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baslinux - Re: [BL] BL3 loop won't install on laptop 386 sx-20 Ultra

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  • From: sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [BL] BL3 loop won't install on laptop 386 sx-20 Ultra
  • Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 19:44:05 +0000 (UTC)

On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org wrote:

sindi keesan wrote:

My guess is RAM. Not enough? Faulty?

I booted with the fast pentium and loadlin ...
mem=4M and that worked fine.

Sure, 4mb RAM is sufficient to boot the DOS version
of BL3. Even 3mb. What I meant by "Not enough?"
was "Perhaps not enough RAM is available in that
computer". Or to put it another way: "Perhaps
you are mistaken about the available RAM in that
computer?"

I can do a RAM check with memtest before giving
up on this laptop computer.

Yes, a proper RAM check is always a good idea when
Linux behaves strangely on untested hardware.

Memtest agrees with syschk and the with amount of RAM found when booting.
640K plus 4MB extended.

This is 640+4096K. Memtest finds 4736K of RAM. Memtest tries to check 80K - 5M. It gets (very very slowly) to test 12 (Bit fade test, 90 min, 2 patterns). On two pentiums this test 'hits a wall' at 20 or 40%. On the 386 it crashes:

Unexpected interrupt. Halting.
A bunch of register information spewed over the page.

On a slow pentium that works fine in DOS and with BL2 RAMDISK memtest produces a black screen with cursor. This computer won't run Windows (I think it crashes during installing) but has been my main office computer for several years. It was given us to recycle.

Maybe BL2 RAMDISK and BL3 loop (which also works) don't use much memory the way I use them (CLI only) compared to Windows on this pentium. But I have been able to handle large images with a viewer, and rotate them, in DOS. We have two others of the same model to test some day.

My partner is putting back together a 386 laptop with broken backlight and 5M (or perhaps 4.7M) RAM, and we will try to transfer fs.img to it via serial cable (llpro - can't figure out Kermit yet). Or download it.

After that there is a 486 laptop with 12MB RAM and external keyboard to try. I am hoping that if linux does not work on these we can rob from one a more reliable floppy drive to use with a 486 that worked fine with floppy BL3.


I mentioned the failed floppy boot because that also
gave us a black screen

Wasn't that insufficient RAM?

Yes, but with 8MB RAM on another computer there was no
black screen with floppy boot.

Different computers react to memory/partition overflows
differently. Particularly laptops.


Loadlin is a DOS executable. It never uses a swap file.

Could there be something peculiar about this extended RAM?

Yes.


25MB does not seem adequate for a DOS partition on a
computer with 4MB RAM and BL3.32.

That's true. To use the swap file you need more than 25mb.

Might you want to mention this on your website, where it says you can use BL3 on a 386 and you need 4MB RAM and 25MB DOS partition?
If you have 4MB RAM you need a larger DOS partition for the swap file.

plip and llpro-parallel would NOT transfer fs.img or the
big zip file properly.

I realize that you've had some problems transfering, but
there is nothing magic about the big zip file that trips
up your plip transfer. Most likely it is a fault in your
hardware/software that shows up during long transfers.

We did this at least ten times on various hardwares. Via plip or llpro/parallel the img file always got corrupted, even inside the zip file. I think we even tried with two different transfer cables. Nothing else ever gets corrupted. We tried transferred the img file separately plain or pkzipped. We will try serial cable this time.

I transferred, via plip, 150MB of my entire linux installation and everything came through okay. It took around an hour. But the plip transfer of under 3MB bl3-32.zip did not so it is not length. Only the fs.img file went bad, and it did so 100% of the time, many times.


Why would parallel mess up a transfer of fs.img when
modem does not and ethernet does not?

Faulty parallel port?

On every single computer, such that only fs.img did not transfer?
I set up six computers this way always transferring from the same one.
Linux BL2 on HD transferred, BL3 loop fs.img did not.


I never did figure out how to transfer files in dumb
terminal mode with Kermit.

Commo works fine (I use it often). I described what to
do it in a previous message.
Some day I will get back to this again.



Can you explain again how to modify the size of fs.img?

I gave very detailed instructions for that in a previous
message. I suggest you search the archive.
Okay.

I notice you used 6.7MB swap file instead of 2x4MB - is
this a compromise between 2x3MB and 2x4MB?

No, it's 1x8MB (minus what the kernel occupies).

I think this means that 8MB RAM holds 2.3MB of kernel plus 6.7M of other things and the kernel does not get swapped but the rest does.
So 2x4736K - 2.3M =about 7.2M for swap? Should I subtract exactly what the kernel occupies or is this close enough? (Is it okay to be slightly under 2x?). 2.3M is about 2500K.

Our other 386 is also 640K + 4M. You can see the screen without a backlight by shining a bright light on the front. How would one switch to an external monitor? Northgate. Nothing on the keyboard about monitors. Another laptop automatically uses the external monitor if it is plugged in and turned on before the computer is powered on. We tried that.


Cheers,
Steven

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keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
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