Prepare the Floppies

Let's imagine that there are 10 high-density floppies available at our disposal. In order to perform a small, base install we need a MINIX install floppy which is composed of the two *.MNX files. After we have a base system installed we can then proceed to install additional, optional parts composed of the *.TAZ files.

We prepare the 10 floppies as follows:

• The line with the cat command prepares the boot install floppy, make sure you get the order correct.

• The lines after the cat line break up the *.TAZ archives across multiple floppies which are then used later when installing to the MINIX system. Notice how we can tell when we're done with one archive by the fact that the "records in/records out" switches from 1+0 to 0+1 when we're on the last floppy.

Perhaps you can see now how you only really need just 1 floppy; you can just keep transfering and using one at a time as you go as you need it. On the other hand you can use 10 individual floppies using each floppy for only one purpose. On the other hand, the largest number of floppies needed by any one archive is 3, therefore you can have one floppy for the base install, plus 3 for any one archive at a time.