How to make boot floppy?

[kynn]

I can't find the docs on how to make a boot floppy. I'm stranded with a Knoppix CD and an old Windows 98 machine that does not support CD boots. I want to download the software to make Knoppix boot floppies from, but I can't find it nor any related documentation. Pointers would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

kj

[Harry Kuhman]

Rather than fight with two boot floppies, it is much easier to use Smart Boot Manager (http://btmgr.webframe.org/) to boot the CD. Rather than make two floppies that will only boot this one live CD, you can make a SBM boot floppy that will boot any Live Linux CD, and actually any bootable CD at all.

[kynn]

SBM is what I tried first, but it does not seem to recognize the CD-ROM drive. In these situations the SBM docs recommend entering the CD-ROM I/O Ports "by hand", but I can't figure out how to determine the correct values for these ports. Any suggestions?

kj

[Harry Kuhman]

Not sure how you expect suggestions when so far all we seem to know is that you have an "old Windows machine". As many details about the system as you can provide would be helpful, in particular is the interface to the CD IDE or some custom interface (and if custom, give the details)? My guess is you could have some very strange custom interface that SBM might have problems with, but then again Linux might need custom drivers compiled into it too, and just making "normal" Knoppix boot floppies might not be of any help either. I doubt that anyone will be able to help much until you post information about the system.

[kynn]

Well, part of the problem is that I have no idea where to find any hardware information for this computer (one of the reasons I wanted to boot with Knoppix was to see what Knoppix auto-detected); when I asked for suggestions, I was hoping to learn about some generic hardware detection tool that would help me answer hardware questions about the machine.

FWIW, if I right-click the "My Computer" icon and select Properties, under General it says

System: Microsoft Windows 98

Dell Computer Corporation
GenuineIntel
Pentium(r) II Processor
Intel MMX(TM) Technology
128.0MB RAM

In the Performance tab it says that "No PC Card sockets are installed."

Under the "Device Manager" tab, if I expand the tree, I don't see any entry that looks to me as having anything to do with the CD-ROM. Instead I see things like (under "Plug and Play BIOS"):

Dircet Memory Access controller
PCI bus->Cinemaster C WDM Main Driver->Cinemaster C WDM DVD Driver
PCI bus->Intel 82371AB/EB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller->Primary IDE controller (dual fifo)
PCI bus->Intel 82371AB/EB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller->Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo)
PCI bus->Intel 82371AB/EB PCI to USB Universal Host Controller->USB Root Hub
PCI bus->Intel 82371EB PCI to ISA bridge (ISA mode)->IO read data port for ISA plug and Play enumerator
PCI bus->Intel 82371EB Power Management Controller
PCI bus->Intel 82443BX Pentium(r) II Processor to AGP controller->ATI Xpert98 AGP 2X (English)->Dell1028L
PCI bus->Intel 82443BX Pentium(r) II Processor to PCI bridge (with GART support)
PCI bus->TBS Montego Multifunction PCI Platform->TBS Montego PCI Audio->TBS Montego Gameport Interface
PCI bus->TBS Montego Multifunction PCI Platform->TBS Montego PCI Audio->TBS Montego MPU-401 Interface
PCI bus->TBS Montego Multifunction PCI Platform->TBS Montego PCI Audio->TBS Montego Sound Blaster Emulation
PCI bus->U.S. Robotics 56K Voice Win (V.90)
Programmable Interrupt controller
PS/2 Compatible Mouse Port
Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural Keyboard
Standard Floppy Disk Controller->GENERIC NEC FLOPPY DISK
System board extension for PnP BIOS
System CMOS/real time clock
System speaker
System timer


kj

[Harry Kuhman]

Well, part of the problem is that I have no idea where to find any hardware information for this computer .....
Dell Computer Corporation
GenuineIntel
Pentium(r) II Processor
Intel MMX(TM) Technology
128.0MB RAM

I'm not a Dell expert, and one of the reasons I do try to avoid them is that they sometimes do very strange non-standard stuff. Still, I'm very surprised that you say a Dell of this apparent vintage does not support booting from floppy. I have just booted Knoppix on a far older Dell, just to be sure it would work (a Pentium I 166 mhz w/ 64 meg of ram), and it boots from CD fine (you have to go into setup, do an ALT-P to get to the second page of the setup, and tell it to boot from the CD first rather than the floppy). Certainly a newer Dell sould also have this support. You can also get more information if you look at your system case to find what model of machine you have, you can then find more information on this system at the Dell website.

I also see no reason from what you posted that would account for SBM not working with that system, but I'm not convinced yet that the computer does not boot from CD natively.

[kynn]

Still, I'm very surprised that you say a Dell of this apparent vintage does not support booting from floppy.I don't know much about hardware in general, so I can't tell how surprising or not it is that this machine won't boot from the CD-ROM drive. All I know is that if I restart the machine (either by selecting "Restart" from the "Start->Shut Down" menu, or selecting "Shut down" followed by restarting the machine), I never see the Knoppix screen come up; instead, I see the usual Windows 98 start up sequence. I do hear noises coming from the CD-ROM drive right before the Windows 98 start up sequence kicks in, suggesting that the machine is aware of the CD-ROM drive, but nothing comes of it.


I also see no reason from what you posted that would account for SBM not working with that system, but I'm not convinced yet that the computer does not boot from CD natively.Again, that's what I see. With the SBM flooppy inserted, the machine seems to be unable to recognize the CD-ROM drive and the Zip drive altogether. If I remove the SBM floppy and restart the machine, they are once again recognized. I learned that the CD-ROM is a Toshiba DVD-ROM SD-M1202. I still can't figure out what its IO ports are, though.

kj

[Harry Kuhman]

All I know is that if I restart the machine (either by selecting "Restart" from the "Start->Shut Down" menu, or selecting "Shut down" followed by restarting the machine), I never see the Knoppix screen come up; instead, I see the usual Windows 98 start up sequence. I do hear noises coming from the CD-ROM drive right before the Windows 98 start up sequence kicks in, suggesting that the machine is aware of the CD-ROM drive, but nothing comes of it.
Have you looked at your BIOS settings to see if the BIOS does not have a setting to let you boot from CD before hard disk or floppy? Do you know that the CD was burnt correctly and at low speed? A CD burnt the wrong way (not from the ISO image but rather just putting the ISO on a CD, for example) or burnt from an ISO with a bad MD5 sum will not boot, in pretty much the way you describe here. I've also seen that many time CD's burnt with the proper procedure but burnt at high speed will boot in some systems but not others, the "fix" is to burn the CD with the proper procedure at a low speed like 4x (or even better use a 700 meg CDRW so that if you have other problems the disk is not wasted). Based on the age of that Dell system it should boot a CD.

[jjmac]

If something like ... when you put the SmartBootManager floppy in the drive, then boot with it, assuming the Bios is set for a "fd0" boot ... That the "cdrom" menu option disappears ...

Sometimes the cdrom/dvd will fire up at boot, but will shutdown to quick, so that the floppies boot process misses it.

If thats it ... when you go into the boot process, before the actual menu comes up, key the eject button on the cdrom drive.

That is, just open and close the tray door.


jm

[yoffedavid]

I have the same problem- bios-> boot Seq. A,C or C,A

I tried to make a bootable floppy disk, but when i restard the computer i got message: boot feild...

[jjmac]

I have the same problem- bios-> boot Seq. A,C or C,A

I tried to make a bootable floppy disk, but when i restard the computer i got message: boot feild...

How did you go about making the floppy.

[yoffedavid]

I found the solution by using: Smart Boot Manager
I downloaded and installed to the boot partition (C:\) the Smart Boot Manager ver:3.6.4 and I select to boot from the CD-ROM
and the knoppix strted to run...

But, I had another problem: the Knoppix cd was running the configuration , and stop at the Knoppix background, and mouse.
I couldn't do anything more.

My P.c: Intel Pentium 100 MHZ, 64 MB RAM, Video card: ARK 1 MB RAM, HD: 3 GB free

M$-Windows 98, M$-Office 97 working O.K.

[jjmac]

Howdy yoffedavid,

Smart Boot Manager can run from a floppy as well ..., should just be a case of doing a "raw" copy to a floppy disc, changing the boot sequence to A, whatever ... inserting the floppy. The only problem that seems to crop up there, is the cdrom option choice going missing. Which happens to me sometimes. Someone on another board suggested that some modern cdroms are to quick for some bioses, that is, they fire up, then down, when the power is turned on, before SBM can get a chance to probe for them. But just keying the "eject" tray to fire it up while SMB is booting solves that.

So ... how come the floppy method didn't work ?, can't be your bios or SMB, as their working from a hdd install ?

On the freeze,

Have a look at the "Cheat Codes", there in a text file on the CD.

> knoppix opt opt opt opt=xxx opt=xxx etc <enter>

Look over the options and turn off every thing you don't need. A prompt should come up after the initial CD splash screen. You may just be having some sought of HW freeze (just quessing there).

>>
My P.c: Intel Pentium 100 MHZ, 64 MB RAM, Video card: ARK 1 MB RAM, HD: 3 GB free
>>

I haven't got the disc handy at present to have a good look, but look for some option that can enable a "text" mode session. It sounds like your specs may be a bit low for a full graphical LiveCD session.

I'll try and look into that, but someone else more knowing should be able to be more definite there ..., i'd be surprised if there wasn't a text mode option.

Possibly one of the "vga=xxx" settings woulds do that.

(/usr/src/linux/Documentation/fb/vesafb.txt)

-- | 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024
----+-------------------------------------
256 | -769 -- 771 -- 773 -- 775
32k | -784 -- 787 -- 790 -- 793
64k | -785 -- 788 -- 791 -- 794
16M | -786 -- 789 -- 792 -- 795

There all positive decimal values, the dashes are just to force this My Opera dosen't deal with white space very well, if there's more than one space in a row. It will just wrap all over the place. Thus the dashes.

Hope thats not to muck yack for a quess :)


jm