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Date:      Fri, 17 Oct 1997 22:36:31 +0100 (BST)
From:      Andrew Gordon <arg@arg1.demon.co.uk>
To:        Warner Losh <imp@village.org>
Cc:        hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Need source...
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.91.971017220750.528A-100000@server.arg.sj.co.uk>
In-Reply-To: <199710171834.MAA03146@harmony.village.org>

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On Fri, 17 Oct 1997, Warner Losh wrote:
> I'd like to put FreeBSD on my Libretto 50CT laptop and dual boot it
> with Windows 95 (I need the latter for quicken, quickbooks and a
> couple of programs for work).  However, the disk drive that comes with
> it is only 880M.  Anybody know where I can get 8.5mm tall 2.5" IDE
> drives?  I've tried all the usual places, but they only have the more
> standard 12.5mm tall drives, and nothing thinner.  While I could fit
> one of these into my machine with a dremmel tool, I'd rather not do
> that given the 4 year warnatee I paid extra for...

I have an IBM "Travelstar VP" 1.6 Gb drive fitted to my Libretto 50CT.
This is 9mm tall, so a fraction taller than the original drive, but
it does fit (it helps to loosen the case screws to give you slack
to slide the drive in, but once in you can close up without any 
distortion to the case, and for warranty purposes if you put the
original drive back and they won't be any the wiser).

The IBM drive cost me GBP 161  (about USD 260), which I thought was
quite reasonable for what it is.

I had my brain out of gear when partitioning it, in that a straight
800Mb/800Mb split with Win95 in the first half puts the root partion
starting at about cylinder 1025 and so it won't boot from booteasy;
however it will boot from DOS using Fbsdboot.exe.  Obviously a
750/850 split would have been more sensible if I had thought of
this before spending many hours installing windows software.

If keeping Win95 on the machine, it helps to save the installation
disc images from C:\windows\options\cabs\*.* because a straight
Win95 installation from the floppies that come with the machine
won't put them back, and without them you have a complete joke
with PnP and PCMCIA cards - you stick in a card and it says
"now insert floppy no. 27", so you eject the card to fit the floppy
drive, but since Win95 is stuck inside the card insertion event handler
at this point, it won't recognize the floppy drive!   I can't now remember
how I got out of this mess - the solution involved putting back the
old hard drive and transferring the cabs files over the network to
my BSD machine, but i can't remember how I got them back again given
that my network card was the first thing that prompted this.  Possibly
I brought back the critical one of the .cab files via floppy and
put the rest back via the network later.

Needless to say, installing FreeBSD was much easier than Win95.




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