From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Oct 2 08:15:38 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id IAA14397 for questions-outgoing; Wed, 2 Oct 1996 08:15:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from jack.colorado.edu (jack.Colorado.EDU [128.138.149.29]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id IAA14386 for ; Wed, 2 Oct 1996 08:15:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from jack (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by jack.colorado.edu (8.7.6/8.7.3/CNS-4.0p) with SMTP id JAA05813; Wed, 2 Oct 1996 09:10:45 -0600 (MDT) Message-ID: <325285F5.27B8@Colorado.EDU> Date: Wed, 02 Oct 1996 09:10:45 -0600 From: "Mark O'Lear" Organization: University of Colorado X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0Gold (X11; I; SunOS 5.4 sun4m) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu CC: Gabor Zahemszky , freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: kernel cannot find his own disk References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Doug White wrote: > > On Mon, 30 Sep 1996, Gabor Zahemszky wrote: > > > I've the next very interesting problem: > > randomly at boot, the kernel correctly start, but when it searches, it > > cannot find the disk, from which is it running. > > Odd. :-/ > > > I've got a new Intel VX MB with 32M ram, and two old disk: > > an IBM 270MB (Dos, Coherent), and a Conner 540 (Dos, FB). > > The disks are OK, on my previous MB, they work fine. And sometimes, it > > works OK now, but sometimes I have to try to boot 2-10 (or more) times the > > kernel correctly find that disk. (I have of course kernel on wd1 in my > > kernel config file.) > > I think, something is wrong with my hardware setup, but doesn't know too > > much about such things. This MB has a built in ide controller. > > It does sound like a flakey ide controller. You might check the cables > next time you're mucking around inside the case, you never know. > > Doug White | University of Oregon > Internet: dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu | Residence Networking Assistant > http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dwhite | Computer Science Major It sounds like the bios isn't waiting long enough for the second drive to spin up. I had this problem. I believe that the bios will wait a very long time for the first drive to spin up, but then once it is up, it will check very briefly if the second one is up, and if it is, great, if not, it just goes on. I had to change the spin up time in the bios on the second drive to wait 10 seconds (5 wasn't long enough). Now it works all the time. Maybe the other MB was slower with it's probes, so the second drive was always ready. -- Mark O'Lear \ e-mail: Mark.Olear@Colorado.EDU University of Colorado \ phone: (303) 492-3798 Telecomm. Svcs. (CB 313) \ fax: (303) 492-5105 Boulder, CO 80309 \