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From: w5ly@vax5.cit.cornell.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Make Disk Bootable & My HD Bug
Message-ID: <1990Dec4.132125.1351@vax5.cit.cornell.edu>
Date: 4 Dec 90 17:21:25 GMT
Distribution: comp
Lines: 60


       Thanks for the mail messages with the free advice on my weird problem.
I figured out exactly what it was last night, and it is of particular
importance to those out there who are wondering how to make a disk bootable
and what has to be on it.
       It seems (from my non-exaustive experimentation) that when AmigaDOS
1.3 is booting off a floppy it needs the following files:
l/disk-validator
devs/system-configuration

and that's it.  Of course, you won't be able to do anything.  The next thing
that it looks for is
s/startup-sequence

then it starts looking for the commands in the startup-sequence.  If you have
anything that references RAM: you need
l/ram-handler

       Now, in my startup-sequence I have:
setpatch
binddrivers
dh0:c/execute dh0:s/HDStartup

And here's where things get *REAL* interesting.  Somebody from C= may want
to correct me on this one.  To fix my "Workbench won't find my hard disk"
bug, I ran amon, looked at the open files, then ran binddrivers.  Binddrivers
loads info.library (!), then opens expansion, then reads hddisk.info (!!!)
then reads the hddisk driver!  If you're missing info.library or the icon file
binddrivers exits with no error; and it doesn't find your hard disk!  Cute.

       Now, to make a disk bootable, it needs all referenced files.  To make
things even more fun, try this--put the files on the disk in the order they
are referenced.  This makes your machine boot really fast, because it does
no disk seeks :) .  Thanks to somebody (who's name I deleted) who wrote an
older version of this for a Fred Fish disk.

       Take a fresh disk.
FORMAT DRIVE <drive> NAME <name>        ; this puts a Trashcan on the disk
INSTALL <drive>
  $add appropriate drive designations to filenames as appropriate
DELETE TRASHCAN
DELETE TRASHCAN.INFO
MAKEDIR L
MAKEDIR DEVS
MAKEDIR S
MAKEDIR C
MAKEDIR LIBS
MAKEDIR EXPANSION
COPY DISK-VALIDATOR L
COPY SYSTEM-CONFIGURATION S
COPY <commands in system-configuration> C

Copy the files on ONE AT A TIME so that Ados doesn't overwrite anything or
change the positions of things.  If your commands reference other files, put
these files on right after the command.  Thus after you put BINDDRIVERS in
C, put icon.library in libs, then <device>.info in expansion, then <device>
in expansion.  After the first command where you reference RAM:, put Ram-
Handler in L.  Then, copy the rest of AmigaDOS to your floppy, one file at
a time (so things don't get overwritten or moved).  Then boot, and listen
to the happy sound of the head moving in one direction only!