> >Even if the original problem is solved:
> >Your memory works well. There is a change to the floppy driver
> >from november last year (by thorpej indeed) which fixed this.
> >(I had to scan the source change entries to find it.)
> >However, the boot code uses the BIOS, and doesn't care about
> >hardware timing.
> 
> oh...er...yeah.  true.  :)
> 
> >As Mike Long mentioned before, the kernel shouldn't be located
> >at sector 0, so the drive must have read bad data (perhaps all
> >zeros) at a point before.
> 
> no, it should not, but i used to get these errors all the time when
> installing netbsd.  sure, the numbers varied from machine to machine,
> but all i could do was retry it with different (new) floppies, writing
> the images on different machines, even going so far as to mix up the
> drives and the computers.

I've had to do this, too. I think that there may be bug-prone floppy drives
and controllers out there. One occasion (linux install), replacing the
controller *fixed* the install problem -- I believe it would boot
DOS, though. Definitely a bum controller, though. I seem to kill a lot
of floppy controllers -- don't know why :(

> 
> this was exceedingly annoying because i could dd the image out to the
> floppy, and the dd the *exact* same thing back in and it still didn't
> work.  i posted about this at the time (13 nov 1996), but nobody paid
> any attention.

My two cents' here ... I've had great "first shot works" installs of
NetBSD i386 on some really funky old 386SX hardware that wouldn't even
look at a linux kernel, for example...

I have had two failures to date:

	1) The Disk LBA/CHS blah blah described in another just-finished
thread, which problem I intend on assaulting later this summer.  The other
related threads have been quite valuable.

	2) Trying to do an install on a 386SX with a 1.2 MB floppy. This
would boot partially, then complain.  Putting in a 1.44 floppy drive
(hmm and a different controller) and re-dding the install kernel and 
fs cured everything.

These were the release 1.2 version install thingies (kcoth12, inst12),
obtained earlier this year (May?).

So my question is: 

	Did I do something really stupid with the 1.2 MB floppy and
think that the 1.2 in kcoth 1.2 (and the size of the images :) meant
1.2MB floppy, too? I.e. is there a set of 1.2MB images I overlooked? I
wouldn't mind having these, if they exist, as a backup of last resort.

	Has anyone gotten a 1.2MB floppy NetBSD 1.2 to install?

These are really academic questions... since a 1.44 MB drive can be had
for nearly the cost of postage. (used, working ones = US$8 or so).

Unrelated: Anybody seen/heard from Brian Hechinger lately?
(wonko@arkham.net)? Used to be on this list, but seems to have
vanished.

Dave