Boot disk won't detect old computer's CD-ROM drive
 

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to install Slackware 9.1 on a Pentium 133 clone with 32MB RAM and 6GB hard disk. It has a Panasonic-Matsushita CR-155 CD-ROM drive. Unfortunately, the Windows 95 CD-ROM is the only CD-ROM I can get to boot on that computer. All other CD-ROMs are rejected, so I'm assuming there's some bug in the BIOS.

So I went to the Slackware site to download a boot disk with the driver. I downloaded sbpcd.i because it supports Panasonic-Matsushita drives as well as Creative Labs drives. (I remember being able to load my CD-ROM disk from DOS using a Creative Labs driver)

But yet when I used the boot disk, it failed to detect my CD-ROM drive and asked me to insert the root disk (?)


Any ideas on what to do?

Thanks,

Vince

In order to set up slackware by floppy you need 1boot disk and 2 root disks, they are also available through slackware's site. Have you tried the bare.i image? Ya never know it might see the cdrom. If not, try the other images.

Yes, I tried the bare.i image first. Then I tried sbpcd.i and it didn't work either. I also tried fiddling around with the kernel arguments but nothing has worked.

So I need to use the root disks even though I have the CD-ROM?

I needed the the root disks because my cdrom was still not detected by slackware, but it was detected during the installation.

Yes you need the root (install) disks, since they contain the Slackware setup scripts. Your CDROM should be detected then when setup scans for the CD installation disk.
The thing with only some CD's booting is that older CDROM drives are only able to boot a CD if it does floppy emulation, which the slackware CD's don't.

Now, the problem is, the root disks seem to be much larger than the 1.44MB, which is the disk format my old computer drive accepts, and the only format my computer's BIOS will recognize. Now, the only diskettes I can find on the market are 2.88MB 2SHD floppies. The problem with this is that half of the root disk image gets written on one side and half on the other. Therefore when I put in my root disk in the drive, it always says that the root disk is corrupt, albeit being brand new.

I do have old diskettes, but every one of them has bad sectors.

How did you all install Slackware on old computers?

The root disks take up two floppies, 1 on the first, 2 on the second. The files are G:\rootdisks\install.1 and G:\rootdisks\install.2 (G:\ being the letter of your cdrom drive). Each are exactly 1.44 MB. Use the included rawrite utility to write these images to your disks.

Thanks, I found the two files, but I have a problem. When I type "dd if=./install.1 of=/dev/fd0", I get this terminal output before it starts copying:
2880+0 records in
2880+0 records out

2880? Doesn't this mean 2.88MB? My diskette is 2.88MB, which is what I'm worrying about. How can I get it to only use 1.44MB?

No that's fine and normal. floppies use a sector size of 512 bytes, so X2 gives you 1.44MB. 2880 records is the right size. If you have any problems use windows or DOS to format the floppies, even though dd will overwrite everything including th formatting. BTW 1.44MB floppies are also double sided. You might want to read my minimal install HOWTO for some tips on making Slack run a little better on old hardware:
http://home.earthlink.net/~gnashley/...ix8_1howto.htm

Okay, I got the root disks to work, but the setup program still isn't detecting my CD-ROM drive. It's actually a CR-585. I'm using the old_cds.i boot image on my boot disks. I tried the bare.i and it doesn't work.

EDIT:
What's weird is that, if I leave my CD-ROM drive open while the setup program looks for IDE CD-ROM drives, the drive will close. So there must be some communication going on between the setup program and the drive, but somehow it can't mount it. The kernel recognizes it, since I see the message "hdc: MATSHITA CR-585" while the computer boots, but it can't mount it.

When I try to mount the CD-ROM manually, it gives me this message: "No medium found" without the CD-ROM drive light even turning on to check.