i386/89438: bootfloppy creation on winxp and archlinux system

[Stijn Van de Paer]

>Number:         89438
>Category:       i386
>Synopsis:       bootfloppy creation on winxp and archlinux system
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    freebsd-i386
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          doc-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Tue Nov 22 22:30:13 GMT 2005
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Stijn Van de Paer
>Release:        6.0
>Organization:
home-user
>Environment:
windows XP/DOS and Archlinux 2.6.12          
>Description:
Hi


1/ I'm encountering problems following the procedure, that I found on this website, for making 3 bootfloppies: boot.flp, kern1.flp and kern2.flp, in preparation for version 6.0 on an old Pentium 166 PC.

I read that in windows/dos, this can be achieved by placing fdimage.exe and the 3 .flp files in the same directory and then type
e.g. for the first disk: G:>fdimage boot.flp a:

My floppies are perfectly fine, I've tried a dozen floppies in the last few days, but to no avail.

When I try to read the floppies by typing a: (off course), windows claimes the floppies are not formatted all the time. Should I be able to read these floppies in a windows PC or not ? One thing is, I tried them as bootflopppies in this P166 and I doesn't do anything. 
During boot of the P166, it is always stuck in 

No /boot/loader
>
>How-To-Repeat:
Try making bootfloppies in either windowsxp or archlinux machine.              
>Fix:
              
>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted:
 >>> FreeBSD/i386 BOOT
 > Default: 0:ad(0,a)/boot/kernel/kernel
 > boot:
 
 I've tried many combinations instead, also fd(0,a) (I don't know what I'm doing :-)
 
 2/ I've also tried to make the floppies on an Archlinux machine with the dd command. After I try to mount the floppy in linux, I always get the message
 "wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/floppy/0, missing codepage or other error ...try dmesg | tail"
 
 3/ I've even been looking for alternative programs like "rawrite" and rawwritewin0.7 which claimes it works for WinXP. But is doesn't in my case. The programs works with .img files instead of .flp files that freebsd offers.
 
 
 Does anyone have an idea, what I'm doing wrong ? I think I'm doing what is documented.
 
 Regards
 Stijn