9fans archive / 1996 / 10 / 3 /    prev next

From: jmk@pla... jmk@pla...
Subject: Installing & IP
Date: Sat, 5 Oct 1996 23:28:04 -0400


> Assorted system trivia is: Pentium, 16M ram, IDE disks, 3c590 10/100
> ethernet interface (Plan 9 detects it as a 3c509), video works in
> 1 bit vga mode.

Even the most recent 4-floppy set will not work correctly with the 3C595
(which is what I think you have, the 3C590 is a 10Mbps card only and should work).
Short of me back-porting the Brazil driver to Plan 9 and making a new set of
floppies, you will need to get a supported card if you want to use the network.

> And a third question in the line of trivia:  The Plan 9 install
> disks boot directly to the Plan 9 operating system, but once
> it is installed, you have to have MS-DOS and use b.com to
> load it.  Why put DOS in the middle?

You can always use a floppy to boot Plan 9 directly, we just never bothered doing
all the IDE drive booting stuff (99.9% of the time we boot directly over the network
and don't use the discs for anything other than holding b.com and plan9.ini).

Jim McKie
jmk@pla...