From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 1994 04:26:59 -0400
From: forsyth@minster.york.ac.uk forsyth@minster.york.ac.uk
Subject: b.com
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 0415f3ea-eac8-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025
Message-ID: <19941010082659.G_V_mqNLO4iJQvIZqYCdIvOwNXJ5Vq_CQZ6CRHIycrc@z>

which hard disc have you got on your 386/486 machine?
(ie, make, size, type)
you can try ftp'ing b.com from /pub/plan9/b.com on ftp.cs.york.ac.uk
to see if that is better (or worse!).  there was a problem with the handling
of certain older drives, but i can't remember whether i fixed it in b.com
or devhard.c in the pc kernel.