486 Data Recovery with MSBACKUP and NetWare // Intel Professional Workstation (Part 2) |

Рет қаралды 21,657

Күн бұрын

In the continuing saga of getting my ailing EISA-based Intel Professional Workstation up and running again, I've continued on a two steps forward, one step back sort of progress. To actually dump the hard drive off this system, I needed Novell NetWare, MSBACKUP, and some custom written utilities that could save a raw disk dump from DOS. This is probably overkill, but as they say, if its worth doing, its worth overdoing!
Timestamps of note:
0:00 - Intro/Recap
1:00 - Full System Specifications and Current State
2:20 - Diagnosing the Dead Floppy Drive
4:24 - Disk Drive Testing and Troubles
5:36 - Interlink Discussions and Goof-up
6:08 - New Dallas Module
7:55 - Memory Testing Problems
9:42 - EISA Configuration Utility
11:08 - Data Recovery Plan, MSBACKUP, and Novell NetWare
14:03 - The Archive Bit Problem
15:15 - Restoring the Backup
15:40 - Writing a DOS based Disk Dumper
16:12 - Linux NFS Root Attempts
17:30 - Coding DISKDUMP.EXE, Dumping the Disk, and Verification
18:41 - Conclusions and Sign-Off
Disk Dumper Git Repos:
* DISKDUMP: github.com/NCommander/dos_dis...
* SERDUMP: github.com/NCommander/serial_...
As I would find out shortly after Part 1, the disk drive on this 486 was essentially kaput, and it was showing very odd that made it appear like it was a low destiny floppy drive. After trying to disassemble the drive, I had a scare when it died entirely before I could nurse it back to health.
Even after solving that, I would find that muggins here had ordered the wrong parts, and even after replacing the Dallas clock chip, it would still be quite a bit of effort to actually get the hard drive saved.
That lead to a magical world of EISA configuration utilities, unlikely finds on the Internet Archive, and a dive into MS-DOS's integrated backup utility. Afterwards, I realize I would need to write a custom utility after trying to run Linux was essentially out of the question.
Social Links:
Twitter: / fossfirefighter
Discord: / discord
Blog: casadevall.pro/
Music is from www.epidemicsound.com, with the following tracks used in order:
- How To Go On (Instrumental Version) - Mike Parr
- Fog Lake - Spectacles Wallet and Watch
- Cryptic Secrecy - Dream Cave
- City Phases - John Abbot
- Travels in Time - Experia
- This Is Our Hut - Trabant 33
- It Can Be Done - Airae
- Valiant - Dream Cave
- Let Go of Fear - Howard Harper-Barnes
- At Evenfall - Howard Harper-Barnes
- Where It Started - Spectacles Wallet and Watch
- Secret Agents - Spectacles Wallet and Watch
- To the Last Man - Jon Bjork
Although not planned as part of #DOScember, this video comes at the end of December 2020, and is well timed with that so I've placed this video under that tag. It's amazing that the retro tech community has come together to help celebrate DOS, and the legacy it left on the computing world.
Intel referred to this system as the LP486E, and that name is used on several of the drivers and the label under the case. It's also the search term required to find any information on this video.

Пікірлер: 96

@the_broly_arms 2 жыл бұрын

As a Linux enthusiast and retro tech nerd, I find your channel as interesting and fascinating as it is therapeutic -- it's extremely calming. Much of it is well above my paygrade of understanding but I still hang on for every new adventure, even the ones that travel through the very depths of kernel panic and drive failure. I hope your channel continues to grow and you find more obscure tech and software to explore!

@georgH Жыл бұрын

"we're out of time for this video" caught me by surprise, I could've stayed glued to the screen for longer :D Great video!

@jrizmalj 3 жыл бұрын

I'm glad I stumbled upon this channel. Great work :)

@BryanChance Жыл бұрын

The way you trouble shoot and fixed the floppy drive was fcking awesome! EDIT: Actually, the whole process is awesome. I learned quite a bit! thank you

@baremetaltechtv 3 жыл бұрын

I've watched every video on your channel I can't wait for more content. I'm desperate for vintage linux videos. I love how you show installation and then actually using the software and troubleshooting. Please please keep up the good work and post more videos! I subbed on both of my accounts 👍

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

Youre going to love what comes next.

@themegaman91965 3 жыл бұрын

Very nice! Awesome to see classic hardware preserved! Also loved that Duke 3D easter egg you had there! :)

@jerrylu532 3 жыл бұрын

Well done! You have done a great job in saving a precious part of computing history, and by documenting the steps and tools you used you are literately saving time and money for others who seek to preserve other machines.

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

I do plan to actually release "N Disk Tools" as a compiled release, I just need some more test victims.

@MrMaxeemum 3 жыл бұрын

Brilliant. You have brought back so many memories. I got onboard with PCs around the 386/486 era and had forgot most of what I knew back then because I was not a heavy user but definitely remember messing around with Novell Netware and Dos Interlink etc. I had many issues as I was new to it at the time but eventually got things working by speaking with friends, reading manuals and just messing around experimenting, there was no internet back then only friendnet. I would love to see more videos as they are explained very clearly. Well done. Subscribed.

@Dxceor2486 3 жыл бұрын

For memtest86 you can use the boot disk version instead to avoid DOS' quirks :)

@Reziac 3 жыл бұрын

I actually cheered when you got that floppy drive working! Great choice of music when we're uplifted by Netware :) Is the diskdump binary available for download? seems useful!

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

It will be. I'm honestly hesitant to release a disk dumping tool that has a total track record of "1 real life" use test, especially because I'm not entirely sure it actually dumped the last sector of the HDD (which is unallocated). DOS does some weird shit with file rounding, so the disk size and the actual file mismatch, but until I can get more samples, or people willing to help "N Disk Tools" is right now only in source forum.

@spacewolfjr 3 жыл бұрын

@@NCommander If you put it up on GitHub/Lab/SourceHut/whatever I'd be happy to review it for you.

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

@@spacewolfjr github.com/NCommander/dos_disk_dumper I forgot to put the link in the description.

@soggybaguette8457 Жыл бұрын

6:50 man that hard drive sounds like a jet engine!

@johnDingoFoxVelocity 4 ай бұрын

Just be happy you weren't working on. It's older brother as it is. So the professional workstation series has another machine and it is the professional workstation server. And this is the weirdest machine if you ever run into one that you will ever see. It looks like a giant server with a handle on the top of it. It is manufactured by Intel and the wildest. Darn thing about it is there is no serial number listed on it. There's only a model number and you will know if you have one when you go to take the cover off. And you see what really makes this a unique server. You take the cover off. And there are not 4 slots for scsi hard drives there. Are eight slots for scsi hard drives They're quite rare and they weigh about 90 pounds. And that's not what the drives in it. That's just because of the weird power supply. They were pretty reliable machines and and they're not bad. But they aren't easy to get up and running. They kind of turned into a nightmare. Onto themselves. And this happened because of the actual drive controllers themselves that loved to fight each other for an IRQ On start up.

@NJRoadfan 3 жыл бұрын

Memtest86+ is too new to run on a 486, it locks up on old systems. Try the older Memtest86 (no plus) instead. My usual go-to for this is either INTERLNK or Laplink 3 as I have the proper parallel cable. Usually if the card has a NIC, I get networking up. In both cases, ye olde machine is the server, I just copy the entire drive to a ZIP file which preserves time stamps and attributes. I could also use modern versions of XCOPY32 if I wanted. One thing I always wanted was a true Win32 client for INTERSVR, but given NT based OSes restrictions with parallel ports, only slow serial would be feasible. Windows 9x could do it, but at that point the existing DOS driver works "good enough".

@VorpalGun 2 жыл бұрын

This was super useful. I was looking for a way to dump an old laptop over serial. The IDE to USB thing I have won't recognise the drive.

@jakobole 3 жыл бұрын

Actually memtest even today is better than the one in Windows 7/10. I helped a friend who had issues - the win-mem-test came up clear, but memtest did not. What made this one difficult was the fact that it was actually the mobo-that was bad. After replacing the RAM, 2 months later, it bluescreened again, win-test showed nothing, but memtest did. The mobo had fried the RAM again....(I thought I was going mad, haha :)

@montagetech 3 жыл бұрын

I’d love to get one of these. The are great for running NeXTSTEP on Intel.

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

I've heard NeXTSTEP is quite happy on this specific model; I'll need to find a SCSI CD-ROM drive that is usable with it and we'll talk about it in a later video.

@montagetech 3 жыл бұрын

Since these machines look so much like the NeXTStation it was rumoured that Intel built these specifically for NeXTSTEP..

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

@@montagetech Won't surprise me, informally, non-NeXT x86 machines are known as "white boxes" in the community (and generally run OPENSTEP vs. NEXTSTEP), and one thing I never could figure out is why NeXT had spent so much effort to have a full EISA implementation in the kernel since OPENSTEP was past the point that EISA was relevant, and their early NeXT-x86 was ISA. This might be the reason right here. I'll be talking about potentially running NeXT/OPENSTEP in part 3, but I need to put this project on the back burner for awhile, I'm a little burnt out by it.

@Drpiwi 3 жыл бұрын

For you trouble with xcopy, I remember that there was a novel utility called ncopy that did much the same of xcopy but was faster and could handle larger volumes as it was actually targeted at copying data from one network volume to an other and those could be a lot bigger on a netware server than harddrives where at that time. But if my memory serves me, I think it also worked very well to copy stuff from a local disk on a workstation to a server or vice versa. Since you have the novel client chances are that you also have access to ncopy.

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

ncopy is on the SYS:PUBLIC folder. I'll have to check to see how it handles things like preserving creation times, SYSTEM bit and such. Thanks for the tip!

@jirkazima1126 3 жыл бұрын

Thanks for a great video (as always)! And thanks for showing the details about the graphics chip. The WD90C31 is an interesting choice among graphics chips that could have been used. It supports BitBlt with keyed-transparency/patterns, but it is limited to 256 colors. I am not sure from the video it the chip has 512KB (maybe only 16-bit access) or 1MB (32-bit access) of video memory. It looks more like the first option., which means no more than 800x600 in 256 colors or 1024x768 in 16 colors. The chip unfortunately supports only ISA/AT and 16-bit MCA. It has no support for EISA or local bus, so in this computer, it is most presumably connected using the 16-bit AT bus. If some mentioned that the computer works well with NextStep, the slow bus to the video chip is a bit sad, because NextStep doesn't use any graphics acceleration and relies on a fast access from CPU to the video memory.

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

Yeah it's a weird choice to say the least. You have an EISA bus, and yet you've got relatively low end 8-bit chip to drive the video bus. I'd expect something either VLB based, or just use the EISA bus there is. I guess this system was probably used for server use, given the BIOS has things to redirect the output. I don't even think Solaris had an x86 port, so I guess people were using NeXTstep as an x86 based UNIX? I'll have to check more in-depth, I've done a lot of work with NeXT, but I also remember 3.3's video driver list is kinda short.

@jirkazima1126 3 жыл бұрын

@@NCommander WD90C31 is not a true low-end card. In fact, it was a solid choice for ISA-based PCs thanks to all the accelerated features. It is way better than most ISA Trident cards. However, I would expect more in such a workstation. Having a graphics chip connected to the 486 local bus would not cost more and there were plenty of them supporting this connection without special glue logic. Something like CL-GD542x would cost the same and you would need just a few buffers/transceivers to connect it to the CPU (because 542x is only 16-bit so it is necessary to merge each 32-bit word from two transfers). Maybe the board was an early design - during 1991, there were not many chips supporting local bus. Or the graphics performance was just not as important... or they chose this chip because it had a good driver for X Window system. Btw I like that this chip's registers with default values for refresh rate in different resolutions can be changed in the BIOS setup. That is very handy. Not sure if NeXTstep was the OS of choice for those, who just wanted to run UNIX on x86. I think it had a very specific group of users. However, I am not very familiar with UNIX distributions for x86. I've recently read some old late-80s magazine where they tested multiple UNIX distributions for PCs and they told that "DELL UNIX" was the best of them (but they maybe liked that a lot of GNU tools and GCC were included out of the box)... I don't have much knowledge in this area (as I was always more focused on non-x86 UNIX workstations), but I assume that there was something available from standard UNIX systems that would make sense to be run on this machine.

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

@@jirkazima1126 I could have worded that better. The WD90C31 is perfectly fine by the standards of 8-bit/16-bit ISA, but we've got the EISA bus there, so it seems like a real "WHY" moment that they shipped with a graphics chip that is effectively bus throttled. Assuming you had a chipset that could read directly from system RAM, you could have gotten pretty amazing performance. I need to pull the RAM sticks to be sure, but I think this board is 72-pin SIMMs. (I've actually put the 486 away, there was a lot of production issues on this video, so I've put it to the side before I can come back tot he topic without ripping my hair away). From my experiences down the SLS rabbithole (see the video on this channel), this chip wouldn't have been supported by Xfree86; its possible one of the commercial UNIXes however had a driver for their X variants. Xenix/SCO UNIX was generally the "best" choice for UNIX in this period for x86, but it's fairly quirky and didn't have a graphical system out of the box for this time period. Linux was still extremely immature, and the BSDs would have just been getting out of lawsuit hell. I put 94/95 to the point that Linux could have been a daily driver for a power user/Linux expert, but a LOT of comments told me that this box is ideal for NeXTstep, so I'm just waiting for a decent SCSI CD-ROM to popup. The other thing I want to def. try is NT 3.1, because this is one of the few machines where it should just work out of the box.

@nickwallette6201 3 жыл бұрын

@@NCommander Solaris did actually have an x86 port, but not back then. It would've been targeted for CPUs in the ~ Pentium 4 era, plus or minus. I ran Solaris x86 on a Sun AMD-64 workstation for a while. I'd rather have Linux. ;-)

@superchiaki 2 жыл бұрын

usually i used a iomega zipdrive for backup all stuff when i was young :)

@xeveniahdarkwind178 Жыл бұрын

Try running spin rite6 on the ancient hdd.. it's saved several old drives for me...

@MasterControl90original 3 жыл бұрын

Great video as usual! Can you link the dallas chip? I've an ibm ps/1 which can't run the floppy drive if the dallas is depleted

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/DS12887%2b/DS12887%2b-ND/956874?itemSeq=346293968 However, there are known incompatibilities with these in 286 and 8086s so you might still need to do the battery mod. Furthermore, PS/1 and PS/2 drives have known capaciter issues, they nearly universally need a re-cap to get going again.

@MasterControl90original 3 жыл бұрын

@@NCommander thanks a lot! oh it's not a drive issue in this case, it is a known bug of the original ps1 line, if you google around you'll find it.

@boringpolitician 3 жыл бұрын

We used to call that cable a "null-modem". It's just stuck with me ever since. I remember those cables being slooooooooow. But a rescue in almost any crisis. Because that cable would always work, even if nothing else did. Used to use it with Norton Commander, to connect from one machine to another, and copy back and forth (slooooow) that way.

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

Interlink could use a serial null modem cable on COM1, or a special port on LPT1, the COM1 is dreadfully slow, but the LPT1 should be able to get a decent bitrate, at least fast enought o dump this HDD.

@MikeStavola 3 жыл бұрын

I definitely remember that when I bought my laplink cable, the packaging said "null-printer cable"

@MessalineApghar 3 жыл бұрын

xcopy can copy hidden and system files and preserve flags if you use the proper command line switches. it can also copy the entire tree including empty directories.

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

Unfortunately, those switches do not exist on the DOS 6 version. I think they were added in Windows 95 or 98.

@MessalineApghar 3 жыл бұрын

@@NCommander incorrect. those switches exist all the way from dos 3.2 to 6.22 and Dr dos 7.

@RobReynolds 3 жыл бұрын

I think Adrian Black had similar problems with low density / high density disks in a recent video

@MykolaTheVaultDweller 11 ай бұрын

Hoow there can be 1016 cylinder and 30 head? Can you please explain cylinder-head-sector addressing?

@nticompass 2 жыл бұрын

Older machines, like 286s don't like the DS12887 and require a DS1287. Newer machines, like 386s and 486s should work fine with the DS12887. So it's a drop-in replacement for *most* systems.

@NCommander 2 жыл бұрын

I did hear that this could be a 286 specific problem (although I've heard some 286s will infact tolerate a DS12887). I have a Compaq 286 that needs a replacement Dallas chip. That's probably going to be a dremel and solder job.

@SobieRobie 2 жыл бұрын

@@NCommander Necroware made a replacement, I think you should check his channel.

@LambertZero Жыл бұрын

The machine has ISA slots, right? So connect an XTIDE to it, and dump the contents of the HDD onto a CF card. What's the problem?

@ooze9808 2 жыл бұрын

What documentation (if any) did you use to guide writing your DISKDUMP ? I've been meaning to get into this sort of stuff but I don't know where to start.

@NCommander 2 жыл бұрын

OSDev wiki is probably the best source: wiki.osdev.org/Main_Page but I already had a lot of understanding of low level programming and BIOS call interfaces. In this case, diskdump uses int 13h, it doesn't talk to hardware directly. I did do that for my SLS on real hardware video though.

@systemchris 3 жыл бұрын

Any guidance on using diskdump. It's quite a cool tool :)

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

I could post the binaries, but basically, run it, answer the questions, and point it to a disk that isn't the disk your dumping (so CF-IDE, NetWare share, etc). If you actually compiled it, let me know how it goes.

@systemchris 3 жыл бұрын

@@NCommander I'll try to compile it (not a developer, just a systems administrator) and test it on my old ThinkPad like you did ;)

@thisisnotanhandle 3 жыл бұрын

Did you try kermit and a serial null modem cable on com port?

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

It won't save the unallocated block data that i needed to do autopsy in part 3. The SERDUMP utility I wrote can do a filesystem dump via serial, but Ethernet is loads faster.

@dw_2005 Жыл бұрын

Where did you get a copy of Memtest86+ 2.11 for dos. I've looked around all over and cant find a copy. Is it possible for you to provide a link to where to download?

@werehyenataur 2 жыл бұрын

netware icloud boot?

@douro20 3 жыл бұрын

Was this Intel's first complete PC product or was there an earlier one?

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

I'm not certain. I knew they had branded versions of OS/2, but the time period would be consistent with this. www.os2museum.com/wp/something-new-every-day/ - the boot splash screen says Intel 386 MicroChannel, which might imply there are rare MCA Intel machines. The Intel Ark doesn't list this or earlier PCs, and given they call this "Intel Professional Workstation 486", a "386" workstaiton makes sense.

@markshade8398 2 жыл бұрын

Additionally Intel actually manufactured complete PC's for Packard Bell and a buuuunnch of other name brand systems from the mid - late 90s.

@Zankuho 3 жыл бұрын

10:55 Try booting up-to-date (version 5.31) raw Memtest86+ from bootable floppy.

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

I had problems with the bootable floppy version in the past which is why I prefer the DOS based one, but I should have probably tried it. I did find a memory tester that does work, but I'll comment on it on Part 3.

@adriansdigitalbasement 3 жыл бұрын

With an older machine, use a bootable Memtest86 V2. That's the one I use on such old machines as the new version all seem to hang (for me)

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

@@adriansdigitalbasement I actually should sit with the assembler code and see what's going on. I actually found Norton Utilities NDIAGS has a pretty comprehensive memory tester (among other things). The LOADLIN crash appears to be entirely based on the fact that the top of conventional memory isn't free to user space since it specifically states it need able to use that area. Do you have any good recommendations for SCSI HDD diagonstic utilities? I'm coming up a bit short, and I might just let Netware's COMPSURF grind the drive to see if it actually is healthy.

@richshealer3755 3 жыл бұрын

@@NCommander Compsurf is what I used for a few years to test hard disks in the clones I built. It's been about 30 years but I think it only has a data destructive test. I later used Spinrite as it is non-destructive.

@nickwallette6201 3 жыл бұрын

I'm finding these days that the ubiquitous utilities packages from back then are incredibly basic. Apparently you could charge $100 for being able to manipulate FAT. Simple equivalents to dd, badblocks, or a decent partition editor (which fdisk was not...) just seemed to be missing in action. I guess nobody thought of that stuff until PartitionMagic blew up.

@Spyd77 3 жыл бұрын

Man, you need to get a Gotek floppy disk emulator. It would have made your life way easier in a bunch of your videos. If you get one, replace the original firmware for the open source FlashFloppy, and you will forget physical floppies even exist.

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

Won't work in this case due to the non-standard floppy connector, and molded plastic case :/. I actually plan to buy one when I get a system with a proper 3.5 drive bay. As for the SLS on real hardware, that one was entirely for lols and just having the picture of the stack of floppies.

@Kali_Krause 2 жыл бұрын

I remember having a vintage computer that came with a stack of Windows 95 installation floppy disks

@j2simpso 3 жыл бұрын

Memtest86 should not be run from Dos, you should create a boot disk and boot directly off it!

@romanhimmes171 3 жыл бұрын

Laplink :)

@milesprower6641 3 жыл бұрын

Chair: *creaaaaak*

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

Now now, that should be [S] Chair: Do the creaaaky thing :)

@86smoke 3 жыл бұрын

I think Memtest 4.1 is just too new for that system. Try version 2.0 from a bootalbe floppy instead: www.memtest.org/download/2.00/memtest86+-2.00.floppy.zip Besides, I like your approach towards solving problems - keep it up!

@xmlthegreat 3 жыл бұрын

You'll want to edit your comment to correct the link. 'Besides' has been appended to the end of the URL incorrectly.

@86smoke 3 жыл бұрын

@@xmlthegreat oh, thanks

@standal001 3 жыл бұрын

Hello, can you share also the diskdump.exe file?

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

I posted the source code to it. I can post the compiled version, but it's never been tested aside from this one use, so it's a buyer beware sorta thing. If you can give me your usecase, I'll post the binary on the github page.

@standal001 3 жыл бұрын

@@NCommander I have an old 386 laptop with 80Mb drive which I want to copy to ZIP before it dies. And it would be great to save also the atributes of files and date codes.

@standal001 3 жыл бұрын

@@NCommander Hmm so I compiled it, but it shows no drive.

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

@@standal001 it needs to be able to see the BIOS int13h interface. Does FDISK see the HDD? I uploaded the compiled binary to the releases page: github.com/NCommander/dos_disk_dumper/releases/tag/0.1

@standal001 3 жыл бұрын

@@NCommander Interesting, your version works. Mine shows 0 disks to backup. The compilled exe is also bigger 48040B, but I compiled it in graphical IDE in Windows. I am not a programmer so probably made an error at compilation.

@AnonymousFreakYT 3 жыл бұрын

"stymied" = "STY meed", two syllables. Not "stimed" one syllable.

@anonhollmuller4032 3 жыл бұрын

dd should work;) read manpage:) greets, a

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

dd doesn't work if Linux doesn't see the SCSI controller or the hard drive :/

@anonhollmuller4032 3 жыл бұрын

@@NCommander you are right! but assume , you compile the driver into the kernel, then des...it should work...i do i have something miss understood? Sorry for my poor english! greets, a! ps, i watch one more;)

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

@@anonhollmuller4032 You're assuming there is a driver in the kernel, and the system could stay. I compiled several kernels from scratch trying. None could see the HDD, and I usually couldn't keep it running because lack of memory.

@suchaluch5615 3 жыл бұрын

There is some incorrect information to Linux 1.) You weren't stuck with "fitting all on a 1'44MB-Floppy": You could have made a boot- and a separate root-Disk. 2.) Problems with Lilo: You don't need Lilo - you can put just the kernel on the bootdisk 3.) "8 Megs is too little for diskless". No: One the one hand, you have your floppy as extra storage - on the other hand, 8 Megs is -a-lot- for an old kernel plus busybox. No need to swap over the network. 4.) you even wouldn't need nfs: Just "dd | netcat" on the Workstation-Side (plus the boot+root-Disk from [1]. 5.) Using tools that write on the disc is a HUGE no-no... But mistakes happen :-D Therefore, I'd never touch Dos/Windows-Tools when accessing a harddrive-to-recover... Or invest in a write-blocker :-D Anyways, thanks for sharing your efforts and experiences - they are great!

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

1. I was referring to the size of the kernel alone. I'm well aware that I could have used a separate disk for the initramfs, I specifically dealt with that nightmare in SLS Linux Part 2. Linux 2.6 removed the make floppy option, and the lp486e.c only exists there, and in some 2.5 kernels. Admittedly, dumping NFS *might* have gotten the boot kernel small enough, but the Linux kernel has incompatibility with the SCSI controller chip in this system so it's a moot point. (I'll discuss more in Part 3, but in short, without significant effort and driver patching, I will never be able to use SCSI under Linux on this system). 2. I never said I needed LILO. I said LOADLIN to load from DOS to bypass limit 1. However, LOADLIN requires the top of conventional memory to be free, hence it dying. If I could have used LOADLIN, I could have put the kernel on NetWare, and started from that. 3. Old kernels won't work. The Ethernet driver I need was added in 2.6 (2005). The onboard Ethernet is not NE2000 compatible. If I could have used a 2.0 or 2.2 kernel, I would have. (however, neither works with the SCSI controller in this system). 4. Technically true, but I couldn't even keep it running /bin/sh in single user mode without risking OOM. The kernel itself was using 4 MiB of 7 MiB of usable memory. I'm not convinced even with busybox that it would have actually be workable. I'd also have to invest a lot of time and effort to get a buildroot setup for 486 compatibility and hope there is no Pentium specific assembly language lurking in uclibc. 5. The HDD had already been booted from several times before I got the system as is but I did make efforts not to make unnecessary changes to the HDD. I already noted that MSBACKUP was a mistake, but it took me awhile to have a tool that could dump the disk from DOS, and I was legitimately concerned that the drive was going to die. Thank you for the feedback though, and I'm glad you enjoyed my content :)

@suchaluch5615 3 жыл бұрын

@@NCommander Thaaanks a lot for the long answer and taking your time! I just tried it in a VM.... Building a 2.6-kernel is no easy task with todays tools... Incredible, how many warnings gcc threw out :-D 2.6 is especially a little bit demanding. I still believe, you could manage to compile an absolute minimal one (e.g. removing IDE, reducing kernel log buffer, ... ) that could manage the task - but it's really a chore. I would still have tried the route with a reduced-to-the-max-2.6-kernel (or even backporting the Ethernet-Driver)... but it would be a hell of a challenge. @drive going to die: All the work to get the system booted could have been done without the drive... Checking if the kernel talks to the scsi-controller could have been done without a disk. But please make no mistake: I really appreciated that you told your motivation, and especially that you explained your mistakes: Seeing others making mistakes can keep me away from doing the same. So a really big THANK YOU for your content (you won a subscriber :-D )!

@NCommander 3 жыл бұрын

@@suchaluch5615 I actually did it in a chroot jail with a period correct GCC. Trying to use modern tools to compile older codebases just leads to pain and suffering.

@nickwallette6201 3 жыл бұрын

Ohmygosh guys.. yeah, Linux has definitely _moved on_ since the 486 days. I wasn't able to get any of a few common distros and live CDs to boot at all on a Pentium MMX. P-II was fine, just slow. I have an old Red Hat floppy version that works, but it's a barren wasteland as far as utilities go. You can tell Linux was really really new at that point. I wouldn't worry about MSBackup. I think booting into Windows is far more detrimental to forensics than clearing the archive bit. That bit is stored in the directory entry for the file, and changes one bit of a single byte in each 32-byte entry. It's not going to affect the files at all, nor the free space, slack space, or even the FAT. Just the directory entries. It's not going to be a bit-perfect image, but compared to Windows creating temp files, swapping to disk, and other tom-foolery, it's really not a big deal. :-)

@suchaluch5615 3 жыл бұрын

@@nickwallette6201 Well, most distros need a 686, so a Pentium could be a struggle. I see one chance: If you look at the gentoo distributions, there is under x86/advanced joices exactly one Stage3, build on 2021-03-15, that is marked as "i486". This one should/could work.