*BSD News Article 8536


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From: wilson@moria.cygnus.com (jim Wilson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: [386BSD] Troublesome SCSI problems with VL-BUS machine
Message-ID: <1992Dec03.193746.7352@kithrup.COM>
Date: 3 Dec 92 19:37:46 GMT
References: <1992Dec1.185127.4785@umr.edu>
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Organization: Cygnus Support
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In article <1992Dec1.185127.4785@umr.edu> yting@mcs213i.cs.umr.edu (Yu-Han Ting) writes:
>half a month ago.  It's based on Micronics' VL-BUS motherboard with an i486
>DX2/66 CPU.  The hard drive equipped is an Fujitsu SCSI one with Adaptec
>1542b controller.  When I tried to boot 386BSD from floppy, the floppy just
>kept spinning for nearly 3 minutes.  I've read the unofficial FAQ from

This motherboard won't boot from any available floppy boot disk.  I believe
that this is a bug in the 386bsd floppy disk bootblocks, but don't know enough
about pc hardware (yet!) to fix it myself.

I know of two ways to boot 386bsd from a floppy on this motherboard:
1) From the CMOS screen, change the LPT1 IRQ from 7 to 5.  (And while you're
   at it, turn off the shadow bios too.)  You can now boot from any 386bsd
   boot floppy.  After installing 386bsd on your hard disk, change the LPT1
   IRQ back to 7 so you can use it.  Simply disabling LPT1 does not work, you
   must change its IRQ.  Also, note, if you ever want to boot from a floppy
   again, you must go toggle the IRQ again.
2) Edit a dist.fs file with emacs, search for `<^F', and change the ^F to ^G.
   Write the file to a floppy, and you can now boot from it.  (This changes
   an instruction in the boot blocks (fdbootblk.c) from cmpb $0x6,%al to
   cmpb $0x7,%al.  This is a horrible hack, but it works.)  You should also
   do the same thing to a fixit.fs file.

After getting 386bsd running from your hard disk, you will likely discover
that it won't respond to the keyboard after booting from the hard disk.
I know of two solutions for this:
1) While booting (after the screen turns blue), start hitting return until you
   see them echo to the screen.
2) Boot normally.  Then login over the network (if you have one) and su.

Jim