From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Jan 27 09:20:49 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA14573 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 27 Jan 1997 09:20:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from dg-rtp.dg.com (dg-rtp.rtp.dg.com [128.222.1.2]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id JAA14567 for ; Mon, 27 Jan 1997 09:20:46 -0800 (PST) Received: by dg-rtp.dg.com (5.4R3.10/dg-rtp-v02) id AA19495; Mon, 27 Jan 1997 12:20:06 -0500 Received: from ponds by dg-rtp.dg.com.rtp.dg.com; Mon, 27 Jan 1997 12:20 EST Received: from lakes.water.net (lakes [10.0.0.3]) by ponds.water.net (8.8.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id JAA00421 for ; Mon, 27 Jan 1997 09:26:38 -0500 (EST) Received: (from rivers@localhost) by lakes.water.net (8.8.3/8.6.9) id JAA01879 for freebsd-hackers@freefall.cdrom.com; Mon, 27 Jan 1997 09:30:23 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 09:30:23 -0500 (EST) From: Thomas David Rivers Message-Id: <199701271430.JAA01879@lakes.water.net> To: ponds!freefall.cdrom.com!freebsd-hackers Subject: 2.2-BETA and 1.2meg floppies? Content-Type: text Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk I'm not sure if Jordan had included this in the "4-meg won't be supported" announcement. But - I was just scrounging together a test-bed machine to let me try these things out ahead of time. Unfortunately, the only floppy drive I could cheaply (i.e. free) acquire is a 1.2 meg floppy. Now, the 2.2-BETA boot floppy, boot.flp, will fit - it's 1177088 bytes long. But, I don't believe the fixit floppy, fixit.flp will since it's 1474560 bytes. [A 5-1/4" floppy has 1228800 bytes.] total 5220 -rw-r--r-- 1 rivers wheel 153 Dec 25 21:52 CHECKSUM.MD5 -rw-r--r-- 1 rivers wheel 699 Dec 23 23:00 README.TXT -rw-r--r-- 1 rivers wheel 1177088 Dec 25 21:42 boot.flp -rw-r--r-- 1 rivers wheel 1474560 Dec 25 21:44 fixit.flp I understand; and agree with the arguments that 1.44 meg floppies are cheap (~$60) - but, I'm under serious austerity measures now and don't think I'll stumble into that $60 any time soon. [We're trying to pay off the house early, you know how it goes - and if not, read last Decemeber's Money Magazine.] So - I was wondering if we can produce a smaller "fixit.flp". Perhaps one without "vi" (just ed would be enough.) might bring it into the 1.2 meg range. I put this together with left-overs from previous projects and some other people's junk they were just going to throw away [cases, monitors, etc..] I was able to scrounge; at absolutely no additional cost was: 386dx-33, 12 meg memory. Aha 1542B, a 5-1/4" floppy, and an old 500 meg SCSI. Serial card with 16450's wired on-board. IDE controller and 40 meg IDE drive (which I saved for another day.) Hercules adapter and a nice Princeton monochrome monitor; plus a used "tilty" monitor stand. NE2000 clone card Ancient/dirty keyboard (switchable between XT/AT, with ESC in the wrong place.) Of course, some of these are parts I had purchased years ago; so I suppose you could say there was some cost; but that should be amatorized across about 6-7 years. - Dave Rivers -