Author Topic: Unable to boot Arca Installer 5.1.1 on Thinkpad T43 1871-AB9  (Read 1119 times)

Dan Eicher

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I'm trying to upgrade myself to a T43 laptop with Arca.

I try to boot from ARCA511 USB stick. I get a White underline in the top right corner and things stop. (no other text).

I tried to boot off of a DVD that I made.
Same symptom, but I saw some harddrive activity on the HD status light.

What I have tried:

Boot live GParted - wiped the drive, only installed a MSDOS partition table.
Same Thing.
Boot live GParted - formatted the disk to JFS
Same Thing.

Reset BIO's to defaults, saved and rebooted.
Same thing.

Booted an MBR - Linux 18.04 stick.
Booted to installer fine.

Dave Yeo

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Re: Unable to boot Arca Installer 5.1.1 on Thinkpad T43 1871-AB9
« Reply #1 on: July 09, 2025, 07:04:28 pm »
It's weird, the boot should go further. My T42 is a bitch to boot the USB but DVD boot has always simply worked.
Did you check the md5sum on your ISO, does sound like a corrupted ISO. Sometimes USB sticks have subtle errors, especially if old, but you're getting the same with the DVD boot.
You can always request a new ISO build from Arca Noae.

Dan Eicher

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Re: Unable to boot Arca Installer 5.1.1 on Thinkpad T43 1871-AB9
« Reply #2 on: July 09, 2025, 07:51:26 pm »
ArcaOS-5.1.1-en.iso
24df5a033db55593efc72f1c1d8bfee3  ArcaOS-5.1.1-en.iso

I also tried the 5.1 boot thumb drive I used to install originally on a different thinkpad, and it failed in the same way.

Doug Bissett

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Re: Unable to boot Arca Installer 5.1.1 on Thinkpad T43 1871-AB9
« Reply #3 on: July 09, 2025, 08:06:24 pm »
My T43 1871-W8M  works okay, but won't run the software that requires Pentium4 support.

I have seen the flashing cursor, on various machines. It usually means that the BIOS settings are not correct, or the media was not created correctly.

The first thing to do, is avoid using anything (GParted), other than OS/2 tools, to do anything with the disk drive. It ALWAYS ends up wrong (but that probably isn't causing the problem). You do need to get booted to OS/2 to use the tools.

So, some questions:

How did you create the USB stick? (you may want to try again, and carefully follow the instructions).

How did you create the DVD?

Neil Waldhauer

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Re: Unable to boot Arca Installer 5.1.1 on Thinkpad T43 1871-AB9
« Reply #4 on: July 10, 2025, 04:24:23 am »
Arca Noae provides good tech support. You could try that.

GParted is a mistake, but it should not stop the USB stick from booting. And you should be able to boot and zero out the disk to undo the damage from GParted.
Expert consulting for ArcaOS, OS/2 and eComStation
http://www.blondeguy.com

Dave Yeo

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Re: Unable to boot Arca Installer 5.1.1 on Thinkpad T43 1871-AB9
« Reply #5 on: July 10, 2025, 07:50:43 am »
I think he has had https://mantis.arcanoae.com/view.php?id=3798 open since the 27th with no one jumping in. Lewis is the T4x expert and likely been busy with the web site upgrade.
I think Doug is on the right track with not properly creating the stick. See what Dan says.

Dan Eicher

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Re: Unable to boot Arca Installer 5.1.1 on Thinkpad T43 1871-AB9
« Reply #6 on: July 10, 2025, 02:15:13 pm »
For the USB Stick, I followed the directions included with the bundle.

The file called readusb.txt using .\dfsanwin.exe -q run aosboot.dfs <snip>

For DVD creation, I used CDBurnerXP - burn iso, pointing to ArcaOS-5.1.1-en.iso.

In the past couple of years, I've updated both main and cmos batteries, and updated to the latest bio's revision I could find on thinkpad forum.

The ubuntu and gpart was not added to confuse the issue, but simply to demonstrate yes, I can boot from the usb port, yes I can boot from dvd and yes, the drive is seen and can be read from and written to.


Dan Eicher

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Re: Unable to boot Arca Installer 5.1.1 on Thinkpad T43 1871-AB9
« Reply #7 on: July 10, 2025, 02:17:31 pm »
I also wanted to add, I've watched all the David Azarewicz video's I could find on the the tube.

Including those talking to BIOs, CSM, UEFI and using the minilvm tool for install.

The challenge is, I'm not even getting a splash screen.

Dave Yeo

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Re: Unable to boot Arca Installer 5.1.1 on Thinkpad T43 1871-AB9
« Reply #8 on: July 10, 2025, 04:47:59 pm »
Can you try your media on a different computer? You don't have to actually do an install, just see if your media boots.

Dave Yeo

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Re: Unable to boot Arca Installer 5.1.1 on Thinkpad T43 1871-AB9
« Reply #9 on: July 10, 2025, 06:14:03 pm »
Forgot to ask, are you getting the first menu where you have a choice of booting from the HD or the stick? If not I'd consider the stick broken.

Doug Bissett

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Re: Unable to boot Arca Installer 5.1.1 on Thinkpad T43 1871-AB9
« Reply #10 on: July 10, 2025, 09:26:28 pm »
WinXP may be causing the problem. There was something, recently (which I can't find), about older windows failing to set the USB stick correctly (it won't boot, not resolved). There could be something wrong with the way it burns DVDs too.

You could try one of the Linux versions, that will boot from a CD/DVD, to create the USB, or DVD media.

Note that the T43, that Lewis has, is the "other" model. Mine is an 1871.

Dan Eicher

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Re: Unable to boot Arca Installer 5.1.1 on Thinkpad T43 1871-AB9
« Reply #11 on: July 10, 2025, 11:50:11 pm »
Maybe my T43 just need a timeout.

I went back,
access ibm > Reload Defaults, F10 Save and Continue
access ibm > F12 load from cdrom
Install started up.
Install complained about the disk something about last something or other.
  Disk Util in installer just went back to the main screen, guess it wasn't able to deal with the issue. 
Put in Gparted cdrom
Reboot.
Killed off the JFS partition I made (probably a linux jfs anywho) to test the HD. Made sure I had a 'ms dos' partition scheme on drive.
  'ms dos' being what gparted calls it.
  Saved all, rebooted.
Installer started. Said use the whole thing. First round through I said verify. I let it run for 30 minutes, and it was still on 0%.
Restarted install, didn't hit optional checkbox for verify while installing.
Installed finished.

So. I'm good.

Thanks to all for their suggestions.

Dave Yeo

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Re: Unable to boot Arca Installer 5.1.1 on Thinkpad T43 1871-AB9
« Reply #12 on: July 11, 2025, 12:29:26 am »
If issue 3798 is yours, can you comment that you got it working and I'll resolve it. Glad you got it working.

Dan Eicher

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Re: Unable to boot Arca Installer 5.1.1 on Thinkpad T43 1871-AB9
« Reply #13 on: July 11, 2025, 11:45:27 pm »
Dave, I added a note to the ticket.

Thinkpad forum recommends that to speed up operation, you boot from the internal HD and put data on a PC Card with a compact flash adapter, like:
   Compact Flash to PCMCIA Ata Adapter CF to PC Card Adapter PCMCIA Ata Adapter for Cf 2 Card (Come with 512MB CF Memory Card)

Can someone point me to some docs on how to get this up and seen under ArcaOS 5.1.1?


   

Roderick Klein

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Re: Unable to boot Arca Installer 5.1.1 on Thinkpad T43 1871-AB9
« Reply #14 on: July 12, 2025, 11:14:38 pm »
Dave, I added a note to the ticket.

Thinkpad forum recommends that to speed up operation, you boot from the internal HD and put data on a PC Card with a compact flash adapter, like:
   Compact Flash to PCMCIA Ata Adapter CF to PC Card Adapter PCMCIA Ata Adapter for Cf 2 Card (Come with 512MB CF Memory Card)

Can someone point me to some docs on how to get this up and seen under ArcaOS 5.1.1?


 

With OS/2 I would stay away from that as far as I could. The cards I not easy to setup and they are slower then USB I think.
Thinking about this you would need to play around with the PCMCIA drivers and possibly some drivers from Veit Kannegesier.
Or maybe the Danis506.add has some support for it . I think its 15 years ago I last worked with PCMCIA on OS/2.
Thoughts from other people ? My personal opinion its not worth the headache.

BTW do you have an SSD in the T43 ? Or a disc with revolving platters ? You can install an SSD I think in T43 if you have not done so.
That will make that old machine fly if it does not have an SSD in it yet.

Roderick
« Last Edit: July 12, 2025, 11:16:46 pm by Roderick Klein »