lwm@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Larry Meehan) (05/12/91)
I just acquired a Unix PC that, I was told, needed a new hard disk. No
problem. I can handle that. Before I buy anything though, I thought I'd
try to boot from floppy and see if I can at least make it do something.
I thought just for grins I'd try to format the hard disk, so I followed
the instructions which start out with booting from the diagnostic floppy.
I inserted the floppy and reset the system, but instead of getting the
message about the system configuration, which the manual says I should see,
I just get a little rectangle character every few seconds on the screen.
This goes on forever as far as I can tell. It seems the system doesn't
even try to access the floppy. I haven't found anything in the manuals
yet about this behavior, so I thought I'd seek the wisdom of the net.
Does the hard drive have to return a "ready" status to the system before
it will do anything, or is there something else besides a bad drive that
my system is afflicted with? I tried plugging the floppy into my MSDOS
box and it seemed to work fine there, if that means anything. Also, the
floppy is surely not the original one since it says "IBM" very clearly
on the front, which is probably not what AT&T would want.
I'm completely new to the 3b1 world, but I'm eager to get this system
running and join the fun. I'd like to catch up on all the tricks that
have been posted previously. Is there an archive of this group or a
"frequently asked questions" document or anything like that?
Thanks to all for any help.
Name: Larry Meehan
Addr: lwm@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu or ...!{purdue|rutgers}!iuvax!lwm
Quote: "Industry without art is brutality." (A. K. Coomaraswamy)
--
Name: Larry Meehan
Addr: lwm@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu or ...!{purdue|rutgers}!iuvax!lwm
Quote: "Industry without art is brutality." (A. K. Coomaraswamy)