If you must install from floppy disks, either due to unsupported hardware or just because you enjoy doing things the hard way, you must first prepare some floppies for the install.
The first floppy you'll need in addition to the boot.flp image is ``floppies/root.flp'', which is somewhat special in that it's not a DOS filesystem floppy at all, but rather a floppy "image" (it's actually a gzip'd cpio file). You can create this floppy in the same way that you created the boot floppy the beginning of this guide . Once this floppy is made, you can go on to make the distribution set floppies using ordinary DOS or UFS (if you're preparing the floppies on another FreeBSD machine) formatted diskettes.
You will need, at minimum, as many 1.44MB or 1.2MB floppies as it takes to hold all files in the bin (binary distribution) directory. If you're preparing these floppies under DOS, then THESE floppies *must* be formatted using the MS-DOS FORMAT command. If you're using Windows, use the Windows File Manager format command.
Do not trust Factory Preformatted floppies! Format them again yourself, just to make sure. Many problems reported by our users in the past have resulted from the use of improperly formatted media, which is why I'm taking such special care to mention it here!
If you're creating the floppies from another FreeBSD machine, a format is still not a bad idea though you don't need to put a DOS filesystem on each floppy. You can use the `disklabel' and `newfs' commands to put a UFS filesystem on them instead, like so:
disklabel -w -r fd0 floppy3 (use floppy5 for 1.2MB disks)
newfs /dev/rfd0
After you have DOS formatted the floppies, you will need to copy the files onto them. The distribution files are split into chunks conveniently sized so that 5 of them will fit on a conventional 1.44MB floppy. Go through all your floppies, packing as many files as will fit on each one, until you have got all the distributions you want packed up in this fashion. Each distribution should go into a subdirectory on the floppy, e.g.: a:\bin\bin.aa, a:\bin\bin.ab, and so on.
Once you come to the Media screen of the install, select ``Floppy'' and you will be prompted for the rest.