18 Feb
2019
18 Feb
'19
12:40 p.m.
On Mon, Feb 18, 2019 at 09:49:30AM -0800, Alan Perry via cctech wrote:
Is there some trick to making boot floppies for the RS/6000 7043-140
(a mid-90s PReP architecture machine)?
[...]
The NetBSD boot floppy images are confusing to me. The
files are too
large to fit on a 1.44M floppy. I didn't see instructions on how to
make boot floppies out of the .fs files one can download in the
install instructions. I went ahead and tried to dd the part that
fits onto a 1.44M floppy and try to boot that and of course that
failed. I have e-mailed the NetBSD prep mailing list and no response
from that.
The system does boot the AIX install on one of its hard disks, but
this is a recycled system and I don't have usernames/passwords for
that install.
Does anyone here have a suggestion on how to proceed?
I have not much of idea about RS6000 but had a peek around netbsd.org
and they have page about running NetBSD on emulators of various
kind. So you may want to experiment with prep emulator, which seems to
be GXemul:
http://www.NetBSD.org/ports/emulators.html
http://www.NetBSD.org/ports/emulators.html#gxemul
and, for example, see if said floppy images boot at all.
A casual check of generic.fs gives me this:
=> (591 12): curl -O
'https://cdn.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-8.0/prep/installation/floppy/generic.fs'
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left
Speed
100 2597k 100 2597k 0 0 3251k 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 3588k
=> (591 13): file generic.fs
generic.fs: x86 boot sector; partition 1: ID=0x41, active, starthead
0, startsector 0, 2879 sectors, code offset 0x0
You have new mail in /var/mail/tomek
=> (591 14): fdisk -l generic.fs
Disk generic.fs: 2 MB, 2659840 bytes
2 heads, 18 sectors/track, 144 cylinders, total 5195 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
generic.fs1 * 0 2878 1439+ 41 PPC PReP Boot
--
Regards,
Tomasz Rola
--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
** **
** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com **