> I've successfully set up one old 486/33 as a Samba server (with 
> naught but the boot floppies and FTP--How cool is that?). Thanks 
> again for your help in learning this wonderful OS! Now I want to make 
> a Netatalk server for my home LAN, but I've run into a brick wall 
> with this Phoenix BIOS thing. People keep giving me 486s, but they 
> all have the same BIOS, which I can't even get to boot the install 
> floppies. I've read the old posts about recompiling the kernel with 
> more (or less?) boot blocks but this is total Greek to me. Can 
> someone give me a recipe or point me to a how-to?

> Thanks,
> Gary Montcalm
> Mansfield, Louisiana

There was a thread some months ago, started by me, about this problem, except I
didn't know it was a Phoenix BIOS issue.  System in question had Cx486DX2-S CPU
at 66 MHz, 20 MB RAM, VLB.  Peripherals include internal Texel 2x CD-ROM and
external Iomega Zip 250, both on Trantor T130B SCSI (NCR 5380 chip?).  Only OS
currently on this system is DR-DOS 7.03.  Beginning Jan 1, 2000, system would
reboot into year 2094 while month, day and time of day were properly retained.
Booting Linux with LOADLIN also retained the year, so I think DOSBOOTing NetBSD
might have retained the year too, except NetBSD never made it through the boot,
always hanging partway through the dmesg.  I tried to boot NetBSD both by
installation diskettes and by DOSBOOT.COM, using for DOSBOOT both the
installation and generic kernels, and also a generic-diagnostic kernel (one at a
time!).  Boot always hung partway through dmesg, and I tried NetBSD 1.51, 1.52,
and I think even 1.43.  I was thinking of trying to compile a custom NetBSD
kernel on the new computer for the old computer to see if I could use that to
install NetBSD on the old computer from 1.5.2 CDs.

Newer Linux kernels were able to access the SCSI Zip drive but hung when I
attempted to access the CD-ROM.  DR-DOS and MS-DOS are/were able to access the
Zip drive and CD-ROM.  Prior to hard disk crash last April 6, OS/2 2.0 to 4 were
able to access the Zip drive and the CD-ROM, first with Trantor/Adaptec-supplied
driver, in OS/2 Warp 4 with IBM-updated driver.  I was also thinking of trying
to tweak the settings for a custom-compiled Linux kernel to see if it would boot
and access the CD-ROM on the old computer.  If no success either with Linux or
NetBSD accessing the CD-ROM, old computer will probably remain DOS-only.  I will
have 1.2 GB hard disk to share between DR-DOS 7.03 and NetBSD or Linux.

OpenBSD 2.9 boot diskette, and there is only one, not two, made with RAWRITE
running under DR-DOS 7.03 from downloaded image file, booted on old computer but
wouldn't access the CD-ROM for lack of support for the SCSI card, which I knew 
in advance.  Reason for downloading and writing the diskette was to compare with
NetBSD.