Re: booting Lisa Xenix

>did anybody manage to boot Xenix directly from hard disk

Yes, I was able to get Xenix 3.0 to boot from a ProFile/emulator or Widget connected to the built-in port. (However, Xenix 2.3, the version distributed on Twiggy disks, does not install boot code on the hard disk)

>What qualifies a working boot block? The "AAAA" signature is present.

For Lisa to attempt to boot a device, all it requires is 0xAAAA at offset 4 in the tags of block 0. If that signature is present, Lisa will execute the code in block 0. No other checks are performed.

>Does the boot code start at offset 0x14 (after the tag bytes)?

Yes, the code does start at offset 0x14, the first byte in the data field after the tags. (For a Widget, the code starts at offset 0x14 in the data field, as the boot ROM loads block 0 from a Widget using the ProFile code.)

>when I try to boot from HD Lisa throws a "75" error (bad system
>file). It never tries to access any other block than 0000, so
>something seems to be wrong with that boot code.

When an error occurs while loading block 0, the error code is generated by the boot ROM. However, I believe we commonly see errors 80-85 when attempting to load a boot sector from a ProFile, so it may be the Xenix code that is returning error 75.

If the boot code in block 0 returns to the boot ROM, it can pass any error code, so error 75 could mean anything to Xenix.

My guess is that Xenix thinks there is a ProFile handshaking problem.

Consider applying the patches from
http://SigmaSevenSystems.com/xpf_xenix.html and re-installing the patched Xenix on the hard drive (or perhaps you can apply the patches directly to the hard drive partition if using an IDEfile).

Let me know if the problem persists and I will disassemble the boot block code to see if there are any clues as to what error 75 means.

Good luck!

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