Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 20:28:26 +1000 From: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au> To: bde@freebsd.org, jkh@time.cdrom.com Cc: current@freebsd.org, phk@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Weird boot problem we've picked up post-2.1-RELEASE Message-ID: <199610031028.UAA10965@godzilla.zeta.org.au>
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>>When booting off of /dev/wd1, the boot process stops right after the first >>prompt, and scrolls this error repeatedly up the screen. If I enter >>"wd(1,a)kernel" at the first prompt, the machine boots perfectly. Apparently the initial drive number is wrong. >Has now become something of an unpleasantly recurring theme. One of >Walnut Creek CDROM's own Customers From Hell had this problem with a >Packard Bell machine, scrolling the "C:0 H:0 S:0" errors right after >the boot prompt and then quickly resetting (that's the old bit). That This message should contain the drive number. >>Well, I had the same problem with Gateway 2000 P5-100. The floppy >>was OK, I tried several ones. And they worked on another PCs. Also >>2.1.0 boot floppy worked without problems. I can't see how wrong drive numbers could work in 2.1 but not in 2.1.5. Both require the 0x80 bit for hard drives and use the other bits for the unit number >>Well, I had the same problem with Gateway 2000 P5-100. The floppy >>was OK, I tried several ones. And they worked on another PCs. Also >>2.1.0 boot floppy worked without problems. >> Then I updated the BIOS ROM of my motherboard (Triton rev. 1) >>from rev. BR0T 1.005 to BR01.010 (with update files from Gateway 2000 >>web site) and bingo. Now the same floppy boots and I can finally install >>2.1.5. I still do not understand what was the reason for that error, >>but obviously it was not a floppy. Bugs involving the floppy drive number are more common. FreeBSD forces the floppy drive number to 0, but only after deciding that the boot drive is a floppy by looking at the 0x80 bit in the register that usually gives the drive number. The bootstrap could be smarter about retrying the reads of the MBR on the drive that it was supposedly loaded from. Bruce
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