From: lpickup@xanadu.btv.ibm.com (Lance Pickup) Subject: Linux on MicroChannel PS/2 Date: 28 May 1992 12:08:28 GMT
I decided to try out 0.96a on my MicroChannel PS/2 based on a few
reports that people had gotten it working on floppies. Here are
my results:
1) It didn't reboot after telling me there were 4 pty's. But the
screen did go blank right after that. I found that hitting a
key brought the screen back, only to disappear about a second
later. Does Linux have a screen blanking feature? This is
what it appears to be doing, except it blanks it after only a
second!
2) By holding down a key, I can get the boot to proceed. It doesn't
matter if I hit the key one key at a time or let it auto-repeat,
but obviously it goes faster if I just hold the key down. The
point is that it appears to be looking for keystrokes. My guess
is that the code thinks it has a keystroke waiting (when it really
doesn't) and is sitting in the keyboard interrupt service routine
until I hit a key? Okay, so by holding down a key for long enough,
I can get it to get as far as prompting for the ROOT diskette.
This is after it reports 0 disks (which I expected based on some
previous posts).
3) When prompted, I put in the ROOT diskette and hit ENTER. The
system tries to read from the floppy twice unsuccessfully???
and then panics. I don't think I have a bad ROOT diskette,
although I was using the 0.95 ROOT (I didn't want to download
the entire 0.96a ROOT until I was sure the BOOT would work).
It seemed to fail immediately, like right after I hit ENTER.
Well, I am pleased I got as far as I did, but I still can't make
it work, even with the screen blanking on me every second and having
to hold down a key. I guess the interrupt processing is still too
far away from the MicroChannel. I would be interested in other
PS/2 user's comments.
Thanks,