Thinkpad A485 - cannot find install media

[anijatsu]

Checklist

• I have searched the issue tracker and was unable to find an open or closed issue matching what I'm seeing.
• (If the issue occurs AFTER or DURING Windows 9x's hardware detection phase) I have tried to install with Skip legacy non-PnP hardware detection phase to [OFF] and the issue still occurs.
• (If the issue occurs AFTER or DURING Windows 9x's hardware detection phase) I have tried to install with the integrated driver library set to [OFF] and the issue still occurs.
• I understand that support is provided voluntarily for free, and that the author is not Microsoft and can/will probably not fix bugs in the operating system code itself. I also understand that it is impossible to support every single hardware combination out there.

What happened?

Using a Thinkpad A485, and either of the USB-C ports, or the two USB-A SS ports, and using a desktop computer having flashed win98qi_v1.0.1a_ALL_usb.img to:

• a microSD card in reader 1 (anker usb-c a8370)
• a microSD card in reader 2 (sandisk pro-reader sdpra5a8)
• a 2.5 SATA to USB-a adapter (adata sp920 + cabletech usb 3.0 to sata)
  using Win32 Disk Imager, and having redownloaded the img file a second time just to double-check that nothing's wrong with it, ...

when booting the laptop using the given boot device I get a screen full of lines like:

Disabling IRQ \#11
Searching for 'iso9660' file systems in '/dev/sr*'
...
Searching for 'vfat' file systems in '/dev/sd*'
...
Cannot find install media (yet). Retrying in 2 seconds.

I think this laptop might be quirky, but I'm not even sure where to get started with providing the troubleshooting information.

It seems that past the bootloader selection screen (blue on black / with Boot Windows 9x QuickInstall) something goes horribly wrong and the Linux kernel can't find the USB stick/USB-SATA adapter and mount it? Because I can't see anything in the /dev/ folder that'd correlate to a storage device.
Because of that I'm also not sure what'd be the easiest/best way to copy over anything like dmesg other than by taking a bunch of photos.

I've tried to add in the suggested boot parameter like some of the errors during the boot attempt suggest (i.e. pci=biosirq) but this didn't seem to change any of the behaviors.

Linux dmesg output

I'm not sure how can I copy the output or write it onto a disk - ls /dev/nvme* and /dev/sd* and /dev/hd* show no results, so I don't think anything is mounted.

Photos of various boot logs

Target Motherboard, CPU and RAM

No response

Target GPU and Sound card(s)

No response

Target Storage Devices

No response

Boot method

Hard disk

Reference image

None

Additional context

No response

[oerg866]

Since it can't find its source media, it can't access all the tools that would be helpful in troubleshooting...

Do you have the ability to boot from a CD-ROM? That way you could use the boot media to see which devices it can see.

In the diagnostic shell, could you try dmesg | less ? that way you could at least take photos of all the different sections. Please do this ~ 30-60 seconds after UN- and REPLUGGING the USB drive in case there is a problem with it.

Thanks!

[ExistingPerson1321]

ive noticed bugs when booting from usb, it boots into the usb, but not quickinstall, some sort of linux loader thing (linux bootloaders arent my forte) so the fix i found is to instead of using the win98qi_v1.0.1a_ALL_usb.iso i use the win98qi_v1.0.1a_ALL.iso or vice versa depending on what iso you are already using and it just works, dont know why but it works.

[oerg866]

ive noticed bugs when booting from usb, it boots into the usb, but not quickinstall, some sort of linux loader thing (linux bootloaders arent my forte) so the fix i found is to instead of using the win98qi_v1.0.1a_ALL_usb.iso i use the win98qi_v1.0.1a_ALL.iso or vice versa depending on what iso you are already using and it just works, dont know why but it works.

Could you maybe provide a screenshot of the "Linux loader thing" you're struggling with?

[ExistingPerson1321]

I haven't been able to reproduce the issue sorry, I no longer have access to the machine I used from my last comment

[oerg866]

You know it's really hard to fix bugs like that 😂🙏

[ExistingPerson1321]

Bugs with booting random loaders or operating systems are something that to me are quite the pain, I'm sorry I can't help because of the lack of tested hardware but if you come across it, I think it showed something like couldn't find menu.c32. That's all I remember from the install.

[oerg866]

closing this due to lack of response from @anijatsu