From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Sep 11 14:02:25 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id OAA17485 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 14:02:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bigpuppy.newell.arlington.va.us (bigpuppy.newell.arlington.va.us [208.218.26.242]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id OAA17479 for ; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 14:02:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (mnewell@localhost) by bigpuppy.newell.arlington.va.us (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id RAA00886; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 17:01:47 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 17:01:43 -0400 (EDT) From: Mike Newell To: Greg Lehey cc: rfg@monkeys.com, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Bummer... Trying to install WITHOUT DOS In-Reply-To: <19970911185251.10888@lemis.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Thu, 11 Sep 1997, Greg Lehey wrote: grog> Yup. It happens so often that I wonder if we don't have a bug in the grog> floppy driver. But it *does* go away with a new floppy. In case of grog> doubt, format it first. I've had a _LOT_ of problems with getting floppy disks to work on FreeBSD. I've even gone out and bought a new drive (working on the assumption that I had a floppy that mangled the offending ones...) Floppies formatted fine, rawrote fine, but then wouldn't boot. I even ran DOS sector checks and the disks were good; just wouldn't read on FreeBSD. In one case I _did_ find a defective cable. But in others the drive just wouldn't work for some reason; in (both of) those cases I ended up putting the hard drive in a Known Good (tm) machine and building there, then dragging the drive over to the Offending Machine (c) where it booted fine... In ALL cases DOS had no problem reading the disk (even with the defective cable!) but FreeBSD did. >>shrug<< I put it down to superior error detection... :-)!! Much obliged, Mike PS - Before anyone asks, I'm ASSUMING the cable was defective. It worked OK under DOS but wouldn't boot the FBSD floppy. I swapped the cable and the floppy read fine under FBSD. Put it back in, failure. I have no explanation as to why it would work under DOS but not FreeBSD, but I sliced up the cable anyway... +--------------------------------------+------------------------------------+ | Mike Newell | The opinions expressed herein | | Affiliation: | are mine. You can take them or | | Address: | leave them. Flames to /dev/null. | +--------------------------------------+------------------------------------+ | Mike@Newell.arlington.va.us | http://www.newell.arlington.va.us | +--------------------------------------+------------------------------------+ | "Peace. It's wonderful!" Father Divine. | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+