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Date:      Wed, 19 Mar 1997 10:16:22 -0600 (CST)
From:      Dan Odom <daniel@thelonious.spidome.net>
To:        hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   ATAPI CD fix
Message-ID:  <199703191616.KAA12937@thelonious.spidome.net>

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I've seen two posts in two days on this topic (to 'hackers', even), so
I'll throw in my $2.00 (inflation sucks):

FreeBSD 2.1.6 (and 2.1.7?) needs the IDE cd-rom to be a slave on the
primary controller.  It will not work if the cd-rom drive is the
master on the secondary controller.  Most PCs are shipped with the
CD-ROM on the secondary controller, so you need to go in and switch
the cables around.

I learned this the hard way.  Six months ago or so I was working help
desk (don't groan) and one of the "known issues" that floated accross
my desk was "BSD derived operating systems will not recognize the
ATAPI CD-ROM in some models."  I forgot about it until I tried to
install BSDI 2.1 on a new server and (surprise) it didn't find the
CD.  I went through my filing cabinets to find the solution: "The
ATAPI CD-ROM device driver that ships with many BSD distributions
requires the drive to be a slave on the master controller.  Switch the
CD-ROM cable from the controller on the system board to the connector
on the primary hard drive."  This, of course, was _after_ four hours
of fiddling with it. :-)

This holds true for BSDI 2.1 and FreeBSD 2.1.6.  FreeBSD 2.2-SNAP will
work properly.  Why isn't this in an FAQ somewhere?

-- 
Daniel Odom
System administrator (sometimes) and web guy (the rest of the time)
daniel@thelonious.spidome.net
http://www.spidome.net/daniel/
finger me for a PGP key



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