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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!agate!tfs.com!julian From: julian@TFS.COM (Julian Elischer) Subject: Re: Floppy problems at boot. Message-ID: <CGK9A4.M82@tfs.com> Sender: usenet@tfs.com Cc: cq@staff.cc.purdue.edu Organization: TRW Financial Systems, Oakland, CA References: <CQ.93Nov15185922@staff.cc.purdue.edu> Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1993 01:25:16 GMT Lines: 50 In article <CQ.93Nov15185922@staff.cc.purdue.edu>, Rob Tillotson <cq@staff.cc.purdue.edu> wrote: >... namely, that no *BSD kernel I have yet tried will successfully >boot from floppy on my system. I have tried every one I can find, >from original 386BSD to the latest NetBSD and FreeBSD, and all have >the same problem. The kernel loads just fine, but when it tries to >set the root device (to the floppy), it reports a hard error on fd0 >and panics. > >My system is a TI Travelmate 4000 portable, 486SX 25MHz, 4MB RAM. >Both DOS/Windows (ugh) and Linux are installed and run without >difficulty. I have tried configuring a kernel (NetBSD, since that is >what we have in the office) with exactly the minimal correct set of >stuff, and it didn't do any better. Hey I wish I'd heard about this earlier.. Both I and Bill Jolitz run TI 4000 laptops. the problem with the floppy is simple.. they have a power save mode that clobbers the floppy controller (The bios is modified to know about it) go into the setup screens find the power saving screen and turn OFF the entry "advanced os power savings" (or something similar) the floppy will magically start to work. >I am completely stumped. Does anyone out there know what I can do to >fix this? To fix it you'd need to know how to do this in the software it's easier to turn it off.. (we run the DX2-50 version) >-- >Rob Tillotson N9MTB Internet: cq@staff.cc.purdue.edu > BITNET: CQ@PURCCVM 73s de VK6UI 8-) julian