Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:50:12 -0700 From: perryh@pluto.rain.com To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Booting from floppy to install 8.1 Message-ID: <4c5132b4.iGhnhIFH2rFImSpc%perryh@pluto.rain.com>
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I'm trying to solve a chicken-egg problem. I need to boot from floppy to install 8.1, and I don't already have a running 8.1 system on which to build a set of 8.1 floppy images. (The machine in question is an oldish Pentium-III that only boots from its hard drive or from floppy -- the BIOS claims it can also boot from its ATAPI Zip-250 drive but that capability doesn't seem to be working.) By comparing the contents of the 7.3 bootonly ISO and the corresponding floppy images, I've figured out how to construct _almost_ everything on the floppies from the contents of the bootonly ISO. The exception is the boot floppy's boot/loader, which is not the same as or obviously derivable from any file on the bootonly ISO including the ISO's boot/loader (which has changed between 7.3 and 8.1, else I'd feel reasonably safe about trying to use the 7.3 boot floppy's boot/loader file). So, in order of simplicity: Should I be able to do a network install of 8.1 using a 7.3 boot floppy set? (I'm not planning to set up zfs, at least initially.) If not, are the 7.3 and 8.1 boot/loader files similar enough that the boot/loader from a 7.3 boot floppy "should" work when all else in the floppy set is from 8.1? Is there a reasonable way to build the proper boot/loader file for an 8.1 boot floppy using a 6.x or 7.x system?
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