Installation on an old 486

[mdg]

Would like to install minix on an old 486DX (Compaq Prolinea 4/66).
Problem is that it does
not have a cdrom drive. It does have an NIC and a floppy drive.
Currently have FreeBSD on
it (installed using floppy and internet). Is it possible to install
Minix 3 without a cd. If so,
any suggestions?

Thanks,

Mike.

[Benny]

> it (installed using floppy and internet). Is it possible to install
> Minix 3 without a cd. If so,
> any suggestions?

Look there : http://minix1.woodhull.com/faq/cdinstall.html
If Minix Supports your NIC you can boot from your floppy
and download all the needed files (I never try this).

Hope this helps a little,

[Al Woodhull]

I'm pleased to have someone refer to an article that I
wrote several years ago, but I should point out that the
procedure I described was intended to deal with
installing Minix 2 (specifically 2.0.3 or 2.0.4). The
current query is about installing Minix 3.

The bootable floppy disk images I described in that
article were relatively easy to make, because Minix 2
distributions always assumed you would be able to make
a root partition that could be copied to a 1.44 MB
floppy disk. But for Minix 3 a standard root partition
is 16 MB. I think you could probably fit enough stuff
on a single floppy to be able to boot, and then load
enough from another floppy to be able to network, but I
haven't tried to do this. If someone will put it
together it would be a service worth posting for others
to use.

I also cannot say for sure that Minxi 3 will be happy on
a 486. I don't know of a reason it would not work, but
I never tried to test it -- in fact, I don't have a test
system for Minix with any hardware older than an early
Pentium.

- Al

[XayOn]

> I also cannot say for sure that Minxi 3 will be happy on
> a 486. I don't know of a reason it would not work, but
> I never tried to test it -- in fact, I don't have a test
> system for Minix with any hardware older than an early
> Pentium.

:( In my 486 minix3 isn't happy at all :'(, floppy boot disk says
something about it havent found something (WoW, well explained
heh ;-)) I'll post soon the problem here... (amd 486 32mb ram, 200mb
hd)

[fatpig]

> :( In my 486 minix3 isn't happy at all :'(, floppy boot disk says
> something about it havent found something (WoW, well explained
> heh ;-)) I'll post soon the problem here... (amd 486 32mb ram, 200mb
> hd)

On my old 486 (33MHz, 32MB) Minix 3.1.2 works fine except for a floppy
disk access problem. I modified the floppy.c driver with a quick hack
which fixed the problem but resulted in much slower floppy access.
More recent versions might have fixxed this problem but I haven't
tried them.

Charles Littlefield