Re: New bootdisks / first install report / help needed
Falk Hueffner <falk.hueffner@student.uni-tuebingen.de> writes:
> Adam Di Carlo <adam@onshore.com> writes:
>
> > Helge Kreutzmann <kreutzm@itp.uni-hannover.de> writes:
> >
> > > I can try them on a ruffian which is currently out of production due to
> > > some technical difficulties and on my LX, maybe on an XP1000. Regarding
> > > my LX I cannot complete the installation due to missing network (i.e.
> > > only modem).
> > >
> > > How is a milo based system supposed to be booted ? I see special disk for
> > > nautilus and jensen but no for milo based systems.
> >
> > I'd have to leave that to an Alpha porter to answer. I'm afraid the
> > documentation probably won't be much help.
>
> I know about two MILO systems: Those with AlphaBios, and the Ruffian,
> which has an ARCS-Bios (and I actually know only about AlphaBios
> first-hand). Both understand the FAT filesystem, so you need a
> FAT-formatted Floppy with the correct milo and "linload.exe", which is
> a tiny program that gets started from the bios and loads the MILO.
>
> We could either provide the MILO images and instruct the users to
> prepare such floppies, or provide complete floppy images. The latter
> would be more wasteful for the mirrors since the milo only takes about
> 400k, so we waste about 15MB mirror space, but I'd actually prefer it,
> makes things easier for the installer, no problems with finding a
> mkfatfs, getting file names right etc.
Most importantly we need docs. I tried to install suse-axp (*hide*) to
write a test report on my Ruffian and couldn't get it past the bios at
all. I have never been able to boot anything but the harddrive, which
came preinstalled. I changed the milo and harddrive a few times, but
always bootet from harddisk.
The ARCS Bios is very precise in what it wants and not very helpfull
in telling whats wrong. It seems the files have to be in proper
subdirs even though you specify the full path in the bios.
So I don't know if one can even boot from floppy or cdrom. If anyone
knows about some docs for this I can try to make a floppy or cdrom
boot.
> I wanted to hack that part anyway, OK if I give it a try?
>
> Falk
Since he's practically living next door you would have two people
working on it and 2 alpha archs testing it.
MfG
Goswin
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