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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!nntp.coast.net!news.dacom.co.kr!news.kreonet.re.kr!overload.lbl.gov!lll-winken.llnl.gov!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!startide.ctr.columbia.edu!wpaul From: wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu (Bill Paul) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Boot string for secondary IDE disk? Date: 27 Dec 1995 15:05:36 GMT Organization: Columbia University Center for Telecommunications Research Lines: 44 Message-ID: <4brnc1$9di@sol.ctr.columbia.edu> References: <30E06377.41C6@cs.uml.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: startide.ctr.columbia.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Daring to challenge the will of the almighty Leviam00se, Brian 'Doc' O'Neill (oneill@cs.uml.edu) had the courage to say: : Simple question...what would be the boot string to boot FreeBSD 2.1 off : an IDE hard drive set up as the master disk on the secondary controller? Simple answer: there isn't one. You can't boot from a secondary IDE controller since the BIOS doesn't know anything about it, and the FreeBSD boot blocks require BIOS support. Now, if by some chance you have a special controller with an on-board BIOS that installs itself at power-up in such a way that you _can_ access the disk with just BIOS calls (I don't have one myself, but it's possible they exist), then you might try this: Boot: wd(2,a)/kernel To put it another way, if you can access this disk in DOS without loading any special drivers in your CONFIG.SYS, then you might be able to boot from it. If not, you're going to have to settle for booting from one of the disks on the primary controller. Of course, once the kernel is running it'll be able to access the disk on the secondary controller without any trouble at all, provided you've installed the controller correctly. (You must make sure the controller is using IRQ 15. Many cheapo IDE controllers have jumpers that let you set the I/O address to the secondary location (0x170), but they _don't_ let you change the IRQ. This is fine for DOS, which uses polled-mode I/O, but for FreeBSD you must have each controller on a seperate IRQ line. I had to take an X-acto knife and soldering iron to mine before it would work properly.) -Bill -- ============================================================================= -Bill Paul (212) 854-6020 | System Manager Work: wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu | Center for Telecommunications Research Home: wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu | Columbia University, New York City ============================================================================= License error: The license for this .sig file has expired. You must obtain a new license key before any more witty phrases will appear in this space. =============================================================================