386 project a success; well, sort of...

[Jeff McCright]

Have you considered bringing in this system to one of the KCLUG Install fests?
I believe the next one is September 6... Someone correct me if I am wrong!!  I
have not seen Pygmy Linux yet and would love to play with it! Just a thought
anyway if you have the time...

Thanks,

Jeff

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From: kclug at kclug.org
To: kulua-l at kulua.org; kclug at kclug.org
Cc: jeff.mccright at southernunionco.com
Subject: kclug - 386 project a success; well, sort of...

After wrestling with my friends old 386 PC for a week trying to get Pygmy
Linux to install and run on it, I finially got it to run last night, for awhile
anyway....
The box came with MSDOS 4.0 on it and I upgraded it to 5.0 from some 5 1/4"
diskettes he supplied me with. I chose to have DOS shell to boot up as default.
Then I formatted the hard drive to clear off any junk on there since I wasn't
getting Pygmy Linux to load up and run during the first go around.
This seemed to do the trick. I installed Pygmy Linux, the files extracted
themselves onto the hard drive this time without a hich. (Last time I was
getting "write errors"). I booted up Pygmy Linx and it was running smoothly
(and lightning fast too!!). Then I made the mistake of trying out a
modem terminal program icluded with Pygmy Linux called "minicom". Once I got
in there, I couldn't figure out how to exit so I had to shut down the machine.
Now when I boot back up, I get this error: "Non-system disk or disk error,
replace and press any key when ready". I think the machine is somehow seeing
Linux on the hard drive as a non system disk.
To make matters worse, I don't have a DOS boot floppy either. I don't really
know how to make one either.
I am guessing since I chose to have DOS shell boot up on start up that maybe
Linux is trying to boot up with it. Is this possible?I'm sure there is a
proper shut down sequence for Linux, but I was planning on finding out for
sure when I powered down, obviously I could not though.
 I know most on this list are fairly advanced in Linux/Unix and will laugh
and have a good time at my expense, but I am merely a hobbyist that really
doesn't know what he's doing (obviously), so I would appreciate somebody
pointing out where I went wrong. (Other than not making a DOS boot disk).
Pygmy Linux was created to reside peacefully on a DOS or Windows partition,
but it doesn't seem to be acting this way, unless I did something wrong
myself.