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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msunews!uwm.edu!fnnews.fnal.gov!fsgm01.fnal.gov!not-for-mail From: mengel@fsgm01.fnal.gov (Marc Mengel) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Boot problems with Promise EIDE controller Date: 25 Sep 1995 11:39:58 -0500 Organization: Fermilab, Batavia IL USA Lines: 33 Message-ID: <446m0u$m15@fsgm01.fnal.gov> NNTP-Posting-Host: fsgm01.fnal.gov Recently I bought a Samsung 1.1G EIDE drive, and a Promise EIDE-MAX "controller", which has a Promise ROM for boot code, etc. for EIDE. The FreeBSD first stage boot loaders (floppy or hard drive) don't work with this ROM in the system. At all. The FreeBSD banner message doesn't even come up. I tried FreeBSD 1.0, 2.0, and 2.05 boot floppies, none of them would bring up the bootstrap loader. On the other hand a NetBSD boot floppy boot loader comes up; and if you boot off of it to the "boot:" prompt, swap floppies to the FreeBSD 2.05 floppy, and then boot "fd(0,a)/kernel", it comes right up, lets you install, etc. So it's not a kernel problem; it's just the first stage boot that breaks with these ROMs in the system. If I pull the controller and put my trusty old ESDI controller back in the system, they all boot just fine. DOS boots regardless. If anyone who works on the boot loader wants to borrow said controller to test it out; I'd be glad to loan it for a couple of weeks; it's not doing me any good at the moment :-). Marc -- <HR> <ADDRESS> Marc Mengel / mengel@fnal.gov <A HREF="http://dcdsv0.fnal.gov:8000/~mengel/resume/Resume.html">WWW</A> </ADDRESS>