Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 12:24:15 -0500 From: "Sean O'Connell" <sean@stat.Duke.EDU> To: Ken Key <key@network-alchemy.com> Cc: FreeBSD mobile <freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Here is what IBM thinks about using FreeBSD on their newer Thinkpads Message-ID: <20001129122415.D51569@stat.Duke.EDU> In-Reply-To: <200011291710.JAA88193@sodium.cips.nokia.com>; from key@network-alchemy.com on Wed, Nov 29, 2000 at 09:10:19AM -0800 References: <200011290551.eAT5pJF28047@mass.osd.bsdi.com> <200011291710.JAA88193@sodium.cips.nokia.com>
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Ken Key stated: : Hi Folks, : : I spent most of last week repeatedly converting an A21P and a T21 into : wortless bricks and back, trying to find a way to get FreeBSD running on : them. I distilled the death point to: : : - Do the install (I've used both boot0 and LILO, doesn't matter), it's : a brick - won't even get into the BIOS menu. : - Pull drive out and boot on my 600X. Fire up fdisk and change it from 165 : to something else. Do not touch MBR or anything else. : - Put drive back in (A21P and T21) and I can now get into the BIOS screens : or actually boot via boot0 or LILO into Win2K. : - Put drive back in 600x, change back to 165, back in *21 : - It is a brick. : : So, while I don't know what IBM is doing with partition type 165, : I am convinced it is a key to the boot lock-up problem for the : T21 and A21P. Now boot0 has grown from 1 to 2 sectors in length, : maybe that's what "the story inside IBM" is trying to talk about - : I don't know. However, the above pattern was reproduced with LILO, : independant of boot0, so I really don't think boot0 is related to : the problem. : : We have a couple of T20s' running FreeBSD, so this particular behavior : seems to be related to changes for the *21 models. The T20 guys are : never going to "upgrade" their BIOS after this mess. Ken- I had heard a rumor that part of the issue was with FreeBSD's default MBR tweaks which set the partition to 165 _and_ make it active. When I installed on an A20M -- not sure that it is even an afflicted system -- I made sure that FreeBSD didn't mangle the MBR on install and use the Partition Magic's BootMagic as a boot loader. Not sure if any of this would help with your situation or not. I took this route mostly because the machine is not mine nor ISDS's ... personal machine for visiting faculty member. S ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Sean O'Connell Email: sean@stat.Duke.EDU Institute of Statistics and Decision Sciences Phone: (919) 684-5419 Duke University Fax: (919) 684-8594 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-mobile" in the body of the message
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