Sender: Christopher John Harrison <charriso@yallara.cs.rmit.edu.au>
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Subject: Re: minix for a 286...
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I noticed this from Martijn van Buul, and it made me think:
::::}1) Make sure that the floppies do not contain errors. Format them (with the /u
::::}   flag when you're running under DOS, otherwise make sure that you do a 'real'
::::}   format, not a quickformat!).

Yes, did all that.  

::::}   You might want to check if the AT's drives are still working fine.

Yes, they boot cpm-86 OK, and MSDOS 5.

::::}2) You didn't tell which AT you have. There have been numerous 
::::}   'compatible' ATs which weren't that compatible afterall. Try interurupting
::::}   the bootmonitor (when it asks to hit '=') by pressing ESC, and
::::}   enter the following commands:

::::}   processor=86
::::}   hd=bios
::::}   boot

::::}   This might solve things. Also note that PS/2 devices are badly supported.

It's just a no name brand PC/i286.

::::}3) Just out of curiousity: Does Minix really crash, or is it sitting in an
::::}   endless loop?

Well I dont know actually, I wrote out the floppies then put the first disk in the drive
and the PC seeks the A: drive, then beeps (as to say, everything is cool), then the PC
tries to read the A: drive to boot an OS.  At this stage (where MSDOS, for instance, 
pops up the string "starting MSDOS..." or whatever) this boot disk hangs, with the 
drive light still on and spinning, it just stays there for ever (I left it on overnight 
to see).

::::}Good luck,

Well...  I dont know if that would help...
I know a bit about PC's n'stuff and it doesn't make a lot of sense to just write a
compressed file to a disk, and expect it to boot, it's more complecated than that.
Especially the part about just adding another file, if you feel like it.

(I'm talking about the minix install precedure, "fdvol root usr")

If the files are disk images then they need to be decompressed for starters, on you can't
add disk images togehter and get another disk image, there a file structures and allocation 
tables inside disk images that are not automatically aligned properly just because you
cat one on the other.

::::}Martijn

Am I missing something or is Minix a hoax?

-- 
                    ***
         Christopher John Harrison
         3rd Yr CS RMIT University
          charriso@cs.rmit.edu.au
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