Baslinux mailing list

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

On Mon, 22 May 2006, sindi keesan wrote:

> How would I copy the BL3.40 ext2 setup from hard drive to loop BL3.40?
> I have made a .tgz file of all the files in the ext2 version, after
> booting with the loop version.
>
> This is for a computer which is mostly full of Win98, which I don't think
> I can compress into less space because near the end of the drive are lots
> of unmovable files.
>
> So I want to make a 100MB loop fsnew.img and transfer the contents of the
> .tgz file to it.
>
> I think I would
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/fsnew.img bs=1024k count=100
>
> wait a bit, then
> mke2fs fsnew.img

I was asked whether I really want to do this to what was (?was not) a 
special block device but I answered 'y' and it worked.

> Do I just mount -o loop fsnew.img and copy the .tgz file to it and
> uncompress it?

That worked.
> I have loop BL3.40 on the Windows computer and can put the .tgz file into
> the baslin directory first, or copy it directly from the other computer to
> the mounted loop file.


I then had to rename the original fs.img to fsold.img and the new 
fsnew.img to fs.img.



I have  bl3.40 set up in about 50MB on a 100MHz Toshiba Satellite Prof 
420CDT wtih Chips & Technology video identifed by hwinfo as F65550 HiPV32. 
I was able to transfer it to a 266MHz Toshiba Satellite 335CDS with F65555 
HiPVPro video and to a 100MHz Hitachi with a similarly-number C&T video 
chip.   The only change I had to make was in eznet.conf since sometimes 
the PCMCIA modem shows up at /dev/ttyS2 and sometimes ttyS1 (depending 
probably on how many non-disabled serial ports the computer has).

XF86Config is specially modified (dot clocks were different from anything 
standard and 800x600 is 35.0 and 640x480 is 25.175).  Xvesa crashes, so I
X_SVGA server from sw4.0 (which works with Opera at least on the Toshibas 
and the Gateway).  I experimented with the numbers making them match what 
I saw on the screen every time X did not work (as posted in a previous 
posting).  Slackware 4.0 is newer than any of our laptop computers.

I was astonished that the same XF86Config is also working with this 
Gateway, which has a Yamaha NeoMagic NM2160 video chip.  There is some 
hardware problem that keeps the video from working in 'stretched' mode (it 
is bleached and nearly invisible) and the server message says 'low 
resolution video modes are stretched'.  I see text in about 80% of the 
screen - is there some way to get this working full-screen in linux 
without changing to stretched mode in bios (setup)?  I have this computer 
because the screen turned invisible for my neighbor, who bought a new 
computer.

I have posted my magic PI Gateway-Hitachi-Toshiba configuration:

http://keesan.freeshell.org/bl/XF86Config.laptops

Copy to /etc/XF86Config AFTER you install the xsvga server and Steven's 
no-xvesa package so that it will overwrite his original version of this 
config file, which I modified the dot-clocks in for laptops.  His package 
contains xinit and a few other things needed for non-Xvesa X.

I would appreciate hearing if it works on other computers circa 1996-1998 
(100-266MHz).

My older Compaq 486 laptop uses a different configuration (also posted at 
my site, the wd configuration, for 640 only) with specific dot-clocks.

Xvesa crashes all of these laptops.  svgalib works at least as 
chipset=VGA, so I suspect that the plain xvga server would also work, but 
only in 16 colors, and these computers have 2MB video ram and 800x600 
screen.