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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!constellation!osuunx.ucc.okstate.edu!moe.ksu.ksu.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!uwm.edu!wupost!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ames!nsisrv!nasahq!mnewell From: mnewell@nhqvax.hq.nasa.gov Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: Booting 386bsd from a 486dx2 machine Message-ID: <1993Apr11.011315.342@nhqvax.hq.nasa.gov> Date: 11 Apr 93 01:13:14 +0600 Organization: NASA Headquarters, Washington D. C. Lines: 39 I have been running 386bsd for a couple of weeks now on a 386/20 machine I bought back in '87. This machine has developed the unfortunate habit of haltin periodically [anywhere from every few minutes to every few days] for no apparent reason [the problem is not bsd related!] so... I trundled down to my neighborhood computer store and acquired a shiny new 486DX2-50 machine. It has 8Mb memory, 256K cache, 245Mb IDE drive, and a Paradise SVGA board. The IDE drive is implemented on a combination board that provides an IDE controller, floppy controller, 2 com ports, 1 parallel port, and one game port. The only problem is I can't get 386bsd (or Linux for that matter) to boot. I have tried turning off all caching, all BIOS shadowing, etc. In fact, I even swapped all the boards from the old machine to the new one with no effect. Symptoms are: - When booting from floppy, the floppy does a few seeks, then dead silence (with the select light on and the drive spinning.) No messages are printed on the console. CTRL-ALT-DEL has no effect. This happens with the original dist.fs, my kernel (which has the fixes for the memory-reporting problem), and the dist.fs.pk-0.2 disk. - When booting from the old disks (SCSI disks on an Adaptec 1542 board) a small theta symbol is displayed in the upper left hand corner of the screen; otherwise symptoms are identical to the floppy boot. As I said I have tried various combinations of turning caching and shadowing off. As far as I can tell there is no option for turning off parts of the bios a la the HP Vectra problem previously reported. Any help would be appreciated! Mike Newell mnewell@nsipo.nasa.gov Did try turning off the cache...