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

We have decided to install BL3 to both 486 computers with worn-out floppy 
drives.  Floppymeter tests out one (after roughing up the spindle because 
the belt is stretched out and was slipping and it was not working at all) 
at -3800 and the other at -4200.  To format a high density disk they 
should be +/- about 150.  Acceptable is 600, borderline 1500.  These will 
occasionally read a disk from another computer.  They do read disks which 
they have formatted and they might do okay communicating with each other. 
One of them formats a 1.44MB disk as only 1.2MB good sectors. They have 
slow rotation and file transfer speeds.

Since they would not read the BL3 floppy disks (part1 and part2 of the 
loop zip file) we cabled BL3-32.zip to them via transfer cable (in DOS) 
and they both boot with loadlin.  They have 24 and 12MB RAM, and color 
VGA.

The better one has a 200MB ext2 partition with Bl1 on it already, and 
would be an ideal candidate for Bl3 with XVESA and X programs because it 
does 64K colors at 640.  (The second one has 512K video ram and VESA 1.2 
so will work with Xvesa but not links2 since it does only 8-bit color). 
They both have PCMCIA slots for which we have a 14.4 and a 28.8K modem.

We do not need 200MB for Bl1 since we won't be adding to it.  50MB is 
probably enough (we put on the compiler files already).  But I don't want 
to delete it because I have it set up to compile, and to use SVGAlib with 
seejpeg, and it is all working.  Rather than copying Bl1 somewhere else 
(via plip or serial cable with pppd), repartitioning into 50 and 150MB 
partitions, and copying it back again, can we mount bl3 / on /dev/hda1/bl3 
and continue to have Bl1 / mounted on /dev/hda1?  I don't think we want to 
share any directories between them since they are set up differently. 
Would we be better off with two separation partitions instead?

I put BL2 ramdisk on both computers and can use that to set up a serial 
cable transfer (pppd, send and receive) of a temp.tar file, and also to 
install packages with netcat and Steven's script.

We have put lilo aside for a while since my partner says he prefers to 
boot into DOS every time, but might practice it on one of these computers 
and then remove it with fdisk /mbr.

SW81 with usb.i bzimage works with gpm and ps2 mouse driver with a usb 
mouse.   We tried it with mc and links.  Lynx from SW81 does not seem to 
be compiled with mouse support.


The usb kernel from SW81 is 1.2MB bzimage.

 Steven, you say you compiled a 2.4 kernel for Bl3.  Did it include usb 
support? If not, would you be willing to compile a 2.4 kernel with USB 
support that we could use on newer computers with Bl3 and Bl2?  Optimized 
for pentium I MMX. Some of our newer PI's have usb ports.  They are 1997 
and thus 'older hardware' by now.  How much space does the USB part of the 
kernel take up? (I think we could also use the mouse as plain PS/2 but the 
newer digital cameras and memory cards now need USB too).  Our USB 
computers all have plenty of RAM.

I guess this should be a separate USB thread.

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