Amiga MINIX floppy problems
David Benn
since my first disks had a large number of bad sectors.
All the latest disks but one copied okay, with a PC (the manual recommends
you use an Amiga utility which can copy PC disks). When booting the system,
the boot and root phases go smoothly. However, when inserting the /usr
disk, I get a heap of sector unreadable (or such like) errors and some disk
not writable errors after the /dev/dd0 mounted message. Sometimes the login
prompt comes up and other times not.
My df0: has always been a little flakey, so there could be something wrong
there (with the write protect problem). On booting MINIX, how does one
specify the boot drive (ie: before inserting root), eg: dd1? dd2? (rather
than dd0). I should add that by "flakey" I don't mean severely. df0: just
sometimes says that a disk is write-protected when it's not.
Also, I've heard that a lot of people have had similar problems with the
Amiga MINIX disks. Now I'm well aware that there are patches for Minix 1.5.
But SURELY (!!!!) I don't need the patches JUST to get the darn thing to
start doing SOMETHING past the /usr mounted stage??? If so, then the $250
is a total rip-off.
I'd appreciate some responses on this, because I'm getting a little fed up
with trying to get Minix going on my Amiga.
in earnest...
--
db...@leven.appcomp.utas.edu.au
David Benn - Applied Computing, University of Tasmania at Launceston.
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Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Stephen T. McKenna
Just to let you know your problems aren't unique:
I had a bad disk in my original set. They were quickly replaced (thanks for
that, P-H) but the second set had a bad one too; luckily a different one than
the first set, which I had copied, so I now had a complete set.
Although Minix is running now, it goes through disks at a furious rate. The
typical situation is sudden unrecoverable read or write errors, frequently in
groups of 5 consecutive blocks. The transfer command is particularly prone
to corrupting disks this way; when transferring from the Amiga to the Minix
side I usually write a half dozen disks in hope that one will read.
I don't think patches are the answer; I've patched up to 1.5.10.2 and not
seen any improvement, although the patches are worthwhile anyway. My advice
on muddling by is to keep everything write-protected whenever possible; this
includes /usr at boot and login time (Minix will gripe about the write-protect
when it tries to write /usr/adm/wtmp, but that's harmless).
I have admittedly old hardware (6 year old A1000 with a 68020 add-on) but it
has never had disk drive problems.
Can anyone out there offer explanations or (hopefully) suggestions?
Steve McKenna
stmc...@nap.amoco.com
Amoco Research Center
Naperville, IL, USA
Art Mercer
>
> Just to let you know your problems aren't unique:
I'll agree to that, in my case it was the Amiga boot disk. Thankfully, I had
down-loaded the 1.5.10.1 & 1.5.10.2 patches and got a good .img file...
[omitted...]
> Although Minix is running now, it goes through disks at a furious rate. The
> typical situation is sudden unrecoverable read or write errors, frequently in
> groups of 5 consecutive blocks. The transfer command is particularly prone
> to corrupting disks this way; when transferring from the Amiga to the Minix
> side I usually write a half dozen disks in hope that one will read.
>
I have yet to get transfer to work. But CrossDos has solved most of my
problems.
> I don't think patches are the answer; I've patched up to 1.5.10.2 and not
> seen any improvement, although the patches are worthwhile anyway. My advice
> on muddling by is to keep everything write-protected whenever possible; this
> includes /usr at boot and login time (Minix will gripe about the write-protect
> when it tries to write /usr/adm/wtmp, but that's harmless).
On the subject of 1.5.10.2, I cannot get it working with the supplied "ttys"
file and haven't had time to write Michael. Any suggestions???
>
> I have admittedly old hardware (6 year old A1000 with a 68020 add-on) but it
> has never had disk drive problems.
>
> Can anyone out there offer explanations or (hopefully) suggestions?
>
> Steve McKenna
> stmc...@nap.amoco.com
> Amoco Research Center
> Naperville, IL, USA
>
Art Mercer
Sr. Consultant, Academic Computing Resources
040H Library Annex
Wright State University
Col. Glenn HWY
Dayton, OH 45435
EMail:
ame...@eve.wright.edu
<or>
ame...@wright.bitnet
PHONE: (513)873-4038
---
David Benn
Thanks for that. At least I know it wasn't just me.
I'll keep your tips in mind.
Now for the good news! Although I consistently got errors by using a PC
diskcopy program (on a PC in fact), when using transfer -f in AmigaDOS
mode, followed by diskcopy in Minix, things worked just dandy. I noticed a
couple of weird things however:
1. If I tried to write protect my originals when diskcopying
Minix seemed to assume that the target disk was
write-protected too. Does Minix only check for the write
protected status of the source disk?
2. If I used a disk that I had previously used to copy one
of the Minix originals onto (via PC diskcopy), it would
come through the transfer -f okay, but a Minix diskcopy
would fail to work correctly, instead giving a heap of
bad sector errors.
Along with the PC diskcopy failures, 2 leads me to conclude that the floppy
drivers must be very sensitive in Minix...
Now that I have Minix up and running, I intend to install the patches, and
customise things a little.
I apologise for the severe tone of "voice" I used in my last posting. I
guess I was just getting a tad frustrated.
Oh, BTW, can someone give me an answer to the question I posed last time
about how to get Minix to accept the ROOT and /usr disks in a different
drive at boot time? The prompt for the ROOT disk says that the bootdev can
be specified. Does this mean just another disk apart from ROOT in dd0? Or
can I specify the 2nd or 3rd disk drive...?
Regards...
--
db...@leven.appcomp.utas.edu.au
David Benn - Applied Computing, University of Tasmania at Launceston.
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Joyous distrust is a sign of health;
Alan Bair
On the subject of 1.5.10.2, I cannot get it working with the supplied "ttys"
file and haven't had time to write Michael. Any suggestions???
I ran into some problems with this and after looking around and talking to
Michael, I found it was a couple things as I remember. One was that the getty
program needed to be put in /etc or maybe /bin. It is one, but acutally needs
to be in the other. The other problem was with the ttys file, but I don't
remeber exactly what it was that needed to be changed. Let me know and I'll
boot up Minix and take a look for more details.
Art Mercer
Sr. Consultant, Academic Computing Resources
040H Library Annex
Wright State University
Col. Glenn HWY
Dayton, OH 45435
EMail:
ame...@eve.wright.edu
<or>
ame...@wright.bitnet
PHONE: (513)873-4038
---
--
Alan Bair AMCU DSCS
Motorola, Inc. (Design Software &
Mail Stop OE-320 Computer Services)
6501 William Cannon Dr. West
Austin, TX 78735-8598 ab...@parsons.sps.mot.com