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Installing Xenix on Lisa with X/Profile Drive?

W

wheagy

Experienced Member
Joined
Apr 10, 2010
Messages
101
Has anyone successfully installed Xenix on the Lisa using an X/Profile as the hard drive? I downloaded the Xenix boot and sys disks from the bitsavers site as referenced in this thread
http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?3582-Anyone-ever-seen-Lisa-Xenix
I did not have any luck with the images from the mediafire site, but bitsavers worked. I transferred them to floppy using BLU and the serial 'copy to memory' and 'write to disk' floppy functions. This seems to have worked very well and the boot disk does indeed boot. I get
boot
:
I work through the first part of the installation, when it starts to prepare the hard disk, I get the error as seen here...
http://i.imgur.com/S7r2LcP.jpg it hangs after the last line shown. (This was actually after running hdinst, after the installation program bombs in a similar manner and drops me to a # prompt.)

I tried several CF cards and different options for preparing the STAR and disk size. So far I have not stumbled on the right combination.

I've read this page
http://sigmasevensystems.com/xpf_xenix.html and tried the suggestions without luck, I have firmware 121 with a date of 2013, so this shouldn't be necessary but I'm pretty new with the X/Profile, so there could be user errors.

Anyone get an installation of Xenix working on the X/Profile?

Thanks...Win
 
The short answer is: Yes, Xenix can work fine with the X/Profile. Here is a photo of one of my systems tonight:

View attachment 16197


I was not the one who did the install on this CF card, so I can't share any of the magic that made this work, but hopefully this will be the motivation you need to keep trying.

Rick
 
I can't quite make out from the picture the settings for the Mode and Target switches on your X/Profile. Can you tell me what they are? That might help a little.

Thanks,

Win
 
To run: Mode = 1, Target = 0.

My setup is a 10Meg Type 04 STAR.

While the tech notes are correct that you can only "format" a 5Meg HD using a Lisa2 and a 10Meg HD using an XL (at least using the built-in ports), FYI, once installed the 10Meg drive works just fine on a Lisa2.

I hope this helps.

Rick
 
Thanks. I did find a thread in Google groups that discussed Xenix needing a STAR to be the size that Xenix expects the hard drive to be on your particular piece of hardware (a Lisa 2/10 for me). But I have tried both 5 and 10 meg sizes (focusing on 10), with not luck.

I found this thread
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lisalist/jkN4eTDqBUQ
discussing the need for patching the Xenix boot disk regardless of what you are installing on to. There were actually two differently named boot disks on the bitsavers site (boot and Xenixboot). I was using boot but also tried Xenixboot. They both did the same thing and gave the same errors. I was hoping that maybe one was a patched image.

Does anyone know if a patched boot image is available anywhere? I believe the patch process might be the next step for me, but it appears to add a whole new layer of difficulty in preparing this boot disk. I'm hoping to find one pre-patched.

Thanks,

Win
 
Any luck yet? I've been meaning to do this myself so I'm goping to give it a shot too.

I did edit the boot floppy image in Windows but the checksums are then incorrect and Disk Copy won't write out the modified disk image on a Mac. I think I'll have to write out the the disk image to floppy on an old Mac and then modify the floppy. I will try to give this a shot this weekend.

If you get any further, please let me know.
 
I plan to keep working on this. I would like to find a method that works, along with some known good floppy images. I have not tried FEdit on the boot disk yet.

Win
 
I also have Xenith on a CF card for the X/Profile. It seems to boot up ok. The OS is so unfamiliar to me though i don't know how to drive it. :)

Tez
 
Quick update on this. With a bunch of help from Rick, I managed to get a copy of FEdit on one of my older Macs so that I could attempt patching the Xenix boot floppy. I used the following patch instruction from this thread --
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/lisalist/xenix$20for$20lisa/lisalist/jkN4eTDqBUQ/El8xvXfzCXkJ

a) To always send 6 command bytes

Sector: $22 (#34)
Search: 0CAE 0000 0001 0010 6614 177C 000A 0009 1B7C 0002 0001 177C
0004 0009
Replace: 17 7C 00 0A 00 09 17 7C 00 04 00 09 0C AE 00 00 00 01 00 10 66
08 1B 7C 00 02 00 01
34
editsector 0xaa 17 7C 00 0A 00 09 17 7C 00 04 00 09 0C AE 00 00 00 01 00
10 66 08 1B 7C 00 02 00 01

Sectors: $CF (#207), $183 (#387)
Search: 082C 0000 0003 6714 177C 000A 0009 1B7C 0002 0001 177C 0004 0009
Replace: 17 7C 00 0A 00 09 17 7C 00 04 00 09 08 2C 00 00 00 03 67 08 1B
7C 00 02 00 01
207
editsector 0x94 17 7C 00 0A 00 09 17 7C 00 04 00 09 08 2C 00 00 00 03 67
08 1B 7C 00 02 00 01
387
editsector 0x192 17 7C 00 0A 00 09 17 7C 00 04 00 09 08 2C 00 00 00 03
67 08 1B 7C 00 02 00 01


b) To not assert CMD before BSY interrupt is enabled

Sectors: twice in $22 (#34), twice in $CF (#207), $183 (#387), $184 (#388)
Search: 00 79 08 EB 00 04 00 01
Replace: 00 79 4E 71 4E 71 4E 71 (change 6 bytes)

34
editsector 0x26 00 79 4E 71 4E 71 4E 71
editsector 0x192 00 79 4E 71 4E 71 4E 71
207
editsector 0x10 00 79 4E 71 4E 71 4E 71
editsector 0x1de 00 79 4E 71 4E 71 4E 71
387
editsector 0x10e 00 79 4E 71 4E 71 4E 71
388
editsector 0xb6 00 79 4E 71 4E 71 4E 71

c) To assert CMD after BSY interrupt is enabled and accept fast response

Sectors: $22 (#34), $CF (#207), $183 (#387)
Search: 02 00 00 02 0C 00 00 02 66 80
Replace: 4E 71 08 EB 00 04 00 01 60 80 (change 9 bytes)
34
editsector 0x86 4E 71 08 EB 00 04 00 01 60 80
207
editsector 0x70 4E 71 08 EB 00 04 00 01 60 80
387
editsector 0x16E 4E 71 08 EB 00 04 00 01 60 80

I did the edits manually using FEdit. I was pretty careful about it, but must have made an error, because it didn't work. The disk used to boot and get partway into the installation, as mentioned above in this thread, but now it doesn't boot at all. The Lisa grinds away on the disk for a little while, it looks like it wants to do something, but I never get the boot prompt. This was my first attempt at this so there's a good chance I messed up the patch...or the patch instructions are wrong. Has anyone done this and can confirm that the above is correct?

Win
 
Another update: I decided to try the 'lisafsh-tool' command-line tool along with the xenix-patches text file (see the link above) on my Macbook Air to directly edit the XenixBoot.dc42 floppy image (without going through the process of editing the physical floppy disk). Once I was set up and hit return, it took a fraction of a second to make the edits to the .dc42 floppy image. Using BLU, I copied this onto a physical floppy and booted. It appeared to actually work. I didn't get any of the errors that I got with the un-patched floppy and for the most part, the installation process proceeded normally using the boot.dc42 and disk01-07.dc42 images from
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/bits/Apple/Lisa/xenix_3.0_rel1.0/Xenix_3.0_rel_1_#40067/

At the first boot of the CF card in the X/Profile, it tried to boot from 'fd(2,0)xenix' instead of 'pf(0,0)xenix)'. I typed 'pf(0,0)xenix' manually and it booted and I started the installation. After the first 3 disks, the installation program did an ownerships and permissions check of the base system and said that boot.pf0 had a bad format, which I'm guessing was related to the pf(0,0) issue. However, after the install was complete, subsequent boots seem fine and don't require manually typing 'pf(0,0)xenix)'. I plan to try installing the text processing and software dev packages soon.

I realize I was reinventing the wheel on much of this, but it was new to me. The gyrations to get a boot disk that work with the X/Profile would have been relatively straightforward if I knew what I was doing going into this, however, it took me several concentrated hours till I got a usable disk. If anyone wants a copy of this boot disk image, let me know. I should be able to zip it and email it to you. If I can find a reasonable place to put it that its easily accessible for others in the future, I'll do that too.

Win
 
wheagy said:
If anyone wants a copy of this boot disk image, let me know. I should be able to zip it and email it to you. If I can find a reasonable place to put it that its easily accessible for others in the future, I'll do that too.

Win
Click to expand...

I should probably put a copy next to the other images on bitsavers
 
Good job wheagy. I didn't get a chance to try this weekend. I'll PM you my email address if you can share until it gets to bitsavers.

Thanks for soldiering through.
 
Well, I did try this today with no luck. Wheagy, I tried to write your image and it didn't work due to a bad CRC error. This happened when I tried to edit the image on a PC also. I then created two boot floppies and neither of them would work. I must have bad floppies (not unlikely) or my set up is wrong. I am booting from a Lisa 2/5 motherboard (X/Profile on built-in parallel port) so I wonder if that is causing an issue? Does yours boot off of a Parallel card? I also have a 2/10 I/O board on a 2/5 motherboard that may be causing issues (or both my floppies were bad) but I edited them individually with FEdit and I can't see doing it wrong twice.

An interesting experiment anyway.
 
I have mixed results. The boot floppy image writes to a floppy Ok for me (using BLU). That floppy then boots Ok and allows me to install Xenix to a CF card on my X/Profile. I can then boot from the X/Profile into Xenix and the installation appears normal. I can add accounts, execute Xenix commands, etc. However, after I shutdown for a few hours and come back, I can no longer boot from the CF card (error 75). I can boot from the Xenix boot floppy and issue 'pf(0,0)xenix' and the system then continues to boot from the CF card in the X/Profile. I'm not sure what's going on.

I assume you were writing the image to floppy using BLU? When you say you "tried to edit the image on a PC". What were you doing?

Win
 
wheagy said:
I assume you were writing the image to floppy using BLU? When you say you "tried to edit the image on a PC". What were you doing?
Click to expand...

I wrote the DC42 images out to floppy with a TAM. This is how I made the unedited boot disk as well. Your image would not write because of the invalid checksums. I then moved the boot disks to a Macintosh Plus (couldn't use FEdit on the TAM) so I edited the floppy as per the instructions with FEdit. It would boot but I got random floppy errors while booting and System Panics when it finished booting.

The DC42 image can be edited with Windows HexEdit. It's a binary dump so you could do the "search and replace"s much easier. The problem is, because the checksums didn't match, it could not be written out with DiskCopy 4.2.

I'll have to give this another shot. I formatted a CF card as a 10MB Profile so it should have worked but no joy here. I didn't get past the boot disk.
 
Oh, so since my boot floppy didn't work, you were trying to edit the original boot image to make your own patched image?

Win
 
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