From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-Id: <200306061337.h56DbZF15928@math.Princeton.EDU>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] fd0!dos not a FAT filesystem?
From: John Stalker <stalker@Math.Princeton.EDU>
Date: Fri,  6 Jun 2003 09:37:34 -0400
Topicbox-Message-UUID: c6f3da96-eacb-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

I also have a machine where plan9 produces this message during (attempted)
install.  The funny thing is I once installed plan9 on the same machine
with the same floppy drive, so I know the hardware hasn't changed.  That
was also 4th edition and I doubt the floppy driver code changes much, so
I would guess the software hasn't changed either.  No other OS has ever
had a problem with this drive.  I didn't investigate much, but I did think
about--and fail to try--the following solutions:
	1) Swap floppy drives.
	2) Put a spare hard drive into another machine where I have
	a working plan9, duplicate the installation, adjust for the
	video card and partitioning differences, and then move the
	hard drive over.
	3) Install to a file using bochs under FreeBSD on the same machine,
	and then dd the file to a partition on the hard disk.  I actually
	got fairly far along in this one.  The install floppy causes an
	exception in bochs and bochs offers to die.  If you decide to ignore
	the exception then everything is fine, except that the video card is
	not recognized--no surprise--so you need to do a text install.  This
	would presumably work better in vmware, but I am too cheap to buy it.
	Bochs is painfully slow.  My 800MHz K7 acts like a 4MHz Pentium.  For
	this reason I gave up in mid-install, but I believe it would have
	worked, if I had been more patient.
	4) Debug the floppy driver.  This would have been hard both because
	I don't really know what I'm doing and because you are at such an
	early stage in the bootstrap that there are no tools available.
One final thought:  Maybe the hardware isn't exactly the same as when I
installed successfully.  I have an SCSI adapter on the machine.  That
hasn't changed.  I do have a new SCSI hard disk, though.  It's a long shot,
but you might try pulling the adapter and seeing if plan9 can now read the
floppy.  If that works please let me know.
--
John Stalker
Department of Mathematics
Princeton University
(609)258-6469