{"id":245,"date":"1997-09-09T01:36:29","date_gmt":"1997-09-09T09:36:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.birdhouse.org\/betips\/?p=245"},"modified":"1997-09-09T01:36:29","modified_gmt":"1997-09-09T09:36:29","slug":"creating-beos-boot-floppies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.betips.net\/?p=245","title":{"rendered":"Creating BeOS boot floppies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Update:<\/b> If you install BeOS Personal Edition from within Windows, you&#8217;ll find a Windows &#8222;Create Boot Floppy&#8220; utility in the BeOS program group. Otherwise, use the notes below.<br \/>\nNote: If you don&#8217;t have a BeOS boot floppy already and can&#8217;t boot your system normally to create one, you can download the floppy image from ftp.be.com\/pub\/beos_updates\/.<br \/>\nIn R4.5, creating extra BeOS boot floppies becomes a lot easier than it was in the past. Insert a floppy, open a Terminal window, and type:<\/p>\n<pre>makebootfloppy -cd<\/pre>\n<p>This will create a boot floppy capable of booting either from your hard disk or from the BeOS CD. If you leave off the <code>-cd<\/code> flag, the floppy will be created much more quickly, but will only be capable of booting from hard disk. If you want to create a floppy that boots only from a specific partition, use the <code>-base<\/code> flag, e.g.:<\/p>\n<pre>makebootfloppy -base \/gorgonzola<\/pre>\n<p>This floppy will attempt to boot from your \/gorgonzola partition even if it&#8217;s not your main boot partition. You can also use the <code>-preserve<\/code> option to leave a copy of the boot image in <code>\/tmp<\/code> (only valid when used with the <code>-cd<\/code> flag).<br \/>\n<a href=\"mailto:wisner@gratuitous.com\">William Dell Wisner<\/a> contributes this undocumented tidbit:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p> The standard <code>makebootfloppy<\/code> command tries to create the boot floppy image to <code>\/dev\/disk\/floppy\/raw<\/code>. If you want to write a boot image to some sort of removable media, such as a Zip or LS-120 drive, use the undocumented <code>-image<\/code> flag. For example:<\/p>\n<pre>makebootfloppy -cd -image \/dev\/disk\/ide\/atapi\/0\/slave\/0\/raw<\/pre>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Alternatively, if you want to create an image from an existing floppy rather than from the boot image on your hard drive, you can simply do:<\/p>\n<pre>cat \/dev\/disk\/floppy\/raw > image.img<\/pre>\n<p>and then write <code>image.img<\/code> to a new floppy with:<\/p>\n<pre>cat image.img > \/dev\/disk\/floppy\/raw<\/pre>\n<p>This is a good way to get around having to remember all of the <code>dd<\/code> commands shown below.<br \/>\nIf you need to make the floppy from within Windows, insert the BeOS CD and a floppy and navigate to Win95\/BeOS on the CD. Click <code>Make.bat<\/code> and sit back.<br \/>\nThe following instructions are left over from versions of BeOS prior to R4.5.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>It&#8217;s a good idea to make a backup copy of your BeOS boot floppy &#8212; you never know when you might need it. You can do this by creating a raw disk image either from the file \/boot\/beos\/system\/zbeos or from the original floppy itself (the zbeos method is easier). You can create boot floppies from within Windows, Linux, or BeOS. While you can&#8217;t boot a more recent version of BeOS with an older boot floppy, you can always use the latest boot floppy to boot older versions of BeOS.<br \/>\nFrom within BeOS, you can use the <code>dd<\/code> command. To create a copy of the image on the floppy from withIn BeOS, do the following.<br \/>\n&#8211; open a Terminal window<br \/>\n&#8211; insert the boot floppy<br \/>\n&#8211; type &#8222;dd if=\/dev\/disk\/floppy\/raw of=bootflop.img&#8220;<br \/>\n&#8211; wait for the copy to finish and remove the boot floppy<br \/>\n&#8211; insert a blank formatted disk<br \/>\n&#8211; type &#8222;dd if=bootflop.img of=\/dev\/disk\/floppy\/raw&#8220;<br \/>\n&#8211; wait for the copy to finish. You now have a copy of your bootfloppy.<br \/>\nTo create a copy of the zbeos image from within BeOS, do this:<br \/>\n&#8211; open a Terminal window<br \/>\n&#8211; insert a floppy you don&#8217;t mind overwriting<br \/>\n&#8211; type &#8222;dd if=\/system\/zbeos of=\/dev\/disk\/floppy\/raw&#8220;<br \/>\n&#8211; wait for the copy to finish. You now have a copy of your bootfloppy.<br \/>\nThe second method will also create a bootable floppy, without requiring<br \/>\nto read the bootfloppy first.<br \/>\nThe same technique works from within Linux. To create a boot floppy from within Windows, search the net for a tool called rawrite.exe and run according to its included instructions. Alternatively, launch a DOS session and type <code>DiskCopy a: b:<\/code> (swap SOURCE and DESTINATION as needed).<br \/>\nSee also: <a href=\"\/chunga.php?ID=391\">Creating BeOS boot floppies, pt. II<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Update: If you install BeOS Personal Edition from within Windows, you&#8217;ll find a Windows &#8222;Create Boot Floppy&#8220; utility in the BeOS program group. Otherwise, use the notes below. Note: If you don&#8217;t have a BeOS boot floppy already and can&#8217;t boot your system normally to create one, you can download the floppy image from ftp.be.com\/pub\/beos_updates\/. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-misc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betips.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betips.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betips.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betips.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betips.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.betips.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betips.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betips.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betips.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}