Creating a Boot Diskette

One of the motivations for creating the Boot Disk Archive was to make it simple to create a new boot diskette for any given ZY. The steps in the creation of a boot diskette for ZY102 are given below. The same procedure applies for any ZY:

1. Using a DOS computer, format a 3-1/2 inch, 1.44 MByte floppy diskette, with the DOS system option (/s). This will create a boot floppy with the necessary DOS system files.
2. Copy HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE to the root directory of the newly formatted floppy disk.
3. Remove the floppy and insert it in an NT Workstation computer on the Laser Domain.
4. Log onto the ``laser'' account of the Laser Domain, if not already there.
5. Using the NT Explorer, open the Boot Disk Archive to the diskimage directory of the ZY of interest, in this case ZY102. NT Explorer should look something like figure A.1 at this point. Note that the drive letter of the archive may be different than that shown in the figure. Drive letters can change depending on the machine's configuration. Whatever the drive letter, the archive may be identified by its name, ``LaserComputerSystems on `Freya'.'' If this drive is not mounted, the archive can still be found by exploring `Freya' over the network, using the `Network' or `Network Neighborhood' icon.
6. Highlight the contents of the diskimage directory. Do not highlight the diskimage directory itself. Only its contents are of interest.
7. Drag the highlighted contents to the icon of the floppy disk drive containing the boot diskette. This will copy all of the files, including subdirectories and their files, to the boot floppy.
8. When the copy operation is finished, the boot floppy is ready.

The floppy disk thus created can be taken to the appropriate ZY and the ZY restarted (either by resetting or by cycling the power).