by Y-my-R » Sat Jan 08, 2022 2:01 am
I just recently cloned my 16GB D8B CF card to a 32GB CF card, and tried if it boots up and works with that. It does. So, I don't think the 32GB CF is the problem.
Personally, I don't like installing from floppy (or an emulator in this case), so I only did this once when I first got the D8B, and made an image from that, that I keep on the computer. If something fails, I just play that image back onto the D8B boot drive, rather than going through that floppy-install procedure.
(And I finally moved the CF card to the back panel, so I don't have to open the rack case every time to pull the CF card (or drive) out of there).
The only trouble is, that only those backup/clone applications will work for that, that make an exact copy of the drive, including the boot sector and everything. What I have been using for this purpose most of the time, is "Clonezilla" - but if you're not familiar with this kind of app, you could mess things up pretty badly when making a mistake (e.g. erasing your windows boot drive or similar).
Another app that surprised me that still works for that as well, is an ancient version of Norton Ghost, that I still had on a D8B computer that I use as a Win98 computer (b/c it has ISA slots and I have an old ISA sound card in that one).
So, if you happen to have an ancient copy of Norton Ghost and an old OS it runs on, this would in my opinion be the easiest way to copy the D8B boot drive (including the boot sector), in a way where the clone can boot directly.
If I recall correctly, there are also some drive-cloning instructions (and maybe even the drive image?!?) somewhere in the database, while recommending a trial app for Windows. That works, too, and I did that once, but then the trial expired, so I went back to those "free" solutions (i.e. Clonezilla or Ghost... well, Ghost is only "free" because I had a license since the 90s).
What I didn't quite understand about Pino's latest problem description was, though, that it sounds as if the D8B fully booted, was usable for a few seconds, and then locked up hard. That doesn't sound like an authorization issue to me (but still could be one).
It's still a good idea to re-install the OS, of course - hopefully it's just a software issue... if not, I guess it'll be necessary to roll this up again from the beginning... but let's cross that bridge when (if) we get there.
Do you happen to have a backup of the D8B system drive that you could clone, Pino68? If not, don't worry... just thought it might be another way around having to deal with that dreaded floppy-based installation.
In the meantime, best of luck!
(I still want to stay out of this for the most part, to avoid a sort of "too many cooks" situation).
