Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 15:32:55 -0800 (PST) From: Simon Shapiro <shimon@simon-shapiro.org> To: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> Cc: freebsd-smp@FreeBSD.ORG, Mark Blackman <tmb@rcru.rl.ac.uk> Subject: Re: SMP success on W6-LI Message-ID: <XFMail.980224153255.shimon@simon-shapiro.org> In-Reply-To: <199802242317.PAA16968@dingo.cdrom.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On 24-Feb-98 Mike Smith wrote: >> This is another problem than what I was thinking about. I was thinking >> about where the BIOS declares (silently) the MBR to be R/O, and only >> boots >> Win95, unless you zap the MBR. > > Fortunately, the BIOS has no say in the matter while FreeBSD is running. Me and my futile attempts to be brief; We had a case where installing FreeBSD on a machine would succeed perfectly well except that upon re-boot, the MBR would still try to boot Win95, find FreeBSD instead and barf. The short version of it is that there is some protection in the BIOS against trying to install non-M$ operating system in the machine. This was confirmed by the vendor's support and empirically by swapping drives, or LL format, both which succeed in confusing the check; Turns out there is some signature in the MBR that the BIOS records when first encountering the disk. The excuse is virus protection, but the reality is that even with ``Virus Protection''' OFF, the feature is still alive. I hesitate to quote names here as this is a major little-i partner and I do not have the proof in my hand anymore. ---------- Sincerely Yours, Simon Shapiro Shimon@Simon-Shapiro.ORG Voice: 503.799.2313 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-smp" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?XFMail.980224153255.shimon>