The files in this directory recreate the four 1.44MB diskettes used to load a limited version of Plan 9 onto a PC. It is intended to let you try out Plan 9 before buying, in particular to see if the system supports your PC hardware. NOTE: this distribution is rather old and will not install on [E]IDE discs >2GB.
The above files are different from those shipped with the distribution. In particular they contain important changes to fix floppy, hard drive, and vga problems. They also contain a new disk preparation program that doesn't clobber anything on any partition described in a Master Boot Record. The contents of the distributed diskettes can be found in the files disk1.orig, disk{2,3,4}.vd.orig.
Read the document Installing the Plan 9 Distribution for information about these 4 diskettes. Read also the errata list since it has important additional information.
Copying the disk image of disk1 onto a floppy is easy under Plan 9 or Unix: just dd to the raw device. However, we don't know of a standard DOS utility to do this. Nigel Roles, ngr@symbionics.co.uk, has been kind enough to write one: it's in ftp://ftp.cs.york.ac.uk/pub/plan9/putimg.
don@paranoia.com writes:
I just thought you might like to know that there is another utility out there to do this called RAWRITE.EXE. It's part of the Slackware Linux distribution installation support files, and consequently is carried on sunsite.unc.edu (/pub/Linux/distributions/slackware/install/RAWRITE.EXE), tsx-11.mit.edu, ftp.cdrom.com, and all sites which mirror them.
kfregeol@eos.hitc.com (Ken Fregeolle) writes:
Another wonderful utility, available as part of the Slakware Linux distribution, is a program called FIPS.EXE. It allows new partitions to be added without destroying any existing data on the hard-drive. The only requirement is that you run the DOS defrag tool first to move all DOS data to the first section of the drive.