Booting with Elks

Booting with Elks

[Florian Zimmermann]

Hello list,

when I try to boot the elks boot disk on my toshiba lt1200
(8086 cpu, 640k ram) I am getting displayed the error 8000 in an
infinite loop. I have also tried the comb disk and a self-made 
kernel dd'ed on a disk, with same results :(

Can anyone point me to where this error may come from?
What kind of bootloader is used on the elks boot disk? (if any)
Google and a grep over kernel sources gave no hint to me yet...

TIA
Florian

Re: Booting with Elks

[David Given]

On Tuesday 10 February 2004 6:12 pm, Florian Zimmermann wrote:
> Hello list,
>
> when I try to boot the elks boot disk on my toshiba lt1200
> (8086 cpu, 640k ram) I am getting displayed the error 8000 in an
> infinite loop. I have also tried the comb disk and a self-made
> kernel dd'ed on a disk, with same results :(

At what stage? While the kernel is loading, or later (after the boot messages 
start to appear)?

I've just tested the latest boot disk --- works fine on dosemu, pcemu and a 
real PC. I don't know what the error code is, but it sounds like a floppy 
disk problem. You're not using a 1.44MB formatted floppy disk in a 720kB 
drive, are you?

(First time I've looked at ELKS for ages, actually. Wow, it's come on. It 
actually looks usable! What's the network code like these days?)

> Can anyone point me to where this error may come from?
> What kind of bootloader is used on the elks boot disk? (if any)
> Google and a grep over kernel sources gave no hint to me yet...

IIRC, it doesn't have a bootloader as such --- it uses a variant on big 
Linux's old boot sector system. That is, you dd the kernel directly onto the 
floppy disk; the first sector of the kernel becomes the floppy's boot sector, 
and contains enough code to load the rest of the kernel into memory and run 
it.

-- 
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AW: Booting with Elks

[Mario Premke]

> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: linux-8086-owner@vger.kernel.org
> [mailto:linux-8086-owner@vger.kernel.org]Im Auftrag von David Given
> Gesendet: Mittwoch, 11. Februar 2004 11:59
> An: linux-8086@vger.kernel.org
> Betreff: Re: Booting with Elks
>
>
> On Tuesday 10 February 2004 6:12 pm, Florian Zimmermann wrote:
> > Hello list,
> >
> > when I try to boot the elks boot disk on my toshiba lt1200
> > (8086 cpu, 640k ram) I am getting displayed the error 8000 in an
> > infinite loop. I have also tried the comb disk and a self-made
> > kernel dd'ed on a disk, with same results :(
>
> At what stage? While the kernel is loading, or later (after the
> boot messages
> start to appear)?
>
> I've just tested the latest boot disk --- works fine on dosemu,
> pcemu and a
> real PC. I don't know what the error code is, but it sounds like
> a floppy
> disk problem. You're not using a 1.44MB formatted floppy disk in a 720kB
> drive, are you?
>
> (First time I've looked at ELKS for ages, actually. Wow, it's
> come on. It
> actually looks usable! What's the network code like these days?)

Haven'd had time yet to look at the latest version. Is the compiler now
running on ELKS itself or is there still the bcc cross compiler?

Mario

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Re: Booting with Elks

[Paul Nasrat]

On Wed, Feb 11, 2004 at 12:40:15PM +0100, Mario Premke wrote:
 
> Haven'd had time yet to look at the latest version. Is the compiler now
> running on ELKS itself or is there still the bcc cross compiler?

ELKS is currently not self-hosting, you still need to use bcc to build

If you are feeling particularly adventurous you can also play with the turbo C
stuff for user space, although bcc is currently the prefered, recommended
compiler:

http://www.retepnet.it/alfmar/fhlvnr.html

Paul

Re: Booting with Elks

[Florian Zimmermann]

mail I accidently forgot to CC to linux-8086:

On Tue, 2004-02-10 at 21:09, Florian Zimmermann wrote:
> Hi Blaz!
> 
> On Wed, 2004-02-11 at 05:48, Blaz Antonic wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > > when I try to boot the elks boot disk on my toshiba lt1200
> > > (8086 cpu, 640k ram) I am getting displayed the error 8000 in an
> > > infinite loop. I have also tried the comb disk and a self-made
> > > kernel dd'ed on a disk, with same results :(
> > > 
> > > Can anyone point me to where this error may come from?
> > > What kind of bootloader is used on the elks boot disk? (if any)
> > > Google and a grep over kernel sources gave no hint to me yet...
> > 
> > Can you post the exact error message you see ? Vague descriptions never
> > help and i don't recall any "error 8000" error message anywhere in the
> > source (grep around to provve me wrong, it's a small number of files
> > anyway so should be over quickly no matter how slow your compilation box
> > is).
> 
> After the bios screen I can see a clear screen and after that
> floppy disk led is active, loading, then only the 8000 error appears,
> like this:
> 8000
> 8000
> 8000
> 8000
> 8000
> 8000
> etc.
> 
> The floppy disk led stays active, so it seems to be like an infinite
> loop. And as already said, I have no reference to this 8000 number found
> in the kernel sources either :(
> 
> > 
> > If it is register small dump (with AX containing error value) it might
> > be that BIOS read function is returning an error, presumeably because
> > your drive/medium is defective. Are you sure that both drive and the
> > medium you use are working allright ?
> 
> I have MINIX successfully running on this machine, so I don't think it
> is hardware fault. I have only an 360k floppy drive, might that be a
> problem? (although the boot image easily fits there)
> 
> Thanks,
> Florian
> 
> > 
> > Blaz Antonic
-- 
Florian Zimmermann <florian.zimmermann@gmx.net>

Re: Booting with Elks

[Pat Gilliland]

David Given wrote:

>I've just tested the latest boot disk --- works fine on dosemu, pcemu and
a 
>real PC. I don't know what the error code is, but it sounds like a floppy 
>disk problem. You're not using a 1.44MB formatted floppy disk in a 720kB 
>drive, are you?

Caveat: I use Elks I am _not_ a developer.

David has a point here which bears expanding a bit.  I found on my 1100
(same as a 1200 w/o the hd)  that the 720 drive is quite particular about
what disks it takes.  If you can, format a genuine 720 floppy (one "hole")
in a 720 drive (not 1.44)  and dd the image to that.  As an empirical fix,
this has worked for me both on my 1100 and 1200.  To pre-empt a further
question - no I have not got the 1200's hd up and running under Elks.  I
would put more work into it but the hd is very hard on the battery. 

Pat

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Re: Booting with Elks

[Florian Zimmermann]

On Wed, 2004-02-11 at 13:44, Pat Gilliland wrote:
> David Given wrote:
> 
> >I've just tested the latest boot disk --- works fine on dosemu, pcemu and
> a 
> >real PC. I don't know what the error code is, but it sounds like a floppy 
> >disk problem. You're not using a 1.44MB formatted floppy disk in a 720kB 
> >drive, are you?
> 
> Caveat: I use Elks I am _not_ a developer.
> 
> David has a point here which bears expanding a bit.  I found on my 1100
> (same as a 1200 w/o the hd)  that the 720 drive is quite particular about
> what disks it takes.  If you can, format a genuine 720 floppy (one "hole")
> in a 720 drive (not 1.44)  and dd the image to that.  As an empirical fix,
> this has worked for me both on my 1100 and 1200.  To pre-empt a further
> question - no I have not got the 1200's hd up and running under Elks.  I
> would put more work into it but the hd is very hard on the battery. 

Good hint. I tried right now and did mkfs a disk in minix, mounted it
afterwards in linux and copied the boot file on it. Then mounted floppy
in minx and copied the file to harddisk, unmounted the floppy and dd'ed
boot file.
I've tried several different boot images on different disks now (all
720k disks) but the error always remains "8000"...
Even tried with and without "bs=8192" appended to dd.

Another idea: the floppy disk drive seems to be on secondary controler.
At least I have to use /dev/fd1 in Minix to access it. Might that be a
problem for the boot startup code?

Florian

> 
> Pat
> 
> Sent using cyberus.ca WebMail - http://www.cyberus.ca/
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