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Date:      Mon, 19 Jan 1998 10:36:44 -0700
From:      "Owen Newnan"<onewnan@uswest.com>
To:        questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Re: Can't get drives to boot on Adaptec AHA-1520
Message-ID:  <87256591.005A19C2.00@notes.mnet.uswest.com>

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> For fun, you might try
> 3:sd(0,a)/kernel

Yup, that's how I get the streaming error messages.

> Your BIOS needs to support booting from these devices.  Normally, the PC
> BIOS enumerates two boot devices.  In your case, it's hitting the first
> two IDE disks in the system.
> If your BIOS does enumerate more than two boot devices, you'll need to
> modify the boot block code to search those devices.   The Adaptec must
> present the removables as bootable devices for that to work; I know that
> Zip (and Jaz) drives don't show up to my NCR as bootable devices, but my
> Seagate hard drive does.

An interesting wrinkle--controller boots fixed drives but not removable ones?
Well anyhow, looks like I need to validate that my config can enumerate three
drives under ANY OS--especially these particular drives.  Any suggestions
anyone how I could test this out under MSDOS, for example?

Anyhow, it does seem to me the ability to boot off a removable drive would be
a very desirable alternative to partitioning or dedicated hard drives for
certain purposes.  For example, I've got a co-worker that is thinking of
installing FreeBSD on a system that she uses for home office running Win95.
I'd like to to be able to steer her toward a removable drive solution rather
than partitioning.

Does anyone out there have boot of removables working for ANY removable drive,
even IDE on the second enumerated drive (e.g., Jaz, SyJet, SparQ)?  If so what
drive and controllercombination?  Such info might be useful to include on the
hardware compatibility list.


I'm getting swamped with questions@FreeBSD.ORG mail so I plan to unsubscribe
in a day or so.  Anyone that responds to this, I'd appreciate your copying
directly to me.

Cheers!





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