Boot floppy: Oldworld Mac
>>To: "'debian-boot@lists.debian.org'" <debian-boot@lists.debian.org>,
>>debian-powerpc@lists.debian.org
Andrew wrote:
> just my crazy suggestion, if you can't get the keyboard to work right
> for the rootdisk prompt, what about changing it to wait 10 or 15
> seconds for a rootdisk insertion and then continuing? would that be
> difficult/messy to implement?
Why does this sound way too easy? I'm gonna have to check that
out. The other thing is that theoretically, we should be able to
get the hardware to tell us that a floppy has been inserted.
Possibly only on mac hardware, but hey. Or we could just poll the
drive or something. Hmmm, lots of crazy ideas...
>
Ethan wrote:
>i still would like to know what caused this to break in 2.2.18...
Michael wrote:
>That one-size-fits-all install doc is truely evil, even with all the
>arch-specific customizations. True, once you're booted into the installer
>it works the same for all architectures. The steps leading up to that are
>just too different.
>
>Alternatives? We used to have a separate quick reference style install
>guide for installation on Amiga, Atari, Mac and perhaps VME on m68k. That
>was considered a bad idea by the boot-floppies team, and we tried to fold
>the specific 'what files to get, how to boot' instructions into the
>generic docs. Confusion ensued. I now think having separate documents that
>detail the initial steps (choice of install method, partitioning,
>reinstalling your OS, what install files to get, how to unpack them, how to
>boot the installer, how to boot into the installed system finally) would be
>the easiest way to solve the problem. For PPC, separate descriptions for
>oldworld (miboot or BootX) and newworld (yaboot) as well as CHRP/PREP and
>other flavors might make sense.
>
>For the remaining tasks, the generic install doc is the better guide
>indeed. My statement above didn't mean I'd like to replace the generic
>docs with per-arch ones. Just separate out the specific things to be more
>flexible in structuring the description.
>
> Michael
Andrew wrote:
>And that would be located at
>
>http://www.netfall.com/powerpc/boot-floppy-oldworld.img
Ethan wrote:
> read the install docs and set the boot-device variable in OF, that may
> be enough, if not check the list archives for other suggestions.
Hi, I'm just starting to explore Linux, and trying to get an install
going on my Power Computing PowerBase 180 clone running MacOS 8.6. I ran
into the keyboard lock problem that's been mentioned a couple of times.
I really like the Debian idea and I'd like to be able to make a
contribution, maybe this is an opportunity right off the bat. I'm no
bootstrap specialist, that's for sure, but I can certainly put together
some documentation for those that follow once we figure out what to say.
I tried the boot-floppy-hfs image from the current 2.2.18 distribution,
and it does run up to the point of asking for the root disk. No response
when I press enter.
I then tried the boot-floppy-oldworld image that Andrew linked to, and
got past the keyboard lock. One difference was the Welcome to Linux
splash screen showed up, where on the new one it does not. It only
flashes for a second, Welcome to Linus 2.2.17; the new floppy image
doesn't flash any screen like that, just starts in with messages which go
by too fast to see.
Then after the root finishes loading from boot-floppy-oldworld, the
second splash screen says the Rescue floppy version is really 2.2.19,
built on 2000-11-22 by Daniel Jacobowitz. Should these version numbers be
in sync?
Where would I find the source for the current boot floppy, and the
archived source for the previous version? My idea was to diff the two and
find out where the changes took place, which would point us in the right
direction.I did verify the difference is in the zImage, not the dummy
System/Finder which are present on the boot disks.
BTW, I also tried BootX 2.2.1 but it crashed each time it tried to
restart into Linux. I believe there's a newer version in the Apple
developer CVS library, but I couldn't find it.
Chris Tillman
tillman-at-azstarnet.com
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