SCO XENIX 2.3.2 on i486

[Peter Funk]

In <18 at dhump.lakesys.COM> 
	mort at dhump.lakesys.COM (Marty Wiedmeyer) asked:

mw> We have SCO XENIX 386 2.3.2 and I have been asked to install it on an 
mw> NCR PC486/MC25.

mw> 1)	Does it run? I know ODT runs, but it's UNIX, not XENIX.

We have succesfully installed SCO Xenix 2.3.2 GT on a number of
Noname-EISA-80486s equipped with 64 MB of RAM.  SCO Xenix 2.3.2
leaves 3/4 of RAM unused. :-)  

But we discovered a serious Problem: Together with a number of device 
drivers the size kernel image grows over the mythical limit of 640 kB.
Also this should be no longer a problem since release 2.3.0 (see pg. 62
on "Large Kernel Support" in Release Notes of 2.3.) we got the following 
error message :

      Not enough physical memory for the kernel!

The board was equipped with an Award BIOS.  On an old 80386/25 
equipped with an American Megatrends BIOS the same kernel boots well.
At the moment, we don't know, whether this is a bios related or 
architecture related problem.  Looks odd: It seems to be necessary
to reverse engineer /boot.... :-(

mw> 	I tried making a bootable disk with mkdev fd and dd'ing N1 to
mw> 	it to no avail.

You will probably also have to patch the minor device numbers of
_rootdev, _pipedev, _swapdev of the floppy kernel image using adb. 
I don't know, whether this is all you need to do, to get the N1-disk
booting.  It may be easier to obtain the 3.5 inch distribution from SCO.
-- 
Peter Funk \\ ArtCom GmbH, Schwachhauser Heerstr. 78, D-2800 Bremen 1
Work at home: Oldenburger Str.86, D-2875 Ganderkesee 1 /+49 4222 6018 (8am-6pm)
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