On Wed, Jul 02, 2003 at 07:22:29PM +0000, Greg Troutman wrote:
> No matter how many perfectly good floppies I've tried, I have never been
> able to get any of the disk2 images from this floppy install set to
> work. Is it not completely bogus, and always has been?  I only have SS10

It is not _completely_ bogus, but ever since I've been doing NetBSD/sparc
from about two years ago, the second install disk, never the first, has
caused problems.  I've even had the second disk go bad after four or five
uses.

> evangeline: {161} dd if=disk2 of=/dev/rfd0a bs=36k conv=sync
                                              ^^^^^^
The lower this value, the better the success rate, at least on my old IPCs.
Even on the first disk I use no greater than 18k.

My almost always successful incantation:

 1) when possible, pre-format in plain MS-DOS mode (NOT Windows):
    "> format a:\ /u /f:1.44"        (The unformat switch is important.)
 2) format on a NetBSD machine of the same architecture, and preferably
    with the same model of floppy drive, as the machine you intend to
    install on: "# fdformat".
 3) write the image in small blocks (it will take quite a bit of time):
    "# dd if=instfs.tgz of=/dev/rfd0a bs=512 conv=sync"

There should not be a single error during any of these three steps.  If
you get an error in step 2), the floppy is rendered useless, although
doing step 1) on it sometimes will revive it.

-- 
henry nelson