Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 02:01:01 -0500 (CDT) From: Tony Kimball <alk@Think.COM> To: blizzard@canoe.ca Cc: questions@freefall.freebsd.org Subject: FreeBSD.NOT Message-ID: <199606040701.CAA28962@compound.Think.COM>
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From: Dave Blizzard <blizzard@canoe.ca> Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 11:43:36 -0400 Subject: FreeBSD.NOT Ok I have to admit defeat. Don't give up so easily. The rewards are quite substantial. Even when I dedicate the entire SCSI drive to FreeBSD, The install destroys the IDE partition and Boot sectors. This is a known problem with the 2.1 Boot. Switch to the 2.2-current disks. Or, unplug the IDE drive before installing. 3) Even though the install seems to go without errors, the bootmgr uses virus technology (sic) to install itself in track 0 sector 1. SOMEONE WHOULD WARN USERS OF THIS. It is well-known, but not adequately advertised. It caused me lots of problems. I was using the NT loader on my IDE drive, and found that running the first phase of the Win95 install would restore the boot info to the IDE drive. I did that several times, until I became familiar with the procedure. THE RECOVERY PROCEDURE IS AS FOLLOWS: low level format the drive install DOS from the original setup. The usual procedures (format & fdisk etc) do not work I suspect because they use BIOS routines while the original DOS install writes directly to the disk A Win95 CD is cheaper:-) Short of dedicating a complete machine to BSD, is there any way to install BSD on a SCSI drive D when an IDE drive is already installed. Again, I suggest unplugging the IDE drive until the system is stable. Sorry if this sounds like I am venting here but something is seriously wrong with the docs or I just don't understand this OS. Oh you are absolutely right, the 2.1 install docs should have big red letters around every page saying "you will probably destroy your other OSen unless you remove their disks and send them to bed until the dirty deed is done." Thing is, unless you *absolutely* need MS-Office or some such, you'll probably find the precautions wasted, since you will just end up wiping all other OSen from your system within a month or two. I get ill just thinking about booting WinNT. Never again.
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