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Date:      Thu, 11 May 2000 00:38:11 -0500
From:      "Mark Johnston" <mark.johnston@home.com>
To:        "Conrad Sabatier" <conrads@home.com>
Cc:        <questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: 4.0-RELEASE installation: can't see my hard drive
Message-ID:  <006301bfbb0b$187023e0$79646c18@burows1.mb.wave.home.com>
References:  <XFMail.000510202622.conrads@home.com>

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From: "Conrad Sabatier" <conrads@home.com>
To: "Mark Johnston" <mark.johnston@home.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2000 8:26 PM


>
> On 10-May-00 Mark Johnston wrote:
> > I'm having trouble installing 4.0-RELEASE - I get through the bootup and
> > kernel setup, but the "Probing..." screen hangs for about 10-15 minutes.
> > The installation screen comes up after that, but when I try to start
> > setup,
> > it tells me that no hard drives are found.  The kernel options I have
> > enabled are:
(long info cut)
> > The debug console shows some
> > errors about timeouts waiting to send commands to ata0-master and read
> > timeouts on ad0 - it also says that the device has disappeared.
> >
> > This system has run Win95 and Linux, and both found the hard drive
> > without any trouble - I've also booted the OpenBSD install floppy,
> > which found the HD OK.  Where am I going wrong?
>
> Sorry, not an answer, just a "me too" here.
>
> I was trying to install FreeBSD 4.0 from CD on a friend's machine and saw
> pretty much the same behavior.  Try as we might, we just could not figure
> out a workaround.  Baffling, really.
>

Hmm.. do you know what kind of onboard IDE he has?  I've done some checking
around, trying to figure out the problem, and noticed that my IDE
controller - a SiS 5513 - was shown in OpenBSD's dev logs as having had its
support "recently fixed".  I'm not sure if this means something in terms of
FreeBSD's support for it, but I also noticed that while booting Linux, the
system says "not 100% native mode, DMA disabled."  I'm thinking that FBSD
may not know that DMA may cause problems and might use it anyway - I'm going
to make my BIOS settings really conservative, maybe rearrange my drives or
disconnect the CD-ROM.  I think it's safe to rule out oft-blamed Cyrix in
the problem - I'm using an Intel P166.

If you happen to have a spare IDE controller card, I'd be much obliged if
you could try booting your friend's system with the drives on it under the
FreeBSD boot disk.  I may also try to pick up a cheap card later this week -
in any case, I'll summarize to the list and send in a bug report if I come
up with a working solution.

Mark



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