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Date:      Mon, 07 Feb 2000 13:46:24 -0500 (EST)
From:      John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Christoph Kukulies <kuku@gilberto.physik.RWTH-Aachen.DE>
Cc:        questions@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: 3.4 CD boot nogo on GA-BX2000/PIII-500
Message-ID:  <200002071846.NAA05724@server.baldwin.cx>
In-Reply-To: <20000207165601.A46546@gil.physik.rwth-aachen.de>

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On 07-Feb-00 Christoph Kukulies wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 07, 2000 at 10:29:09AM -0500, John Baldwin wrote:
>> 
>> On 07-Feb-00 Christoph Kukulies wrote:
>> > 
>> > I tried to do an upgrade of a 3.3 system which I installed
>> > yesterday (the 3.3 CD didn't boot either - Atapi CD as master on first
>> > IDE controller). When trying to boot the 3.4 CD I got
>> > 
>> > 1. FD 2.88 MB System Type (00)
>> > 
>> > and then lock-o-city.
>> 
>> Apparently your BIOS doesn't grok 2.88 floppies very well.  You should be
> 
> ??
> 
> To clarify: I had no floppy inserted, I had a floppy drive A 1.44 MB
> activated in the BIOS, boot sequence CDROM,A,C (IIRC) and then that
> message above. I *wanted* to boot from the CD. Installing
> from the 1.44 floppies wasn't the problem, that worked fine.

Yes, I know.  The problem is that right now the CD booting uses an image of a
2.88 floppy to boot off of.  Your BIOS for your CD-ROM does some tricks to
trick your BIOS into believing that you are actually booting from a 2.88 meg
floppy in your floppy drive, and when the BIOS tries to access the disk, the
CD-ROM BIOS catches that access and maps it over into the file on the CD instead.

The problem is, many BIOS's do not handle 2.88 meg floppies correctly, thus when
the BIOS tries to boot from the 2.88 floppy your CD-ROM has tricked into thinking
it has, it dies.  It's just a bug in a lot of BIOS's.  The fix is to use a different
method of booting off of the CD-ROM where you don't emulate a floppy at all but
boot directly off of the CD.  That is what I'm currently working on, but it isn't
working all the way yet.

-- 

John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> -- http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/
PGP Key: http://www.cslab.vt.edu/~jobaldwi/pgpkey.asc
"Power Users Use the Power to Serve!"  -  http://www.FreeBSD.org/


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