This page discusses the content and use of the LinuxLiveCD image for H89 projects that can be downloaded from this site.
With the latest milestone in the development of the H17 full-track capture process, i.e., successful capture, transfer and reconstruction of several H17 disks, it seemed wise to test the process on several computer combinations. The PC based portion of the process has been done on an AMD Athlon machine (i.e., Intel compatible) running Slackware Linux. At this point there is no Mac or Windows version of the software.
For potential testers with Intel compatible computers there is an alternateive. Rather than cross-compiling the utilities for a Windows (or for Mac), I've customized a LinuxLiveCD obtained from www.slax.org. The downloadable ISO image presented here provides a means to boot a memory image of Slackware Linux. The OS is fully functional, including an X Window GUI environment, but does not use the non-volital storage media on the host machine. The whole thing runs in memory. It includes executables for the specialized serial communications program (with an easily recognizable icon on the desktop, along with an executable (genimage) for processing the transferred raw full-track images.
NOTE: genimage was updated after this CD was created. Please
download
To conduct the test, download the Custom LinuxLiveCD image ('new-slax-3.iso') and burn it to a CD. If you use a CD-RW, be aware that some drives, while they can read CD-RW media, they cannot boot CD-RW media. Ensure that your BIOS is set to allow booting from your CD and boot the new CD. It will quickly pop up a splash screen telling you about Slax and offering several start-up options. Just wait for its delay timer to run down (about 10 seconds) and it will automatically configure the system and start an X Window session.
It is a generic configuration so the process will take a few minutes. It will gather information about your complete hardware environment, including configuration of a network interface. It will identify of all mountable disk partitions. Even though it doesn't use your disk drives, it will mount all that it finds. This will be useful in case you decide to save something to disk to use between boots or to use with your original OS. Anything "written" goes into a memory image that is lost upon re-boot unless you save it to persistent storage.
As mentioned above, your network interface will be configured. Mozilla Firefox is included so you will be able to browse the Internet if you like. (You can use Firefox to return to this page in order to download the latest genimage directly to your Linux Live session.) The Firefox icon is in the panel at the bottom of the screen. A single click will execute items in the bottom panel. Remember that anything you download will be written to memory (RAM drive). If you want to keep downloaded materials, you'll have to copy or move them to a folder on your hard drive before shutting down. The default download folder is /root/Downloads.
Once the desktop is displayed, you can run the custom serial communications program (h89serial3) by double-clicking on the H89 icon on the desktop. The Help menu item on the program will provide a little backgound on its use and its options. Basically, to send a file, click Function and then Send File. Have your H8/H89 start "listening" first. To receive a file (or an image) on the PC, click Function and then Accept Input Data. Select or create a new file name and then start the remote sending process.
Even if you don't actually transfer files, double-click on the H89 icon to run the program and let me know what you think of the Help menu.
Here's a crash course, er, I mean, quick course in Linux nomenclature and a few useful commands.
First of all, unlike MS-DOS, almost everyting in Linux is case-sensitive. For example, 'FileName' is distinct from 'filename' and from 'FILENAME'. Most shell commands (i.e., built-in commands) are in lower case. Keep this in mind and be carefull of the Caps Lock key.
A few commands of interest:
cd - change directory; 'cd /mnt/hda1' will set the current directory to '/mnt/hda1'
cp - copy; 'cp file1 file2' will make a copy if 'file1' and name it 'file2'
ls - list directory contents; If the current directory is /mnt/hda1, then
'ls' will list its contents. If the current directory is not /mnt/hda1
you can list its contents with 'ls /mnt/hda1'
pwd - path to working directory; responds with the full path name for the
current directory (folder)
|
In Linux, IDE drives are represented as hda for the first drive, hdb for the second drive, etc. SCSI drives are represented by sda for the first and sdb for the second, etc. If you have only one partition on your first IDE drive, it will be mounted as /mnt/hda1. If you have more partitions on the first drive, they will be mounted as /mnt/hda2, /mnt/hda3, etc. Alternatively, they might be mounted as /mnt/hda1 and then /mnt/hda5. Don't be concerned if the numbers aren't sequential. A similar pattern is used for SCSI drives except that the label is /mnt/sda1 instead of /mnt/hda1.
OK, now we know where our disk drives are found, let's do a 'mind experiment'.
If you download FULLTRK9.ABS using Firefox, it
will be saved as /root/Downloads/FULLTRK9.ABS, which, by design, defaults to
a memory image of a file system. To permanently save it,
single-click on the terminal icon at the bottom of the screen.
This will open a terminal screen (similar to a DOS
Command window). Type
MSWindows allows spaces in file names. Linux does as well, but
because of the special meaning attached to spaces and a few other
characters, spaces in file names must be 'escaped'. To copy our downloaded
file to
The mount point for your first CDROM drive (presuming it is IDE) is
/mnt/hdc. If you have a second CDROM drive (or DVD drive)
it will be mounted as /mnt/hdd. CDROMs, as far as I know,
are not partitioned, so there are no numberical suffixes to the names
(labels) given to them. In your a terminal window
(Command window) type the command
root@slax:~# cd /mnt/hdc root@slax:/mnt/hdc# |
Type the command 'ls' and you'll get a directory listing of the folder.
root@slax:/mnt/hdc# ls boot/ slax/ (NOTE: the / after the name indicates that these are directories) root@slax:/mnt/hdc# |
Type 'ls -l' (ls-space-hyphen-lower case l) for a detailed list.
root@slax:/mnt/hdc# ls -l total 1 dr-xr-xr-x 6 apache apache 440 2009-12-22 15:29 boot/ dr-xr-xr-x 8 apache apache 472 2009-12-22 16:47 slax/ root@slax:/mnt/hdc# |
You get the idea. You can descend the
directory tree by typing 'cd' followed by the name of the target
sub-directory. For example, if you are in the directory /mnt/hdc,
you can type
If things get confusing, you can type 'cd' by itself. This will take you back to your 'home' directory, in this case 'root'. Your home directory is displayed in the command prompt by a tilde (~) immediately following the user name and machined name. In this case the user is 'root' and the machine is named 'slax'. So typing 'cd' alone will give you the prompt 'root@slax:~' and you can start again.
Finally, you can do all of the file and directory functions above via GUI. Double-click on the 'Home' icon on the desktop, to open a window showing you graphically what the home directory (again, in this case, root) contains. It is analogous to the Windows steps of selecting My Computer and then Explorer in order to view directory contents. You can use the navigation arrows just like a web browser to move up and down the directory tree (this viewer is, after all, based on the Konqueror Web Browser). On the main canvas, double-click on a folder to open that folder. On the desktop, double-click on the 'Home' icon a second time to open a second view of the directory tree. You can now drag and drop files and folders between the two views.
Send me an email at 'dsemrick (at) protonmail (dot) com' if you have questions or to offer suggestions for improvement of this page.
Dan Emrick
December 28, 2009