by Y-my-R » Thu Jun 13, 2024 7:06 pm
Sorry about the apparently wrong info about what the database says should be on or off in the BIOS.
I always turn the Parallel port off, since the D8B system doesn't use that, and anything that normally uses an IRQ (aka "interrupt" as in a prioritized permission to "interrupt whatever the computer processor is doing," to handle that task... in this case, the potential for the parallel port to take up CPU cycles for no reason).
Anyway, if the database doesn't say to turn that off, it should work with it on... I'd turn it off, anyway. I'd have to take a look about the USB thing, but if there isn't anything, that should be fine, too.
Sorry again for the potential confusion and the conflict with what it says in the database. In addition to making basic settings per the database, I just use "conventional old-school PC wisdom" to further optimize (aka, disable anything that isn't actually in use by the D8B) - but if you set everything to how its described in the database, nothing else in the BIOS should get in the way of the D8B booting.
So... good that you carefully set the BIOS per the database... and sorry if I made you check everything a second time, if it was already right.
As far as I recall, MacOS 9 and early versions of MacOS X weren't able to read FAT/FAT32 - or at least not write to that file system. From what I remember, you had to install some extra application to make that possible (that often caused new, different problems), to make that work on older Macs. (I hope I'm not confusing that with NTFS, where that was definitely like that).
More recent versions of MacOS can read/write FAT/FAT32, but Macs that can do that, don't usually have floppy drives, anymore. So, not sure if that G4 would be able to read the D8B drive the way it is originally formatted (if you're certain that it should, but it doesn't see the partition, the partition might be shot, so you might have to clone or format from the D8B floppies, after all. Formatting in fAT/FAT32 from the Mac won't help, as mentioned, before).
An IDE-to-SSD adapter will work in an HDR... I never tried in a D8B. In the HDR, though, I bought 2 different ones that didn't work, until I bought a 3rd one that "doctor1360" here on this forum recommended that DID work.
I can look up what brand/model that was if you want to go that route... but I wouldn't know if this will work in the D8B (or on the "old motherboard" for it). The HDR uses the same motherboard as the "newer" motherboard that some D8Bs have.
As for cloning or restoring drives via the the Mac... I'm a Mac guy, but didn't have much luck with that, when I tried. Disk Utility didn't work. Carbon Copy Cloner didn't work. Dupe didn't work, etc., so I eventually gave up.
Since I had an old PC (and also converted a D8B rack unit to a Win98 system at some point, and can now access a working PC floppy drive that way), I just switched to PC for doing that.
I mean... you could temporarily install Windows on the D8B, just to make that floppy edit for a clean installation to the same drive, afterwards, but it wasn't straight forward, either. I don't recall what got in the way, but I had to work around several odd issues for it to accept the Windows installation and boot from it.
Another crazy idea (I have a lot of those, haha), would be to install Linux on that G4 (there's some older Linux distributions that did that... I had SuSE Linux running on a PowerPC 9200 at some point, for example, and am running Ubuntu on a Core2Duo Mac Mini), then access the first boot floppy of the D8B from there, and add that "format:on" line to the Tools.ini file from there. But that's a lot of work (that comes with it's own challenges... old Linux like that had to be configured via command line for installation), so, probably not worth the effort, unless you'd somehow have another use for the G4 if it was running Linux, haha.
Another idea I mentioned before, is to boot the D8B rack computer with a DOS bootup disk. For booting, even an old Windows 95 or Windows 98 startup disk would work. The problem, then, is that, those bootup disks didn't always come with an Editor that would be needed to modify that first D8B floppy.
But if you CAN somehow get a hold of an old DOS boot floppy (or try a Windows boot floppy that is intended to start the installation of Windows on old PCs like that), this would be the lowest effort method mentioned in this particular post.
You could do it like this, in that case:
1. Set the boot order in the BIOS to boot from the floppy (A:) first
2. Insert the DOS/old-Windows boot floppy into the floppy drive
3. Let it boot until it shows C:
4. take out the DOS/old-Windows floppy and put in the first D8B boot floppy
5. type "A:" (no quotes)
6. at the A: prompt, type "edit tools.ini" (no quotes)
(7. - if you get a "command not found" error, then there's no editor on that boot floppy. If you get a tools.ini not found error, then the tools.ini file apparently isn't on the root of the floppy disk (I don't remember where exactly it is located on the floppy), you can see a list of folders by typing "dir" (or dir -p to add page breaks, if things scroll by too fast). You can change into a folder that is listed, by typing cd foldername (with foldername being the folder you want to access). Then type "dir" again (no quotes) to see what's in the folder. To back out of a folder, type cd.. or cd .. (I think the space between cd and the two dots is only necessary on unix... but if cd.. doens't work, try with that space). This will bring you one folder up. With these couple of commands, you should be able to navigate the folders on the floppy until you find the tools.ini file)
7. If you don't get an error (e.g. command not found), but a weird blue screen opens with a bunch of cryptic looking lines on it, then you're lucky and the floppy has the editor as part of that DOS version and opened the tools.ini file.
8. Use the editor to add the new line "format:on" at the end, as a new line, and save. (You navigate with the arrow keys on the keyboard. I don't recall for sure, but I think you access menus with the Alt-key while simultaneously pressing the first key of the word in the pull down menu... so, "Alt-F" to access the "File" menu in order to save.
I haven't done this sort of thing in a while, though, so the steps above may not be 100% accurate... but hopefully what I wrote here is enough to give a clue how to work this, when trying to edit the D8B boot floppy after booting the rack computer into DOS via a DOS/old-Windows startup floppy disk.
Short of buying an IDE-to-USB adapter (just search for that online - they're quite cheap... usually under $20 - I just saw one for under $4, shipping from China) in order to connect the D8B drive directly to your Windows laptop, I can't really think of another good way to do this via an old G4 or a floppy-less Windows PC.
