Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2001 18:51:00 -0000 From: "Dracopoulos, Dimitris" <Dimitris.Dracopoulos@gs.com> To: "'freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org'" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org> Cc: "'freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.org'" <freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.org> Subject: Cannot boot from floppy and cannot read/write it any more - But it works in Linux somehow Message-ID: <E17B00C11DB1D511AA210002A560174C0FDD13@gsln02e.ln.fw.gs.com>
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Hi, The floppy in my system stopped working a few weeks ago (I did not notice this immediately as I was not using it often). Here are the very strange symptoms I am experiencing: 1) The system will not boot from a boot floppy (I have tried a few different boot floppies including Linux/Win98 ones which they all work in other machines). My BIOS (AMIBIOS) complains that it cannot find a boot record in the floppy). The boot sequence set in my BIOS is floppy->cdrom->hard disk. When I disable booting from hard disk and cdrom then it keeps prompting me for inserting another floppy with a boot record. Booting from my CDROM or hard disk works fine! In any case, I have not change any settings in BIOS since it was last working.. 2) I am not able to read or write a floppy while in FreeBSD (version 4.3). Using mtools the lights comes on but I keep waiting. Mounting /dev/fd0 has a similar problem and keep reporting errors periodically. Under no circumstances I am able to read or write a floppy (I tried the GENERIC kernel as well). HOWEVER, and while in Linux (Debian potato) read and write in a floppy works absolutely fine! My system is able to boot Windows98 as well (for my job purposes only!) and there I cannot write any floppy as well (but I am only able to list the files in a floppy something which I cannot do in FreeBSD). 3) I have tried a brand new drive and a different IDE cable as well and the symptoms are identical. The floppy was working a few weeks ago. 4) I 've tried all the above with a very bare system (just the hard disk/memory/graphics card) and still I have the same problems. I started thinking that it might have to do something with a BIOS virus but then why under Linux it works fine? (and why I am able to boot from a CDROM and the hard disk). Has anyone any ideas on this? Any help will be appreciated. My system specs are: Motherboard: Tyan 1832 (Tiger 100) with AMIBIOS 1.16a Dual Intel Pentium 3 (500Mhz) (rest of specs not so relevant as I mentioned above that I tried the floppy with the very bare system as well). Cheers Dimitris To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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