What program do you use to burn a Tiny Core ISO in a CD-R?

[Mauricio]

I didn't understand the last part, what do you mean by dd-ing the InstantCore.img? That sounds interesting.

It means that an image is written to the drive with the help of dd utility. As far as I understand You have Debian up and running. Are You not familiar with dd utility? Sorry, I didn't catch the question.

I have a Debian based distro, yeah. I never used DD before, I'm a beginner in Linux world haha, but it will be my next try. I will learn to use DD, I don't want to bother you with it.

I already downloaded the InstantCore image. If I understand correctly, DD has an option to "install" that image to a plugged HDD?

[jazzbiker]

Nothing in Your posts prompted that You are new to Linux :-) Sure, it is very useful utility and You can easily find a lot of descriptions and use cases. You are absolutely right, I meant it in the sense of writing of the image directly to the drive.

I should warn You to be very careful while selecting the target (of=/dev/sd?), dd should be run as root, so writing to an incorect target may cause the disaster. You'd better describe the steps You'll make to determine the target drive here in the topic before executing.

[jazzbiker]

The final step will be

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sudo dd if=InstantCore.img of=/dev/sdX bs=1Mwhere big X will determine the drive which will be totally rewritten with InstantCore.img without any chances to be recovered.

[CNK]

Post Part One (working around forum errors)

I think you're barking up the wrong tree with the CD burner software and different drives. If you can read the burnt Tiny Core CD-Rs with any computer other than the one you burnt them with, then the reading issue shouldn't exist for the old computer either.

I suggest it's a problem with the CD booting implementation in the BIOS, as this is quite common with PCs of that vintage. The answer is to boot to a bootable floppy disk which has its own CD boot loader software, then boot the CD with that. The Plop Boot Manager works to boot CD-Rs written with TC ISOs on the old Pentium 1 PC that I'm posting from now. Write the floppy image to a floppy disk with dd or a Windows floppy image writer program, boot to that floppy, then select "CDROM/DVD" from its snazzy-looking boot options menu.

[CNK]

Post Part Two

With the HDD, some BIOSs are limited in the CHS specs of the drives they can support. Often there are work-arounds, maybe with reduced storage space, but it depends on the BIOS. People often have success with IDE to CF card adapters too.

PS. Jeeze do these internal server errors seem to be biting me hard here lately! People are posting many replies before I can figure out why I can't post my own. I guess they're a "won't fix" issue though, since CentralWare deleted to section about forum errors... Very frustrating!

[Mauricio]

The final step will be

Code: [Select]

sudo dd if=InstantCore.img of=/dev/sdX bs=1Mwhere big X will determine the drive which will be totally rewritten with InstantCore.img without any chances to be recovered.

Okay, I just tried this method.

Now when I boot it, it displays the following:

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GRUB loading.
Welcome to GRUB!

error: disk 'hd0,msdos1' not found.
Entering rescue mode...
grub rescue> (and the cursor)


[jazzbiker]

Hi Mauricio!
It looks like BIOS can not read the image on HDD due to CHS, as CNK supposed :-( You may try

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grub rescue> lsbut I guess it will show nothing.
Can You confirm or show the result?

[jazzbiker]

fdisk utility allows to set necessary CHS values ( now I know, never used this), but how can we know what Your BIOS wants? Maybe in the BIOS menu itself You will find some prompts? Something like default values.

[Mauricio]

Hi Mauricio!
It looks like BIOS can not read the image on HDD due to CHS, as CNK supposed :-( You may try

Code: [Select]

grub rescue> lsbut I guess it will show nothing.
Can You confirm or show the result?

Damn, the keyboard won't work! I can't type anything on that screen. (the keyboard works on other PCs).

I must add that when the Welcome to GRUB screen appeared, before the error showed, the computer kind of rebooted and did it like 3 or 4 times before it displayed the complete message with the error included.

[Mauricio]

fdisk utility allows to set necessary CHS values ( now I know, never used this), but how can we know what Your BIOS wants? Maybe in the BIOS menu itself You will find some prompts? Something like default values.

I installed the image into the original HDD, so this souldn't happen I think.

[Mauricio]

Post Part One (working around forum errors)

I think you're barking up the wrong tree with the CD burner software and different drives. If you can read the burnt Tiny Core CD-Rs with any computer other than the one you burnt them with, then the reading issue shouldn't exist for the old computer either.

I suggest it's a problem with the CD booting implementation in the BIOS, as this is quite common with PCs of that vintage. The answer is to boot to a bootable floppy disk which has its own CD boot loader software, then boot the CD with that. The Plop Boot Manager works to boot CD-Rs written with TC ISOs on the old Pentium 1 PC that I'm posting from now. Write the floppy image to a floppy disk with dd or a Windows floppy image writer program, boot to that floppy, then select "CDROM/DVD" from its snazzy-looking boot options menu.

Hello CNK, thank you very much for this info! It is very valuable, as I have no experience at all with hardware of this era, specially for installing Linux on it. It is great that you know to deal with them!

I tried different burnings exactly because of this. I thought that BIOS of  that era must be very picky about the bootable CDs configurations, so I tried my luck.

It looks like you might have a solution here. I don't have access to a floppy drive right now, but some time in the future I will buy one and try this.

[Mauricio]

Post Part Two

With the HDD, some BIOSs are limited in the CHS specs of the drives they can support. Often there are work-arounds, maybe with reduced storage space, but it depends on the BIOS. People often have success with IDE to CF card adapters too.

PS. Jeeze do these internal server errors seem to be biting me hard here lately! People are posting many replies before I can figure out why I can't post my own. I guess they're a "won't fix" issue though, since CentralWare deleted to section about forum errors... Very frustrating!

That might be it then! The original HDD is 4gb and the one I tried is 41gb or something like that, quite a difference!
Unluckily, that kind of adapters with old connectors are rare in my country, and expensive! The CF cards too, so it won't worth it I guess.

[jazzbiker]

fdisk utility allows to set necessary CHS values ( now I know, never used this), but how can we know what Your BIOS wants? Maybe in the BIOS menu itself You will find some prompts? Something like default values.

I installed the image into the original HDD, so this souldn't happen I think.

But the image was created with some default values which have no correspondence with the HDD parameters. Maybe this makes an old BIOS crazy.
Aren't CHS values printed on Your HDD label?

[Mauricio]

fdisk utility allows to set necessary CHS values ( now I know, never used this), but how can we know what Your BIOS wants? Maybe in the BIOS menu itself You will find some prompts? Something like default values.

I installed the image into the original HDD, so this souldn't happen I think.

But the image was created with some default values which have no correspondence with the HDD parameters. Maybe this makes an old BIOS crazy.
Aren't CHS values printed on Your HDD label?

Sorry, I missunderstood your message, dumb me haha. Now I understand your point.

It has some data grills, maybe you're asking for this one:

Cylinders: 01 04
Heads: 16
Sectors: 63

I searched for some datasheet of the HDD and found this: https://www.manualslib.com/manual/466132/Maxtor-Diamondmaxtm-2160.html?page=12#manual
My model is Maxtor 84320D4.

[Rich]

Hi Mauricio

That might be it then! The original HDD is 4gb and the one I tried is 41gb or something like that, quite a difference! ...

The BIOS on very old hardware had limitations on how
large a drive they supported. If that's causing a problem,
you can lie to the BIOS by setting it to a smaller size. When
the kernel boots, it doesn't look at the BIOS. It figures out
what disks are present and their size for itself:

Hi KingBongo
The difference is  /mnt/hda1/tce/optional is on your hard drive and  /tmp/tce/optional is in RAM.
As far as the BIOS is concerned try telling it the 30Gb drive is 500Mb, the kernel will figure out
the correct size on it's own. I'm running a machine from 1997 with a 320Gb drive. The machine
didn't like it so I either lied to the bios or disabled it, and let the kernel figure it out since it is
used for file serving.
[Corrected my copy of tinypoodle's typo]

For more on the specs of that machine:
https://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,7942.msg45971.html#msg45971