Baslinux mailing list

[baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org]

On Sat, 2008-07-12 at 14:59 -0400, baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org wrote:
> Hello, I'm trying to get Linux running on a very old IBM PS/2 model
> 70/80 PC. I've tried many other distros, but they all failed to run
> due to issues with SCSI. So I tried BasicLinux on a floppy, it was the
> first Linux distro to ever successfully run!
> 
> However, I was very limited to what I could do since this PC only has
> 12MB RAM, so I couldn't load a GUI and could only load a few extra
> programs as addons. So I want to try to get Linux running without
> floppies, so I downloaded the DOS version and transferred it to the PC
> via a LapLink cable. 
> 
> However heres where problems start. When I ran "boot.bat", everything
> went smoothly... except when it came time to find the filesystem
> image. I got this error:
> 
> /baslin/fs.img not found on mount /dev/hda1
> 
> It goes on with mount points 8 times, then freezes. I Googled the
> error and came upon a post in the mailing list from 2004 of someone
> who's getting the same error, and it was due to the fact that the
> kernel only supports IDE or somethning like that, and recommended to
> use BL2 instead. However, I tried BL2, and it gave me one of the
> common errors I got when trying to get Linux running: No math
> coprocessor found. Giving up.
> 
> The PC is so old it doesn't have a math coprocessor! 
> 
> The post I read this from was from 2004, so I was wondering if the
> status of this issue has changed since then, or if there's a fix? If
> not, what else would be able to run?

So I finally have access to the computer now. I tried using the
bzimage.big kernel that has SCSI support as suggusted, but when I boot
from DOS, it still says it can't find /baslin/fs.img on the SCSI disks,
and freezes.

I also get this error in the boot time text:
SCSI <fdomain> detection failed, no card found. So it doesn't detect any
SCSI disks. So it appears that, even though I'm using a kernel with SCSI
support in it, it still can't detect my SCSI disks.

I've changed the name of bzimage.big to ZIMAGE, and edited the linuxrc
file on the INITFS file (I had to mount it with -o loop) to point to
SCSI disks, but it's still not working.

Any ideas? Also, I can't access the SCSI disk when I boot from the BL
floppy version and use the SCSI modules (scsi_mod and sd_mod).