*BSD News Article 9816


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From: burgess@hrd769.brooks.af.mil (Dave Burgess)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: 386bsd HELP laptop back to DOS 5.0 H/Disk prob
Date: 13 Jan 1993 09:05:22 -0600
Organization: Armstrong Lab MIS, Brooks AFB TX
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Message-ID: <1j1b3iINN973@hrd769.brooks.af.mil>
References: <1992Dec11.163609.9644@ryn.mro4.dec.com> <1993Jan13.042929.28504@fcom.cc.utah.edu>
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In article <1993Jan13.042929.28504@fcom.cc.utah.edu> terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C) writes:
|In article <1992Dec11.163609.9644@ryn.mro4.dec.com> ashley@gidday.enet.dec.com (STEPHEN ASHLEY) writes:
|>	HELP HELP,
|>	  Fellow 386bsd people, I am in a bit of a bind and need help on
|>this one. I tryed (for a lark) installing 386bsd on to my laptop tonight,
|>it is a 386sx/16 olivetti V16. Anyway the install got creamed 3/4's of the
|>way through the extract, I had to go to work. I took the laptop to work
|>with me and decided to reinstall DOS 5.0 back on to the hard drive. But
|                                  ^^^^^^^
|>I can't get the thing to boot of the hard drive even after several 'fdisk'
|>sesions and diffrent combniations of primary and extended DOS drives. I 
|>keep getting this message :-
|>
|DOS 5.0 command to overwrite master boot record:
|
|	fdisk /mbr
|
|For non DOS-5.0 DOS-heads:
|
|	Instructions in README and INSTALL documents.
|
|

  If that doesn't clear the MBR (it should), you may need to completely
invalidate the master boot record by writing over the raw hard drive.  The
INSTALL.NOTES suggest "cat /386bsd >/dev/rwd0d".  ANy file bigger than 8K
should work.

  If you decide to cat something over your hard drive, you WILL need to
re-fdisk and reformat.  

  If you have the facility to low-level format the drive, that is also a 
reasonable solution.  

  Since you are 'between installations', I would recommend the following to
finish up (assuming you MUST use DOS :-( ):

  - From DOS try the fdisk/mbr to completely reinitialize the master boot 
record.
  -  If that works, you are done.
  - Finish the BSD installation.  Get the minimum on the system to get it
to boot.
  - Use 'cat /386bsd... to overwrite the disk partition information and 
completely hose your hard drive partition table and Master Boot Record.
  - Reinstall your OS of choice onto your now completely confused hard drive.
  - You are done.


TSgt Dave Burgess
NCOIC AL/MIS
Brooks AFB, TX