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From: ghod@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: [386bsd] Strange solution to booting problem
Message-ID: <1992Sep17.004545.2065@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu>
Date: 17 Sep 92 00:45:44 -0500
Organization: Carnegie Mellon Computer Club
Lines: 68
Greetings....
I'd like to share with you a strange experience I just had concerning
the dist.fs bootable image. I've been trying to get a 3.5" copy of it to boot
on my 386 SX for the past couple of days with no success. Each time I try to
boot, the system hangs almost immediately. At best, it only reads the boot
sector, then it locks up tight. The only observable activity prior to the
system freezing is the momentary blinking of the keyboard LEDs. After that,
nothing. Zip. Nada. Even the RESET button won't work.
Thus I began searching for a fix. I tested the boot disk on a 486
machine at work. Naturally, it worked fine. I disabled all the comm ports and
removed all the peripherals (except the VGA card): still no luck. I twiddled
with the CMOS setup and disabled every piece of shadowed memory in sight: still
nothing. I downloaded Terry's patched dist.fs bootable from agate: more of the
same. I read the bug report postings and discovered that the keyboard
controller was responsible for hanging the system under certain circumstances
and that resetting it by unplugging and then reconnecting the keyboard might
un-freeze things: that didn't work either.
Then tonight, a few minutes ago in fact, I got the standard dist.fs
to boot. Here's what happened: I have a pile of 3.5" 1.44meg floppies lying
around (none of which are labeled, of course) which will soon hold the 386bsd
binary distribution set. They're all MS-DOS formatted, but not bootable.
Somehow I got confused and tried to boot off one of them by mistake, resulting
in the familiar "Non-system disk" error message being displayed. So I replaced
it with the dist.fs disk and hit RETURN, fully expecting the machine to lock up
yet again. Only this time, it worked like a charm. I tried this trick, which I
now call 'the bait and switch', repeatedly and it worked each time. I'll be
darned if I can figure out what's going on, but I'm hoping someone in this
discussion can shed some light on the subject. I plan to attempt a hard disk
installation in the not to distant future, but I'm concerned that this strange
booting problem will persist after 386bsd has been installed. If anyone can
explain why the 'bait and switch' works and predict whether or not a hard disk
installation will be successful, please let me know.
Some pertinent facts:
Swapping drives and booting from the 1.2 meg disk also causes my system to
hang. However, I have not as yet tried the 'bait and switch' with the other
drive.
I can get Terry's patched bootable going using the same trick, only the system
hangs again before the boot sequence completes. (It craps out after a few
seconds of disk access -- no messages appear on the screen.)
I recall l someone else posting a request for help with the same kind of
problem (i.e lockups with a 386) but noone followed it up.
My system configuration:
LASER PC clone
16 Mhz 80386SX/SL processor (math co-processor not installed)
4 Mbytes RAM
AMI 386 BIOS version 1.5 (1990 vintage)
Oak VGA adapter (VGA BIOS v2.15-35)
Seagate ST351-A 42 Mbyte IDE (drive which 386bsd identifies correctly)
1.44 meg 3.5" and 1.2 meg 5.25" floppy drives (the 3.5" is the boot drive)
2 serial ports, 1 parallel port, 1 game port
generic 101-key AT keyboard
Thanks in advance.
--Bill Paul
Assistant System Administrator
New Windsor Associates L.P.
ghod@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu -or- ghod@drycas.bitnet