6.0R-alpha ISOs - not bootable?

[jonathan michaels]

greetings,

hope you all had a happy peacefull christmass and you new years parties
were much enjoyable.

On Wed, Jan 18, 2006 at 10:31:06PM +0100, Wilko Bulte wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 18, 2006 at 11:09:24AM -0800, J.C. Roberts wrote..
> > On Mon, 16 Jan 2006 15:57:20 +0100, Wilko Bulte <wb at freebie.xs4all.nl>
> > wrote:
> > 
> > >On Mon, Jan 16, 2006 at 07:14:02AM -0500, Paul Baughman wrote..
> > >> Finally had a chance to download 6.0R.  It boots my 2100A fine and drops 
> > >> into the installer without a hitch.    I was short of time, so I didn't do 
> > >> the install, but I thought you'd like to know that much.
> > >
> > >Fascinating.  Now the big question is how do these 2 Lynx boxes differ?
> > 
> > Actually, the two machines might be identical and the *only*  difference
> > is the type of CDR media being used. Older CDROM drives do not play well
> > with a lot CDR media (depending on process type and dye color) because
> > it has a lower reflectance than "Mastered" CDROM discs.
> 
> Correct, I share that experience.

i'm not sure that teh term "Mastered CDROM" means .. but i share the
'can't read the newer cut cd's made off the silvery (aluminium, i think
it is) material in several older i386 machines and both of my dec hosts
an alphastation and a surviving multia .. werks very good for a 90 mhz
pentium, grin. 

> In addition, I also know from experience that accumulated dust on the
> lens/laser of older CD drives negatively affects reliably reading CDR[W]

yes, i would sugest regular cleaning, especially if thier is a smoker
in teh house, i've found cleaning about once a year does wonders, note
maybe twice a year with a non abrasive cdrom cleaning kit, the cheap
ones use somthing akin to not so fine grade of sandpaper.

also, two other things that have increased my success rate to about 99
percent is to use the gold plate tdk media (not it doesnt have to be
tdk but so far thats the only brand that i've seen here in australia, i
havent looked very hard, i'm mostly house bound) but the thing that
seems to work teh most best is to have the production side of teh
process to limit the "cutting speed" to as slow, as close as possible
to "1x" as possible, the slower the better.

note i've been told (in good faith) that the old cdrom players (some of
mine are some 10 years of age early ide types) won't handle teh new 80
minute media. in my travels and sticking with the gold media and
cutting teh media at 1x produces a cdrom that is virtually guaranteed
readability in virtually all but teh most obstinate hardware .. i've
not had a problem in any of my ide/scsi managarie dating back some
twelve years of age .. all work, reliably and most will do so
regardless of cutting speed (on teh gold media) but to be safe i always
try to ensure its been cut at 1x or 2x, failing that at teh slowest
speed possible.

this is fopr home built cdr (sorry if i got teh tag wrong), so far i've
managed to get good results from commercial cdroms that are made of teh
aluminium material, except for one really cheap outfit that produced a
netbsd boot disk that none of teh machines will recognise letalone are
able to read.

hope this helps, its teh summary of some ten, almost twenty years of
experimenting ever since i got my first cdrom player a scsi nec cdr
84-1 (the original multispin worked (date of manufacture in 1984) a
treat for a little over 15 years when teh electronics gave up.

> But I have yet to see the SHOW CONF side by side.

question, wilko, what would teh SHOW CONF, sorry both my alphas are
ofline and i never got into teh niceties of teh "show conf" they both
worked right off teh start line and i never need to delve into teh conf
file. 

anyway hope this helps the veteran's brigade, though some of my and
fellow machine users are aproacking classic and even antique statis,
especially any one with a working ibm pc/xt .. sigh

with kind regards and best wishes

thank you for all you help over the years

cheers

jonathan

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