Booting FreeBSD 1.0

[Warren Block]

On Thu, 27 Jun 2013, Julian H. Stacey wrote:

> Warren Block wrote:
>> Yes, 1.0, from November 1993.  The install CD is here:
>> http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/FreeBSD-1.0-RELEASE/
>>
>> emulators/qemu boots from the floppy image in the cdinstal directory,
>> but reports "no cdrom found".
>>
>> I managed to find a Pentium 4 system with a working floppy drive, found
>> a working disk, made the boot floppy, and then booted it.  It boots and
>> reports the same thing.  Putting the CD drive on a separate IDE bus or
>> as a secondary on the same bus as the hard drive makes no difference.
>> Chipset too new, maybe.
>>
>> Any ideas short of "find an original Pentium system that still works"?
>
> I recall FreeBSD CDROM images have had 2 different types of boot
> sequences, I think it matched evolving generations of BIOS support.
> The change was some years back.  Maybe qemu only supports the newer of the 2
> CD boot methods.

On the P4 system, the CD would boot but hang.  None of the other systems 
would boot from the CD, so I think you're right.

Just tried a Celeron 600 system, with the same results.  Whatever 
hardware the IDE/Adaptec floppy is expecting is not quite what it finds. 
The CD light does not even blink when it tries to "find the cdrom". 
UDMA disabled, 40-wire IDE cable, manually master/slave or different 
bus, none have made a difference.

On the positive side, the floppy boots reliably.