[9fans] Step 1 and I'm stuck. (Was Building a new Plan 9 system)

[9fans] Step 1 and I'm stuck. (Was Building a new Plan 9 system)

[forsyth]

>>Does Plan 9 perhaps have some problem with Pentium II boards?  I combed

the pentium II is fine (i run plan9 on my p-ii thinkpad), although
once you've got the system running you'll want to apply some changes
(from plan9.bell-labs.com) to detect the cpu type correctly.
otherwise the system will say you've got an 852MHz 586 or some such thing,
and it will use the wrong values to limit a few busy-wait delays.
i'd be surprised if you had too much trouble just installing the 4 disk
set even with the cpu type detected incorrectly.

[9fans] Step 1 and I'm stuck. (Was Building a new Plan 9 system)

[Kenji]

Hello!

>		Primary IDE Master
>			Maximum Capacity 		4312MB
Installing 4-disk set to IDE over 4GB will cause a problem.

Kenji Arisawa
E-mail: arisawa@aichi-u.ac.jp

[9fans] Step 1 and I'm stuck. (Was Building a new Plan 9 system)

[James]

Hello folks, 

Now that I have the video card thingy out of the way, here
is my woeful story...

I got my new workstation computer today. Instead of just putting linux on
it, I thought that I might as well try and install the Plan 9 diskette
system -- Seems like it would be good to know if I can even install a
mini-system before I go out and spend money to build a complete setup.

Basically, I'm running into a weird problem after I've installed disk1 and
Plan 9 is trying to install the 3-disk set. I'm getting an error that it
couldn't build the Plan 9 partition.  It seems like the system doesn't
really understand my E-IDE drive properly.  It complains that it had a
problem building a Plan 9 partition table on /dev/hd0.  There is plenty
of space left at the end of the disk, I only have 1 40mb partition. That
leaves over 4.2Gb unpartitioned (in other words, there is the single tiny
partition, and 4.2 Gb left free on the disk, NOT in an extended partition
or anything like that).  Anyone else experience and resolve this problem?

The hardware on this machine is:

	Intel SE440BX motherboard w/Pentium II 400Mhz CPU & 256Mb RAM
	Matrix Millennium GB200 4mb AGP video	 <-- I'm only trying 640x480x1
	WDC AC24300L-(PM) 4.3Gb E-IDE disk drive <-- This is the only disk
	Mitsumi FX Series IDE CD-ROM			 <-- I'm not trying to detect it
	3com 3c509B-TX							 <-- I'm not trying to detect it

Does Plan 9 perhaps have some problem with Pentium II boards?  I combed
the archives, and realized that nobody mentions a P2 system.  I have
been assuming that, like the P1 and 486, things are backward compatible.
And the fact that the disk1 boots and installs c:\plan9 made me think
that it should work.  I hope that is the case!

One thing I note is that the sucky BIOS on this motherboard (you actually
have to change a JUMPER to get at the BIOS config!)  refuses to let me
change the settings for the disk drive. I tried disabling LBA mode, and
some other things. Here are the impossible to change settings the mb uses
for the drive:

		Primary IDE Master
			Maximum Capacity 		4312MB
			Multi-Sector Transfers	16 Sectors
			LBA Mode Control		Enabled
			Transfer Mode			FPIO 4 / DMA 2
			Ultra DMA				Mode 2

After going through the steps I outline below, I tried a whole bunch of
things. Using FDISK extended disk mode (allowing it to use all 4.x Gb)
and making a 4.290 Gb partition, leaving 20mb free, playing around with
the one partition size, trying disk1.nvd and disk1.org, using the 9dos
file on the FTP site...  I even tried creating extended DOS partitions
in the hopes that perhaps the docs were wrong and I needed to create
the plan9 partition myself (After going through the 9fans archive, it
looks like my first assumption was right: plan9 expects to have 1 DOS
partition, and then have the rest of the disk unpartitioned and free).
So what gives? Is it my hardware?

If nobody has any idea of what could be wrong at this point in my message,
I fear all may be lost. But just in case it isn't, I've appended a
step-by-step listing of what I did (just the thing to read with your
morning coffee!)

Any suggestions will by gratefully received,

Jim

Installation Log:

	Downloaded disk^(1-4) from ftp://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/pcdist/

	Created disk1:
		[root@aubrey jimr]# fdformat /dev/fd0H1440
		Double-sided, 80 tracks, 18 sec/track. Total capacity 1440 kB.
		Formatting ... 
		done
		Verifying ... done
	
		[root@aubrey jimr]# dd if=disk1 of=/dev/fd0H1440
		2880+0 records in
		2880+0 records out

	Created disk^(2-4):
		DOS> format a:
		DOS> copy diskN a:
		
	Created DOS boot disk:
		DOS> format a: /s
		DOS> copy [bunch of utilities -- e.g., fdisk, format, sys, etc.] a:
		
	Booted the DOS boot disk, and went into FDISK:
	
		deleted partition 1 (the only partition, it spanned all 4.3Gb)
		create new dos primary partition c:, size == 39mb
		made c: active
		left the rest of the disk unpartitioned
		
	Rebooted with the DOS boot disk
	
	Set up C:
		A:> format c: /s
		A:> mkdir c:\dos
		A:> copy *.* c:\dos

	Stuck in disk1, rebooted 
	(also tried booting c:, and and running b.com from a:)

		After booting Plan9 disk1, it asked me to select the
		hard drive I wanted to use.  It gave me the one option
		of hd0 -- this is fine, since I only have the one E-IDE
		disk drive.

			The following partitions were found. Select
			a FAT-based partition for the installation.
			
			0 *Type: FAT (HUGE)	LBA:	63 -> 80324

		The disk installed files into c:\plan9 without reporting
		errors

		The disk asked me to set up plan9.ini:
		VGA	Setup				640x480x1
		Mouse Type				PS2
		ATA (IDE) Controller	None
		SCSI Controller			None
		SoundBlaster			None
		SoundBlaster CD-ROM		None
		File system console		None

		resulting plan9.ini:
			mouseport=ps2
			monitor=vga
			monitorsize=640x480x1
			bootfile=hd!0!/plan9/9dos
			rootdir=/plan9
			bootdisk=#H/hd0disk:63

	Rebooted into DOS, ran \plan9\b.com
	
	Got a menu
		Choose
			Install 3 Diskette System to local drive
			
			Got a menu
				Choose
					/dev/hd0
				
					Got the error
						An  error occurred while trying to build
						a Plan 9 partition table for the disk. The
						most likely cause is insufficient disk
						space.


Jim