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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mira.net.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!paladin.american.edu!gatech!news.mathworks.com!fu-berlin.de!news.belwue.de!news.uni-stuttgart.de!uniol!uni-erlangen.de!news.tu-chemnitz.de!irz401!orion.sax.de!uriah.heep!news From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Installation hangs after hardware probes (2.1R) Date: 22 Jun 1996 11:32:44 GMT Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden Lines: 46 Message-ID: <4qglks$q31@uriah.heep.sax.de> References: <4pm69j$62c@muenchen.photogrammetrie.de> <4pv023$84e@uriah.heep.sax.de> <4q3mdt$mm7@muenchen.photogrammetrie.de> Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.heep.sax.de Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.6 X-Phone: +49-351-2012 669 X-PGP-Fingerprint: DC 47 E6 E4 FF A6 E9 8F 93 21 E0 7D F9 12 D6 4E mehldau@photogrammetrie.de (Gerhard Mehldau) wrote: > : That's the point where the root file system is about to be configured > : and mounted. Which floppy controller is there in the Compaq? Any > : chance to disable it and use a separate controller? > > It's a NEC 72065B. From FreeBSD's description, or from looking at the chip? I suspect the former. Of course, it's _not_ actually a NEC 72065B, nor is FreeBSD's probe in any way a reliable sign of which controller you might have. (Linux' probe is slightly better.) All the today's floppy controllers are clones of a NEC765 or successor, but they have been glued together with some other functionality into a single chip. Most of these chips break the (bug) compatibility with one or the other of their original chips they try to clone. The worst known offender is the UMC 8669F which has a floppy controller macrocell that triggered a bug in FreeBSD's floppy driver by issuing unsolicited interrupts (read this: it is incompatible with a NEC765 which never did this), and which has a UART simulation so poorly implemented you cannot run Taylor UUCP on it. The only solution for this chip is to turn it off. The other multi chips have less important bugs. > Unfortunately, I don't have a spare controller > to try your suggestion. You are in Germany, i'm willing to send you a spare floppy controller if your want. > BTW, occasionally I get the following message before the system > hangs: > > Fatal signal 10 caught! I'm dead.. Bad sign. Your motherboard/memory combination seems to be rather flakey. -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)