From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <25570b160ef1b1803391a5c7000637b8@collyer.net> From: Geoff Collyer To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: [9fans] booting a 9 pc without using any disk nor a prom burner Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2004 23:52:22 -0800 Topicbox-Message-UUID: f123258c-eacc-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 I've just booted my (Pentium Pro) terminal without using any rotating disk. I bought a compact-flash-to-IDE converter from PC Engine. It's called the CFDISK.5D and I got mine from http://store.ituner.com/ituner (in Fremont, CA) for US$20. Look under `CF IDE Adapters'. There are other variations and you might want to buy one of them instead if there isn't room to insert the CFDISK.5D directly into an IDE controller slot on your motherboard. For booting Plan 9, you can use the smallest compact flash card you can find (I had a 4MB and a 10MB lying around, but the smallest you can buy new seems to be 32MB). Currently you can buy 16MB Sandisk cards for US$10.50 at http://www.stores.ebay.com/fcoelectronics. The example of setting up a disk in prep(8) almost works but you only want the 9fat, and prep expects 9fat to be exactly 10MB (leaving no room on a 10MB card for boot blocks, etc.). I ran prep by hand to set up a slightly smaller 9fat on my 10MB card. The CFDISK.5D (but perhaps not some of the variants) requires a 4-pin floppy power cable and many machines provide only one (and you'll need that to boot until you populate your compact flash card). I got those at CompUSA for US$13. Make a plan9 boot floppy per the example in prep(8). Copy your machine's plan9.ini (and nvram in plan9.nvr if it has one) somewhere handy, like /tmp. Once you've gathered all those parts, turn off your machine (at the power supply if possible), insert the compact flash card into the CFDISK.5D or relative (it slides in easily), connect the floppy power cable to a free power connector inside the PC and the other end to the CFDISK.5D at the floppy-style power connector. Insert the CFDISK.5D into the first free IDE connector on your motherboard (I had to use the second one due to short-sighted physical design of my machine). It's keyed so you can't insert it wrong-way-round. At this point your machine probably won't boot off your existing disks nor your (uninitialised) compact flash, so insert the boot floppy and turn the machine on. When it comes up, format the compact flash per the example in prep(8), modulo the possible need to partition it by hand. You should now be able to remove the boot floppy (and any other disks you no longer need) and reboot. The machine should come up by booting from the compact flash (mine did, first time). So that's US$43.50 per machine, plus shipping, but it won't wear out from being read (like a floppy) and is utterly quiet (unlike a regular disk). It seems like just the thing to make sure that your main file server and CPU server boot unattended.