Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

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
>
> ____________________________
> http://www.basiclinux.com.ru
> _______________________________________________
> BasLinux mailing list
> BasLinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/baslinux

keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org