More SCO Xenix VP/ix problems

Andrew Phillips 289 8712 andrew at teslab.lab.OZ
Tue Nov 28 17:57:40 AEST 1989


We just got VP/ix version 1.1.0 and have had a few problems running
it on Xenix 2.3.1.

First, here is my vpix.cnf file:

C			/usr/vpix/defaults/C:
ROM			/usr/vpix/defaults/rom
CMOS			/usr/vpix/defaults/cmos
BOOTIMAGE		$HOME/vpix/vpix.img
EGAROM			/usr/vpix/defaults/romvga
A			/dev/rfd096
B			/dev/rfd1135ds18
D			/dev/hd00
E			$HOME/vpix/E:
MOUSE			/dev/mouse/vpix0

My major problem is that I can't access the MSDOS partition on the
hard disk (as drive D).  After trying a few things I realised
something that I hadn't know before - I can't access the SCSI drive
if I boot up with vanilla IBM PC-DOS, I have to use MSDOS supplied by
Apricot (MS-DOS 3.3) which presumably has special hooks for the SCSI
hard drive.  If I try to boot VP/ix with Apricot's version of MS-DOS
I get "General protection fault - cannot emulate instruction".  Would
Update A allow me to run this version of MSDOS?

If I boot with the MS-DOS 3.2 that comes with VP/ix and do a chkdsk
of drive D I get a "probable non-DOS disk" message.  I haven't tried
formating drive D because "DIR D:" gives all sorts of names which
look like some things on the Xenix partition and the drive is OK
under MS-DOS 3.3.


I also get several messages when starting up VP/ix, which I can't
explain because I can find no reference to these error numbers in the
manual:

"Error 13 opening mouse file /dev/mouse/vpix0".

"Error 16 encountered opening file /dev/rfd1135ds18 as drive B"

>From my experiments it seems that you can't have more than one real
floppy disk accessible from VP/ix? i.e. A: or B: but not both.

Also when I try to go to the pseudo hard drive (E:) I get "Invalid
drive specification".  Is it that only drives C and D can be pseudo
hard disk drives?

Thanks in advance.  Andrew.
-- 
Andrew Phillips (andrew at teslab.lab.oz{.au}) Ph. +61 (Aust) 2 (Sydney) 289 8712



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