1 Oct
2008
1 Oct
'08
6:24 p.m.
A friend of a friend has an old xenix machine; Compaq DeskPro 386
running Xenix. He shut if off after running for years and it won't
boot because the cmos battery is dead.
The disk is an ESDI drive attached to a Compaq ESDI/FLPY controller
(copyright 1989) ISA bus card.
He says can't see any way to enter a "setup" mode in the BIOS.
Anyone know how to fix this?
apparently it has his Alfa Romeo motor club data on it (so it's clearly
+10yo :-)
Anyone know if the xenix fs can be mounted on linux? (I doubt it, but
I thought I'd ask)
-brad
1 Oct
1 Oct
6:55 p.m.
apparently it has his Alfa Romeo motor club data on it
(so it's clearly
+10yo :-)
I used to have one of those. I really miss that car.
Anyone know if the xenix fs can be mounted on linux?
(I doubt it, but
I thought I'd ask)
Don't quote me on this, but somewhere in the back of
my head I have a vague memory that Xenix used the same
file system layout as System V. If that is true, then
you should be able to. I don't see a Xenix specific
one in the source tree, so if it's not the same as one
of the others, then you're probably out of luck unless
you want to write one, which might not be too bad, especially
since you only need to read and not write.
BLS
2 Oct
2 Oct
5:49 a.m.
Brian L. Stuart wrote:
From the 'mount' man page:
"Note that coherent, sysv and xenix are equivalent and that xenix and
coherent will be removed at some point in the future -- use sysv instead"
... I've had quite a bit of luck mounting ancient Unix-and-friends filesystems
under Linux, albeit often read-only (not a problem if just salvaging data) and
sometimes with screwy file timestamps (possibly more critical in this case)
The real problem is the partition table, as these are often proprietary and
not very well documented, and Linux support for alien partition tables is a
bit sparse. You need to know where the filesystem starts and ends on the disk
in order to pull it out raw using 'dd' under Linux, and then mount the
resulting file image as a Xenix filesystem loop option.
For my Tek Unix box I ended up trawling the Tek's raw disk for fragments of
ASCII related to partition support. That gave me just enough data to
reverse-engineer the partition table format in the first few blocks of the
disk, and then get access to the filesystem sizes/offsets. For this case,
maybe someone has a suitable running Xenix install and can quote the format,
or has some useful paper documentation...
cheers
Jules
apparently it
has his Alfa Romeo motor club data on it (so it's clearly
+10yo :-)
I used to have one of those. I really miss that car.
Anyone know if the xenix fs can be mounted on
linux? (I doubt it, but
I thought I'd ask)
Don't quote me on this, but somewhere in the back of
my head I have a vague memory that Xenix used the same
file system layout as System V. 
1 Oct
1 Oct
7:03 p.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brad Parker" <brad at heeltoe.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2008 9:24 PM
Subject: help (re) booting xenix after cmos battery failure
A friend of a friend has an old xenix machine; Compaq DeskPro 386
running Xenix. He shut if off after running for years and it won't
boot because the cmos battery is dead.
The disk is an ESDI drive attached to a Compaq ESDI/FLPY controller
(copyright 1989) ISA bus card.
He says can't see any way to enter a "setup" mode in the BIOS.
Anyone know how to fix this?
Those old-school machines usually required a setup disk, unlike regular
clones.
I remember using a program naemd something like 'GSETUP.EXE" or .COM on a
Compaq Portable III,
and it worked fine.
I think all you need is a bootable DOS disk, with a generic setup program,
and set up the HD drive type
in the BIOS.
Changing the CMOS battery would be a good idea, so you don;t have to do the
same process at every power-off.
Tony
7:20 p.m.
On Wednesday 01 October 2008 22:03, Tony Mori wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brad Parker" <brad at heeltoe.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2008 9:24 PM
Subject: help (re) booting xenix after cmos battery failure
Some of those also had a setup partition on the HD. If a dos or similar disk
gets booted and fdisk is run (or linux equivalents) to see what's there, it
may be possible to tell, then all you need to do after battery replacement
is to get into it and tell it that what it finds in the hardware is okay. In
terms of the one old machine like that we have, what I'm remembering is that
somewhere in the powerup sequence the cursor changes from an underline to a
block and ends up over on the right side of the screen. I'm not 100% sure on
the keystroke but try looking for that behavior and hitting F10 when it does
that. If there's a setup partition in place that should dump you into it.
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
A friend of a friend has an old xenix machine;
Compaq DeskPro 386
running Xenix. He shut if off after running for years and it won't
boot because the cmos battery is dead.
The disk is an ESDI drive attached to a Compaq ESDI/FLPY controller
(copyright 1989) ISA bus card.
He says can't see any way to enter a "setup" mode in the BIOS.
Anyone know how to fix this?
Those old-school machines usually required a setup disk, unlike regular
clones.
I remember using a program naemd something like 'GSETUP.EXE" or .COM on a
Compaq Portable III, and it worked fine.
I think all you need is a bootable DOS disk, with a generic setup program,
and set up the HD drive type in the BIOS. 
2 Oct
2 Oct
2:25 a.m.
On Wed, 2008-10-01 at 21:24 -0400, Brad Parker wrote:
A friend of a friend has an old xenix machine; Compaq
DeskPro 386
running Xenix. He shut if off after running for years and it won't
boot because the cmos battery is dead.
The disk is an ESDI drive attached to a Compaq ESDI/FLPY controller
(copyright 1989) ISA bus card.
He says can't see any way to enter a "setup" mode in the BIOS.
Anyone know how to fix this?
Argh. I used to know this. If it's like my 386N then you need to hit a
key - possibly F12 - when the cursor scoots across to the right-hand
side of the screen. You've got about a second to do this. Don't blink.
apparently it has his Alfa Romeo motor club data on it
(so it's clearly
+10yo :-)
It's probably well outlived most of the 10-year-old Alfas, although
there's an early 80s one parked near my office that's not quite a Tetley
teabag yet.
Anyone know if the xenix fs can be mounted on linux?
(I doubt it, but
I thought I'd ask)
Probably. As someone else mentioned, SysV rings a faint bell. There's
bound to be some way to do it.
At worst you can dd off the entire image and play with the image,
leaving the disk alone.
Gordon
8:20 p.m.
The Linux sysv file system (as it existed a couple years ago) would
mount a clean 80386 Xenix partition if given the proper flags. You
should mount read only. I have fortunately never had to try it on a
dirty filesystem.
On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 2:25 AM, Gordon J. C. Pearce MM3YEQ
<gordonjcp at gjcp.net> wrote:
On Wed, 2008-10-01 at 21:24 -0400, Brad Parker wrote:
A friend of a friend has an old xenix machine;
Compaq DeskPro 386
running Xenix. He shut if off after running for years and it won't
boot because the cmos battery is dead.
The disk is an ESDI drive attached to a Compaq ESDI/FLPY controller
(copyright 1989) ISA bus card.
He says can't see any way to enter a "setup" mode in the BIOS.
Anyone know how to fix this?
Argh. I used to know this. If it's like my 386N then you need to hit a
key - possibly F12 - when the cursor scoots across to the right-hand
side of the screen. You've got about a second to do this. Don't blink.
apparently it has his Alfa Romeo motor club data
on it (so it's clearly
+10yo :-)
It's probably well outlived most of the 10-year-old Alfas, although
there's an early 80s one parked near my office that's not quite a Tetley
teabag yet.
Anyone know if the xenix fs can be mounted on
linux? (I doubt it, but
I thought I'd ask)
Probably. As someone else mentioned, SysV rings a faint bell. There's
bound to be some way to do it.
At worst you can dd off the entire image and play with the image,
leaving the disk alone.
Gordon
10:39 a.m.
Brad Parker wrote:
A friend of a friend has an old xenix machine; Compaq
DeskPro 386
running Xenix. He shut if off after running for years and it won't
boot because the cmos battery is dead.
The disk is an ESDI drive attached to a Compaq ESDI/FLPY controller
(copyright 1989) ISA bus card.
He says can't see any way to enter a "setup" mode in the BIOS.
If the system has a diag partition, as a lot of Compaqs did, he'll
need to hit F10 at boot time. The cursor will move from upper left
corner to upper right on the screen, and you've got maybe 2 seconds to
hit F10.
Failing that, I might have the diagnostic/setup floppy image. I'll
look for it this evening.
Doc Shipley
8:34 p.m.
On Thursday 02 October 2008 13:39, Doc Shipley wrote:
Brad Parker wrote:
Nice to see my recollection confirmed.
A friend of a friend has an old xenix machine;
Compaq DeskPro 386
running Xenix. He shut if off after running for years and it won't
boot because the cmos battery is dead.
The disk is an ESDI drive attached to a Compaq ESDI/FLPY controller
(copyright 1989) ISA bus card.
He says can't see any way to enter a "setup" mode in the BIOS.
If the system has a diag partition, as a lot of Compaqs did, he'll
need to hit F10 at boot time. The cursor will move from upper left
corner to upper right on the screen, and you've got maybe 2 seconds to
hit F10. Failing that, I might have the diagnostic/setup
floppy image. I'll
look for it this evening.
I think those are often pretty machine-specific, but the last time I needed
one I was able to download it from Compaq's web site. Though that was
admittedly not recently...
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
10:32 p.m.
Roy J. Tellason wrote:
The readme files show the 286/386 setup disks to be pretty generic.
SP0308 was the one I remembered.
I found what seems to be the entire SoftPaq library here:
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/
Impressive, no?
Doc
On Thursday 02 October 2008 13:39, Doc Shipley wrote:
Failing
that, I might have the diagnostic/setup floppy image. I'll
look for it this evening.
I think those are often pretty machine-specific, but the last time I needed
one I was able to download it from Compaq's web site. Though that was
admittedly not recently...
5707
days inactive
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10 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
blstuart＠bellsouth.net -
brad＠heeltoe.com -
doc＠mdrconsult.com -
gordonjcp＠gjcp.net -
jules.richardson99＠gmail.com -
korpela＠ssl.berkeley.edu -
ploopster＠gmail.com -
rtellason＠verizon.net -
tonym＠compusource.net