From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Aug 27 09:28:09 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id JAA13645 for hackers-outgoing; Tue, 27 Aug 1996 09:28:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id JAA13639 for ; Tue, 27 Aug 1996 09:28:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id JAA24820; Tue, 27 Aug 1996 09:16:25 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199608271616.JAA24820@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: 2.1.5 install failure: booting from fd0 in stead of sd0 To: guido@gvr.win.tue.nl (Guido van Rooij) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1996 09:16:25 -0700 (MST) Cc: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <199608270634.IAA11231@gvr.win.tue.nl> from "Guido van Rooij" at Aug 27, 96 08:34:26 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > > Herein lies the rub. dosdev == 0 means it's a floppy disk. boot.c > > converts this into `maj = 2'. Only if the 0x80 flag is set, it will > > move to maj = 0 (wd) or maj = 4 (sd). > > > > If i read the code right, it looks as if your BIOS doesn't pass the > > correct value in %dl down to the bootstrap. (It apparently passes > > 0 there as opposed to the boot drive BIOS ID.) Call it ``broken''... > > > > Your only chance short of replacing the BIOS is to hack the bootcode > > on your harddisk so it will never try booting off a floppy again. > > I concluded the same. However, how can it be that a previously installed > NT on a FAT filesystem does boot? NT has seperate boot records for floppy disks and for the hard disk. Thus the hard disk boot record can always assume that it will be booting from a hard disk. It is unlikely that you would be able to install NT to boot off the second drive -- even though this is technically allowed by NT, the lack of a 0x81 (or 0x01) in the DL register at the time the boot code is called will prevent it fromstarting off the right disk. You BIOS is, indeed, in error, and the fact that you don't see it when NT is on your C: drive proves nothing. Regards, Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.