Hi Jeremie! I downloaded the images.
The first thing I noticed was that the root.img was more than 1.440 MB long. The second thing that I noticed was that "fdformat" and "superformat" don't work on powerpc hardware, so I can't create a 1.920 MB formatted floppy to put root.img onto. For example, when I try to do "fdformat /dev/fd0" I get an error message: "ioctl(FDFMTBEG): Inappropriate ioctl for device". So the largest image I can write to media is 1.440 MB. I decided to try the boot.img anyway since it was the right size. I could at least see if my systems would boot with it. The third thing I noticed was that the floppy drives hadn't been used for years (literally) and they were *dirty*. The blank floppy disks I had around the house were about the same age, so I couldn't trust them either. So I went out and got a drive cleaning kit and a box of brand-new floppy disks. (I had to go to three stores before I found one that carried floppy drive cleaning kits. Floppy disks are seriously going out of style!) After a thorough cleaning... I was able to write the boot.img and read it back without error. The original boot.img and the read-back file compared bit-for-bit, so I figured I had a good one. First, I tried it on the machine that wrote it (a beige G3 at 300 MHz). It succeeded in booting (got a "happy-mac" icon that changed after a while to an icon of Tux Penguin snuggling up to a happy-mac.) Of course, when it ejected the boot floppy (presumably because it wanted the root floppy inserted -- though there was no indication on the screen that this was the case. I assume that is normal?) I had no root floppy to insert. But I felt good that I'd gotten that far! Next I tried it on a different machine (a powermac 6500 at 225MHz). It got to the point of the Tux-and-Mac icon, but the drive made grinding noises and it never ejected the disk. It just hung. I believe that the floppy drive on that machine is terminally old/tired/flakey, even after a couple of thorough cleanings. It's not altogether surprising, since in a previous life, this machine was used (and abused!) by students in a public computer lab. I'll try swapping the floppy drive with a known good one and try again. Though that may take a couple of days. So, can we make a root.img file that will fit on a 1.440 MB disk? Hope this helps! Rick Rick Thomas wrote: > > Thanks, > > I'll give that a try. > > Rick > > On Sunday, March 21, 2004, at 06:47 PM, Jeremie Koenig wrote: > > > On Sat, Mar 20, 2004 at 01:06:55PM -0500, Rick Thomas wrote: > >> OK, I'm willing to give it a try. Where do I start? > > > > You can find some floppy images at > > http://sprite.fr.eu.org/d-i-oldworld/ > > I haven't tested them at all, so please tell me how it goes ! > > > > You won't be able to install any bootloader, but IIRC chrooting into > > /target and running quikconfig works. Maybe you'll also need to do some > > OpenFirmware configuration to boot into the new system. > > > > Good luck ! > > > > -- > > Jeremie Koenig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]