Installing OS/2: Boot disks

Preamble

Creating the correct installation diskettes to install OS/2 unto unusual hardware has always been the trickiest part of the entire process. This is probably the most involved single step in this guide. However, anyone who can edit a DOS config.sys file and know what they're doing can cope with this.

The procedure is as follows:

1. Create the three standard installation diskettes from the CD
2. Ensure the correct ordering of the PCMCIA drive and the flash ROM drive
3. Boot the disks, then proceed to partition and install
4. My installation diskettes

IBM packs the diskette files into .DSK files on the OS/2 CD. You'll need to use XDFCOPY to unpack these files back onto diskettes. XDFCOPY.EXE lives in \DISKIMG on the CD - it's a good idea to temporarily add this directory to your operating system's command path. When I talk about creating a diskette from, for example, DISK1.DSK, I mean you should type in the command

XDFCOPY DISK1.DSK A:

XDFCOPY has two extra parameters:

• /Y - do not prompt the user to press a key before copying to the diskette
• /NV - do not verify the diskette once written

I tend to use both parameters to speed up the process. If you have trouble with a particular diskette during the installation, remake it and omit the /NV parameter so that it gets verified during creation.

Create the three standard installation diskettes from the CD

From the \DISKIMGS\OS2\35 directory on the OS/2 CD, create the first three diskettes from DISK0.DSK, DISK1.DSK, and DISK2.DSK.

Next, you might want to create some free space on Disk 1 so that any parallel port storage device drivers you may need can be placed there. Any of the following files could be deleted to free up space:
 

 
You will also want to REM out the lines in CONFIG.SYS which refer to these, and place a semi-colon in front of lines in SNOOP.LST which refer to the .SNP files above.

Ensure the correct ordering of the PCMCIA drive and the flash ROM drive

First, make sure you know the PC110 drive configuration is correctly configured. I strongly recommend you install with your PCMCIA drive as the primary IDE channel device, and your Flash drive as the secondary channel device.

To do this, you should follow these steps:

1. Ensure that all drives you want to be visible are included in your startup sequence, and that the ordering will boot the desired partition. I chose FDD-1, PCMCIA, HDD-1 to boot from floppy, then PCMCIA drive, then the 4MB Flash drive. See BIOS support for PCMCIA devices if you need more information on this part.
   
2. Ensure that your IDE controllers are recognised in the default order; you do this by issuing the PS2 command PS2 _@ATA SECONDARY whilst booted into DOS. See the section on PS2 commands for more detail on this command. This ensures that both the PCMCIA drive and the Flash drive can be seen.

Once the drive controllers are in this configuration, and so we know they are visible and using certain resources, the final preparation is for the order in which the OS/2 IDE driver loads support for these channels. It makes sense for the PCMCIA drive to be seen on the primary IDE channel, even though we have set it above to use the secondary channel resources. To accomplish this, we tell the OS/2 IDE driver to swap the channel allocations for the given devices, by altering one line in the CONFIG.SYS to read:

BASEDEV=IBM1S506.ADD /A:0 /P:170 /IRQ:15 /A:1 /P:1F0 /IRQ:14

The PCMCIA hard drive (assuming it has a single primary partition) should be seen as C:, and the flash ROM should be D:.

Boot the disks, then proceed to partition and install

When you boot from Disk 0, you'll see a white rectangle and 'OS/2' displayed in the top left of the screen - hit the following keys to gain extra control over the boot sequence:

• <ALT>+<F1> - Bring up the Recovery Choices menu, with options to boot to a command prompt, reset to VGA, and others.
• <ALT>+<F2> - Continues to boot but displays the filename of each driver as it's loaded. Good for diagnosing boot hangs.

My installation diskettes

If you want to check my installation disk changes, click below for more details:

• Disk 1 contents
• CONFIG.SYS on Disk 1
• SNOOP.LST on Disk 1

Back to OS/2 installation guide

Written by Daniel Basterfield. Images found on the internet. Enjoy!