making floppy systems

[Ralph Stickley]

--- fred anger <anger@rightarm.org> wrote:
> Hello all.  I'm new to PWL, and haven't seen any specific docs on creating
> bootable floppy systems.  Please point me to docs if there are any.  
> pwlconfig seems to want to flash to /dev/hda1, and unlike some docs I've
> read, I'm not given the opportunity to specify that I want a floppy
> system.  Perhaps it's buried in the menus?
>  
The floppy support is not provided as originally envisioned (and documented).

To access floppies, use the 
Manage Projects / Project Defaults for "my project"

Device boot location  /dev/fd
Device Partition: 0
Device Type: FLOPPY
Device Type Node: /dev/fd

This will allow the Erase and Load operations to work. Check the mkBootDisk
script to see what else has to be done to boot a floppy (I haven't tried to
make a boot flooppy yet so the Lilo thing may not be the best way to go).

> I have a need to build a mini-system that'll fit on a floppy, which can be
> inserted, booted, then flashed onto the hard drive of an "embedded"
> system, which will then be a standalone Linux machine (i.e. boots from
> it's own hard drive from then on).  This sorta seems to be what PWL was
> going for, only it seems that you actually need to have the hard drive
> plugged into the development box to do this.  Is this true?  Or is there a
> way around this?
> 
Yes...So far, all my development has been on DOC flash (M-Systems Disk-On-Chip
which was quickly abanonded for cost reasons) and Compact Flash (PCMCIA Adaptor
and USB/CF adaptor).  These are all "integrated" hard drives available directly
to pwlconfig.  

Hope this help. Also, Adi is approaching the boot/ramdisk file system support.

Thanks,
Ralph

> -fa
> 
> 
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> See the list archives at http://adis.on.ca/archives/
> See the PWL homepage at  http://peeweelinux.com
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