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Date:      Mon, 27 Jan 1997 09:30:23 -0500 (EST)
From:      Thomas David Rivers <ponds!rivers@dg-rtp.dg.com>
To:        ponds!freefall.cdrom.com!freebsd-hackers
Subject:   2.2-BETA and 1.2meg floppies?
Message-ID:  <199701271430.JAA01879@lakes.water.net>

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I'm not sure if Jordan had included this in the "4-meg won't be
supported" announcement.

But - I was just scrounging together a test-bed machine to let
me try these things out ahead of time.  Unfortunately, the only
floppy drive I could cheaply (i.e. free) acquire is a 1.2 meg
floppy.

Now, the 2.2-BETA boot floppy, boot.flp, will fit - it's 1177088 bytes long.
But, I don't believe the fixit floppy, fixit.flp will since it's
1474560 bytes.  [A 5-1/4" floppy has 1228800 bytes.]

   total 5220
   -rw-r--r--  1 rivers  wheel      153 Dec 25 21:52 CHECKSUM.MD5
   -rw-r--r--  1 rivers  wheel      699 Dec 23 23:00 README.TXT
   -rw-r--r--  1 rivers  wheel  1177088 Dec 25 21:42 boot.flp
   -rw-r--r--  1 rivers  wheel  1474560 Dec 25 21:44 fixit.flp

I understand; and agree with the arguments that 1.44 meg floppies
are cheap (~$60) - but, I'm under serious austerity measures now and
don't think I'll stumble into that $60 any time soon.  [We're trying
to pay off the house early, you know how it goes - and if not, read
last Decemeber's Money Magazine.]

 So - I was wondering if we can produce a smaller "fixit.flp".  Perhaps
one without "vi" (just ed would be enough.) might bring it into the
1.2 meg range.

 I put this together with left-overs from previous projects and some
other people's junk they were just going to throw away [cases, monitors, etc..]
I was able to scrounge; at absolutely no additional cost was:

	386dx-33, 12 meg memory.
	Aha 1542B, a 5-1/4" floppy, and an old 500 meg SCSI.
	Serial card with 16450's wired on-board.
	IDE controller and 40 meg IDE drive (which I saved for another day.)
	Hercules adapter and a nice Princeton monochrome monitor; plus
	   a used "tilty" monitor stand.
	NE2000 clone card
	Ancient/dirty keyboard (switchable between XT/AT, with ESC
   	   in the wrong place.)

 Of course, some of these are parts I had purchased years ago; so I
suppose you could say there was some cost; but that should be amatorized
across about 6-7 years.


	- Dave Rivers -




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