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Date: Fri, 04 Jul 1997 15:17:18 +0000
From: Randy DuCharme <randyd@nconnect.net>
Organization: Astrolab Development
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To: Kelly Wiles <kelly@xactinc.com>
CC: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Can't boot from 'C' drive, why?
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Kelly Wiles wrote:
> 
> I can not boot up from the 'C' drive any more.  It use to work
> until I upgraded to 2.2.
> 
> When I have the system board configured to use the 'C' drive
> first, I get a 'Read error'.
> The read error is happening because the system is going out to
> the floppy drive and I do not have a diskette in it.
> 
> I can bootup under a floppy and then enter the
>         sd(0,a)/kernel
> And this works fine.
> 
> I have re-installed twice, tried disklabel.
> 
> When I installed I choose to use the complete drive for
> FreeBSD.
> 
> System configuration:
>         Micron P166
>         48 meg memory
>         Adaptec 2940 SCSI controller
>             Drive 1 2.5gig
>             Drive 2 1.5gig SYJET
>             Drive 3 CDROM 10x
>             Drive 4 CDROM 6x
> 
I have identical problems with the Micronics M54Pe ( EISA/PCI DUAL CPU )
mainboards that I used to use.  I have the problem with ALL versions of 
FreeBSD.  I'm pretty sure it's a BIOS issue.  I was able to get around
it by creating a small DOS partition (5Meg) on the drive and using
booteasy.  
For me it was convienient as I could keep my EISA config utilities on
the 
hard disk.  There may be other ( and better ) solutions but I've not
been
able to find one.  I too tried many different things with disk
geometries
etc. but the small DOS partition ALWAYS worked.

Hope this helps!
Randy