1.44 drives on i386

[Liam R. E. Quin]

I am posting this because it's a useful thing to do, and not everyone thinks
of it...

Steven H. Izen (izen at cwru.cwru.edu) wrote:
>I'm thinking of swapping my two drives, to make the 1.44 meg (in dos language)
>a:, and my 1.2 meg drive b:.  Does anyone know how I can create a bootable
>1.44 meg 386/ix floppy from my 1.2 meg distibution floppy?  I tried dd
>unsuccessfully, but I could have specified some parameters incorrectly.

Yes.  If you want to use dd, you can, but you have to use the "dt" devices
in order to copy the boot track.

The most useful thing to do though -- and the reason for posting this -- is
to mount your bootable "install" floppy, and use dd to make an image copy
so you can make new ones (the same size) later, but *also* to use
	mkdir /floppy  # to keep the stuff -- change as appropriate
	dd if=/dev/rdsk/f0q15dt of=/floppy/IMAGEf0q15dt  # or whatever
	mount /dev/dsk/f0q15d /mnt  # mount it as /mnt
	cd /mnt # whir whir clank
	find . -print | cpio -pdlmv /floppy/files
	cd /floppy/files
	umount /dev/rdsk/f0q15d  # or whatever -- "/mnt" might be OK

Now you can look at the files that were on the boot floppy in the comfort
of your own winchester :-)...

In particular, INSTALL and INSTALL2 show how the hard disk is made bootable
using dd from the boot track, and copying the necessary /etc/default files,
etc., into place.
You can also shave a few blocks off these scripts, which will mean that you
can then install Unix a few more times before they becomre unuseable (or is
that fixed in 2.0.2?  I haven't checked).

And of course, you can make a bootable disk with different programs on it...

Lee
-- 
Liam R. Quin, Unixsys (UK) Ltd [note: not an employee of "sq" - a visitor!]
lee at sq.com (Whilst visiting Canada from England, until Christmas)
 ...striving to promote the interproduction of epimorphistic conformability