Quoth Miod Vallat <miod@online.fr>:
| > I just tried this again (from BeOS).  It makes a floppy.  I shut the
| > machine down.  Power it off.  Wait some amount of time.  Turn it on.
| > I get 4 cycles of lights going up and down.  It hits the floppy briefly,
| > then zooms the Be logo and starts booting BeOS.
|
| What firmware does the machine use ? I've noticed that, at least on my
| BeBox, recent firmwares didn't try to boot from diskette at all since
| BeOS v4 unless I cold boot, and the latest doesn't even try to boot from
| diskette.
|
| Try downgrading your firmware to the BeOS 3.1 level - you'll end up with
| a decent firmware, which accepts to boot from diskettes anytime.

That sounds like good bet - anyway, my firmware, which does boot from
floppy, is in fact not up to date.

In case it isn't clear what we're talking about, the firmware upgrade
is a floppy disk that installs a new boot ROM.  If you don't have the
floppy at hand, you can get it from Be:
ftp://ftp.be.com/pub/beos_updates/r3/bebox/bebox_bootrom_r3.2.img.zip
and likewise the other revisions, older and newer;  this one or maybe
"preview" would be likely candidates.  You don't need the newest ones
to run BeOS 5.0, unless maybe they handle some new hardware you have.
Just put the floppy in there and reboot (hm, that raises an obvious
question, but apparently the "hits the floppy briefly" stage reads
enough data to recognize its own upgrade.)

	Donn Cave, donn@oz.net