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From: mw@theatre.pandora.sax.de (Martin Welk)
Subject: Re: Can't get FreeBSD to Boot!
Organization: Private Site, Member of Individual Network e. V.
Message-ID: <DGvoA7.H3p@theatre.pandora.sax.de>
References: <42vcre$664@nntp.interaccess.com> <461t1a$oce@tetsuo.communique.net> <463e4a$lat@mozo.cc.purdue.edu> <467eng$pkk@ucthpx.uct.ac.za>
Date: Mon, 23 Oct 1995 01:32:31 GMT
Lines: 48
In article <467eng$pkk@ucthpx.uct.ac.za>,
Elizabeth Post <eap@cs.uct.ac.za> wrote:
>I don't know if it will help, and I don't know if it is the answer, but
>when I first tried to install FreeBSD 2.0.5 on my 386 DX with 8 Mb I had
>the same symptons with the boot floppy, or it would start and then hang.
>
>When I fiddled with the CMOS settings and changed the cache setting (can't
>remember what to) everything started working OK.
On my old 386DX-40 motherboard it was the other way around:
with enabled cache, the machine run fine under SCO Unix, FreeBSD,
Messy-DOS and Windoze - until I installed QEMM. That product made
the machine hang with enabled cache. Disabled the cache in CMOS
setup - everything works fine again...
And: we have a machine containing an about 1/2 year old Soyo
motherboard with a 486DX2-66 CPU and 16 meg RAM. Works fine, but
the CPU speed switch (aka turbo switch) was connected to the
motherboard with only one pin, as I wanted it to be disabled and
told my dealer so.
Everything worked fine - we're using an Adaptec 1542C SCSI
host adapter, one hard disk, six CD-ROM drives, network
adapter - until I got the idea to play with that turbo
switch. When booting that pseudo-intelligent interactive
interrupt handler called MessyDOS, it worked. The FreeBSD
kernel showed it's first lines of the boot message, the
rotor started spinning - and stopped. Started again, rotated
for a while, stopped again. Repeated and repeated that until
it found everything useless, hang or rebooted.
So we opened the machine, disconnect the one and only wire
going from the turbo switch to the motherboard and now it
runs fine again regardless of any turbo switch position...
I just wanted to express that sometimes some hardware shows
strange and unbelievable effects. Don't give up, get a 2nd
machine to try it out again, change, what you wouldn't
change at any other time. Perhaps it helps.
Bye,
Martin
--
/| /| | /| / \ ,,You know, there's a lot of opportunities,
/ |/ | artin |/ |/ elk \ if you're knowing to take them,
\ you know, there's a lot of opportunities,
mw@pandora.sax.de \ if there aren't you can make them,
Meissen, Germany, Europe \ make or break them!'' (Tennant/Lowe)