Installing OS 3.9 with a Surf Squirrel... HELP!

[MrBang]

Okay.  I (finally) picked up a copy of OS 3.9 and some 3.1 ROMS for my A1200.  (I’ve been running OS 3.1 over 3.0 ROMS for just about forever.)  My machine currently has a Blizzard PPC/040 in it with 256MB of Fast RAM.  I was hoping 3.9 would finally let me get some better use out of the PPC.

But I have multiple problems.  First, the 3.9 installation wants to start off a boot disk that it can write files to.  That’s no surprise since the floppy versions of 3.0 and 3.1 that I already have also write files to their installation disks.

So I followed 3.9’s instructions to make an Emergency Boot floppy.  But the boot floppy won’t boot my machine.  It says it “can’t open cd.device” and locks up.  Now this may or may not be a big deal because of my second problem.  My CD-ROM is being driven off a Surf Squirrel.  My 3.9 boot floppy doesn’t recognize my Surf Squirrel and my various Surf Squirrel boot floppies won’t function as an OS 3.9 boot floppy.

Now I figured if I copied the correct libraries, devices and other appropriate files over to the 3.9 boot floppy, and adjusted the startup-sequence accordingly it would fly.  But I guess I missed something.  I can’t install on top of 3.0, 3.1 or a blank formatted hard drive.

Now I’m not going to detail everything I’ve done (since I don’t want to type for an hour and a half, and I probably wouldn’t remember it all anyway).  So I’m just going to ask:  Has anybody else tackled this problem, and if so, how did YOU do it?

Thanks.

[shaf]

Hello,

It's been a while since I looked at the OS 3.9 FAQ but I seen to remember something concerning the Hardware Configuration and the romupdates call.

Cheers

Shaf

[blobrana]

hi MrBang...
Good choise with the 0s3.9 and 3.1roms...

Hum,
I just didn't bother with the Emergency Boot floppy, as i have another boot partition (10mb) on my hard drive for emergencies...
You could just copy by hand all the files all the libraries and files from the CD to the Hard drive. (Best to check the version numbers along the way as well).


Have a look at my Startup-sequence (you will probably need to alter it to suit your system though.)

The bit where it says:
C:SetPatch quiet ;SKIPROMMODULES"scsi.device"
is the important bit...

Fairly straightforward,

good luck.

[Thomas]

blobrana wrote:
The bit where it says:
C:SetPatch quiet ;SKIPROMMODULES"scsi.device"
is the important bit...

Please note that the semicolon before SKIPROMMODULES *disables* the entire SKIPROMMODULES clause, so don't consider adding this *comment* a necessary change.

If you want to remove scsi.device from the rom updates you should remove the semicolon (and add a space between SKIPROMUPDATES and "scsi.device").

The correct line is setpatch quiet skipromupdates scsi.device

Bye,
Thomas

[Mad-Matt]

As I recall , cd.device is part of the squirrels cd32 emulation.  this may need manualy copying to the boot floppy, but it could be too big.  Ideally squirrelscsi.device would be used as this is a more general driver for the squirrel hardware nd should fit on the boot floppy no problem. (the cd0: mountlist would also need updating to reflect this.  durring the making of the boot floppy, this gets names EMERGANCY_CD or somethng like that in Devs:dosdrivers/.

Matt
-----

[blobrana]

Yeah, squirrelSCSI.device is where the problems are arising from...

CD0:>

FileSystem   = L:CDFileSystem
Device   = sqUIRRElscsi.deVice
Unit      = <A number like 0,1,2,3...>


Like i said,
i would recon  it`s easier to install OS3.1(with the squirrel working) first then  just decant the entire 3.9 CD onto the Hard-drive.

@Thomas
Tnx for extra info,

[saimo]

This is not exactly OT, but a word of advice: OS3.9 has a NSD patch that made my life a hell with the SquirrelSCSI II! Before I realized the problem, I had 2 coasters for every good track I managed to write with my before very reliable TEAC writer. If you want more info, just tell me and I'll look for details on my old installation of the system (can't remember off the top of my head).

saimo

[6]

I did this years ago and had similar problems with the boot floppy.  I do not remember exactly what I did, but I did copy some files to the boot floppy manually and now it works okay.

I think you need to put the squirrelscsi assign before Setpatch.  CD0: has to be activated first or it never works.

Sorry I don't remember more.  Maybe with time...

6