> I'm trying to boot a machine from a floppy, but failing. I've tried
> several install disks, and only get
> Loading linux..
> to show up. It's always 2 periods, regardless of the image's actual
> name (vmlinuz, linux, etc). I've been able to figure out that the
> periods are printed one at a time by the read_track function, but that
> doesn't help much. I tried pulling all of the hardware out
> of the box,
> but this is apperently in the "reading of the kernel" stage.
> I've used
> multiple floppy disks, and have tried a different floppy drive. I've
> also disconnected the "b:" drive. Still no help.
I'm assuming you are trying to boot a floppy with kernel you made
yourself. Have you tried booting one of the minisystems like
tom's boot disk? It might help you determine if the problem is
with your floppy, or the image you made.
What kind of boot disk are you using - kernel direct to floppy,
floppy with lilo, or syslinux? In the past I've found that
syslinux is the easiest to work with for making systems on a
floppy. Grub seems to work well too, but I haven't played it
it as much.
> This is on a 486 board (AMD 486DX4/120 with PCI and 2 IDE
> channels, oh yeah),
> if that triggers any memories.
I have an old 486 that doesn't like to boot off floppies.
Sometimes I've had floppies that would fail to boot a
half dozen times. I'd try it in a different machine to make
sure the floppy was good, then a half a dozen times in the
486 before it took. I never had any problem with the other
disk, root disks, or data disks, just the boot disk.
Mark
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