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Date: Wed, 28 Dec 94 08:43:58 EST
From: robertg@meaddata.com (Robert Gerdardy)
Message-Id: <9412281343.AA00492@atom.meaddata.com>
To: ats@g386bsd.first.gmd.de
Subject: Re: Loop...Loop...Loop
Cc: questions@freebsd.org
Sender: questions-owner@freebsd.org
Precedence: bulk

Andreas,
 
> That is very early. At that point the booter just tried to read the second
> block with the help of the bios from the floppy. 
> Can you check, that the floppy types are set correctly in the BIOS ?
> DOS can work with wrong values in the BIOS, it looks also on the floppies
> and decides the size from them. But FreeBSD trusts the BIOS values.

The machine has 2 floppies, one 5.25 and one 3.5. Originally, the 5.25
was A: and the 3.5 was B:. I had to switch them, because OS/2 warp will
only boot from 3.5 on A:. According to instructions from Gateway, I
swapped the two cable connectors, and then I went into the BIOS setup
program and changed them there also. Is it possible that this change does
not get recorded in such a way that FreeBSD can find it?

> 
> Another possibility can be a bad floppy, can you also try another
> floppy ? The floppy  must also be error-free to work with UNIX. If 
> a DOS format says anything about bad sectors, use another floppy.

It is a brand new, preformatted disk. I did not check the formatting,
but there were no complaints when I wrote it using the mkflppy script.

Bob