Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
From: Allisonp@wstd.kom (Allison)
Subject: Re: Dell 486
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Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 22:45:02 GMT
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Stephen Isard <S.IsardDeleteThis@ed.ac.uk> wrote:


Make sure the machine works for dos!  I'm running it on a DELL/425 and
a DELL/316 and the install was totally painless.  both have 4mb or
greater.  The 316 has 80mb disk and the 425 has a 200mb.  Both are not
partitioned for dos (no need for dos machines).

Now if I could get it to install and boot on a 286 that would be
something!

Allison

>Hello,

>I'm trying to install minix 2.0 on a Dell 486 25S, vintage 1993, with
>4MB ram.  When I insert my boot (ROOT+USR) floppy and turn on the
>machine, the monitor comes up and behaves as per documentation, but 
>when I try to boot minix, a few lines of numbers get printed, the
>screen goes blank, and that's it.  In particular, I never get to the
>copyright message.

>The bugs section at the bottom of the boot(8) man page, mentions the
>possibility of indefinite hangs if I/O addresses or IRQ's are wrong, so
>that looks like a possible candidate.  But I don't know which I/O
>addresses or IRQs it is looking for at this stage.  It seems to have
>figured out how to get at the monitor, keyboard and floppy drive in
>order to run the boot monitor, and I don't know what other devices it
>needs in order to print the copyright message, or where it wants them to
>be.

>I'm pretty sure the boot floppy is ok; the checksums are right for
>the ROOT and USR files, and the floppy does manage to start minix on a
>newer Celeron-based machine.  So I think there must be something
>non-standard about the Dell, but I don't know where to start looking.

>The inside of the Dell is still exactly as it came from the factory. 
>It's got a floppy drive, a hard drive, a couple of serial ports, a
>parallel printer port, a mouse, a keyboard and a monitor.  It doesn't
>have, nor has it ever had, an ethernet card or cdrom drive.  I don't
>think it has any serious hardware faults, because it can boot Windows
>3.1 and run out of date versions of Word, Eudora and Netscape.

>Any hints or tips on how to diagnose and/or cure the problem would be
>much appreciated.

>Thanks in advance,

>Stephen Isard

Real address is: Allisonp @ world DOT std DOT com
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