On Tue, 12 Sep 1995 08:14:29 -0500 (CDT) 
 Brian Oneill <btoneill@member.com> wrote:

 > I have a HP9000/300 which i just recieved, it currently has no HD, i'm 
 > working on getting one, but it won't have any system on it. I have 2 720k 
 > floppies on the system currently. Is it possible to do a ramdisk boot off 
 > of floppies, and then format the HD and install the installation off of 
 > floppies? Or atleast enough of the installation off of floppies so that i 
 > can zmodem the remainder of the package?

We currently don't have an Amigo floppy driver.  I have one of the 
dual-floppy boxes, but the boot roms on my 380 tell me that it's fried 
... there's a computer warehouse hear here that has a stack of these 
floppy boxes, and I'm 1/2 temped to go pick up several of them (for, 
like, 10 bucks a piece) and hope that I have enough parts to hack one 
working unit together.  After that, it's more or less a matter of having 
documentation the the Amigo command set, that drive, and a SMOP :-).  (If 
I understand it right, Amigo is different enough from CS80 to not be 
compatible.)

For the initial bootstrapping of a machine, network booting might be your 
best answer.  I am also working on a network installation method that 
labels a disk, uses NFS to place a miniroot into the `b' partition, and 
boots into the miniroot for the rest of it.  (Sadly enough, it doesn't 
look like I'm going to have the time to make tape installation work for 
the next release.)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason R. Thorpe                                       thorpej@nas.nasa.gov
NASA Ames Research Center                               Home: 408.866.1912
NAS: M/S 258-6                                          Work: 415.604.0935
Moffett Field, CA 94035                                Pager: 415.428.6939