From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Aug 30 12:48:53 1995 Return-Path: questions-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.FreeBSD.org (8.6.11/8.6.6) id MAA26900 for questions-outgoing; Wed, 30 Aug 1995 12:48:53 -0700 Received: from ref.tfs.com (ref.tfs.com [140.145.254.251]) by freefall.FreeBSD.org (8.6.11/8.6.6) with ESMTP id MAA26890 for ; Wed, 30 Aug 1995 12:48:51 -0700 Received: (from julian@localhost) by ref.tfs.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id MAA00372; Wed, 30 Aug 1995 12:48:47 -0700 From: Julian Elischer Message-Id: <199508301948.MAA00372@ref.tfs.com> Subject: Re: FreeBSD and the Promise 2300+ EIDE controller To: partek@iquest.net Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 12:48:47 -0700 (PDT) Cc: questions@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: from "David Anderson" at Aug 30, 95 02:08:53 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Content-Length: 2331 Sender: questions-owner@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk > > (Please send replies to partek@iquest.net) done > > After using Linux for 4 months, and learning more about FreeBSD, I > decided to give it a try. (The main thing that convinced me was the > kernel configure that's almost identical to SunOS 4.1.3) > I tried 5 times yesterday to install FreeBSD 2.1.0-950726-SNAP. Each time > the install over FTP went fine,(even though it took forever over my 28.8k > modem) but when it came to booting the system from the HD, it would lock > up looking something like this: > > ------------- > >> FreeBSD [Stuff I don't remember deleted] > > Boot: > | > -------------- > > Then the computer was completely frozen. I was told on #FreeBSD that the > problem sounded like it originated with my hard drive controller. I've > tried every setting, and every configuration on the controller and it > still did the same exact thing when trying to boot from the HD.. Is this > controller just incompatable with FreeBSD, or am I doing something > horribly wrong? I tried setting it up with the boot manager AND the > standard MBR also.. well the boot uses the BIOS to do it's work, so it's unlikely that it was unable to read anything... The bios got that far; it's unlikely to fail at that point.. possibilities.. your BIOS might use some non-standard memory location (e.g. just below 640K) that might be getting over-written in the boot.. (unlikely as we have cleared up most of those problems) the MBR (block 0) might have inconsistant data in it.. the disklabel might be incorrect > > Also, when installing I ran into another problem. When sysinstall went to > write the fdisk info to wd0, it would crash saying something like this: > ------ > sysinstall: read input/output error > panic: running away without my init! > ------ > It then would force a reboot. > I don't know what caused it, but if I erased the partition table and > started over, it seemed to work. Could this be related to the HDC too? > > I refuse to go out and spend $80+ on a new EIDE controller, so I'm > willing to help out in any way I can on getting this to work. from the install, if you do it a second time, does it find the partitions etc, from the previous attempt? (it won't know where to mount them, but it should at least find them..) > > (Please send any replies to partek@iquest.net) > >