[rescue] OpenBSD on an SS5 - argh!

[Mike Meredith]

On Fri, 14 May 2004 15:12:05 -0400, Sheldon T. Hall wrote:
> Heh, floppies.  I hardly ever use them on PCs, and, although some of
> my SPARCs have 'em, I don't recall _ever_ using 'em.  I expect the

I recently released my old work PC back into the pile of rubbish in the
middle of the office; someone rescued it and discovered that the floppy
was faulty. I'd never used in in roughly 3 years of use, so it was
probably bad from the start (the relevant company isn't known for
producing quality).

On the other hand, I've found that reformatting a floppy just before use
has a greater chance of working than otherwise.

> "SPARC bad floppy drive" syndrome is from lack of use.  I even got a
> "SCSI" floppy drive with one of my SGIs, and who cares?

Does that get it's power from the SCSI bus like Tadpole floppy drives ?
Would a Tadpole drive work on an SGI ? (I've got a spare Tadpole drive
from when my 3GX was stolen).

> However, this brings up a thought ... how about an OpenBSD ftp-install
> boot_CD_?  I know SFA about making bootable CD-ROMs, but it seems that
> it ought to be possible.  Would it be possible to have one that worked
> on multiple platforms?

There seems to be plenty of options for making bootable disks with
mkisofs, although I've never tried them. Looks like SPARC and PC
bootable disks would be east, others might be trickier or impossible.