[Oberon] Re (2): Oberon0.Dsk and the BootFile, Native.Bin

[peter at easthope.ca]

Paul, thanks for the reply.

From:	Paul Onyschuk <ptmelville at gmail.com>
Date:	Thu, 13 Nov 2014 10:18:45 +0100
> AFAIR you need to initilize partition table, before using image for
> Oberon0 under QEMU (otherwise Oberon gets confused), example:
> 
> $ echo "Create 100MB file"
> $ dd if=/dev/zero of=file.out bs=1MB count=100
> $ echo "Create new primary partition and made it bootable"
> $ fdisk some.img

file.out#some.img? 
I did this.

user at mebius:~$ dd if=/dev/zero of=NOimage bs=1MB count=100
100+0 records in
100+0 records out
100000000 bytes (100 MB) copied, 2.17107 s, 46.1 MB/s

user at mebius:~$ sudo fdisk NOimage
  ...

user at mebius:~$ sudo fdisk -l NOimage

Disk NOimage: 99 MB, 99999744 bytes
41 heads, 12 sectors/track, 396 cylinders, total 195312 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x70bdad7f

  Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
NOimage1   *        2048      195311       96632   83  Linux

At this point my NOimage should be the same as your some.img.

> $ echo "Boot Oberon0 from floppy and use image as hard drive"
> $ qemu-system-x86_64 -fda Oberon0.Dsk -hda some.img -boot a

I did two cases.
The beta release is 08.12.00.
The alpha release is 05.01.03.
qemu-system-i386 -fda Oberon0.08.12.00.Dsk  -hda NOimage -vga std -boot a
qemu-system-i386 -fda Oberon0.05.01.03.Dsk  -hda NOimage -vga std -boot a

> Then Partitions.Show should give more meaningful results as in
> attached screenshot.  You can then change partition type under Oberon
> and go from there.

My screens for the two releases.
http://carnot.yi.org/Oberon0.08.12.00UnderQEMU.png
http://carnot.yi.org/Oberon0.05.01.03UnderQEMU.png

Two facets are questionable.

* 08.12.00 shows IDE0#02 which shouldn't be there.
  Misalignment of the image file to the disk part?

* 05.01.03 fails to show the type although it was set with fdisk.

Then I did
sudo dd if=NOimage of=/dev/sda2
and rebooted.

08.12.00 gives a black screen with flashing cursor.
05.01.03 gives a black screen with OBE.

According to http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/betadocu.html#PM 
this means that in the 08.12.00 case there was a failure in executing 
the first sector.  In the 05.01.03 case, at least some of the first 
sector executed but the second did not.

Another comparison
Using the Oberon0 diskette, install a system in one part, say IDE0#02.
Using the same Oberon0 under QEMU, install in a second part, say IDE0#03. 
Then examine with "sudo dhex /dev/sda2 /dev/sda3".  All of the code 
should match.  Some does but not all.

Hypothesis
Each of the two Oberon0 releases can produce a viable system when 
running from a diskette.  Neither works properly under QEMU although 
the system from the alpha release is closer to viability.

Regards,                               ... Peter E.

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