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Date:      Wed, 21 Jan 1998 16:08:54 -0800
From:      dbsmall@ttl.pactel.com
To:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Cc:        david.small@usa.net
Subject:   FreeBSD 2.2.2
Message-ID:  <35EF0B8572DACF11B5BA080009CB86B858BD0A@exchange.ttl.pactel.com>

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I've gotten some good advice from a couple of  folks (Matthew Hagerty,
and someone else whose name is now on my machine at home, and which I
forget...Rudy at Yahoo?)

Unfortunately, I still don't have FreeBSD running, and I've once again
rendered my system unusable.

Here's what I've got:
A Dell Pentium II, with SDRAM, and an AGP video card.  The motherboard
has 2 IDE controllers on it.
The primary controller has only an IBM EIDE Hard Drive on it.
The secondary controller has an IDE ZIP drive first (master), and an
ATAPI CDROM second (slave).
(Actually, both the ZIP drive and the CDROM Drive use cable select to
determine whether they're master or slave... and neither came with
enough jumpers to set them any other way.
The 6.4 GB HD has 3 'partitions' on it:  the first is NTFS, and boots NT
4.0 workstation.  The second is FAT.  The third (the last 1.2 GB of the
disk) is where I plan to put FreeBSD.  I also intend to be able to boot
into either system.  This disk has LBA enabled.

Here's what I've tried so far:
1) Boot off the CDROM:  Install never gets to sysinstall.  Hangs after
probing for devices.  Identifies the CDROM drive as wd1 (since it's on
the IDE controller #2?)  (I gave it 15 minutes....)
2) Boot off of an ATAPI CDROM boot floppy.  Same results as #1
3) Boot off the CDROM.  During the install process, remove wd1 from the
kernel configs.  Makes it to the menu screen, but is unable to install,
since it can't find the CDROM drive.
4) Copied the entire contents of FreeBSD 2.2.2 from WC CDROM onto the
second partition.  (the first FAT partition).  Booted into DOS via a
bootable DOS floppy.  This partition is identified as the first DOS
partition, so DOS calls it C:  (even though NT called it F:).  Run the
Install program from DOS (telling it to install from a DOS partition).
Tell sysinstall "None" when asked which MBR to use (not to use BootEasy,
for example).  Not only did the install fail (couldn't find the disk at
some point), but it screwed up my MBR for NT.  That is, the drive seems
to think the FreeBSD partition is the boot partition, at least, cause
rebooting results in the endless boot: prompts...

One note:  Mr. Hagerty has suggested that I put the CDROM drive on the
primary controller.  Unfortunately, the physical configuration prohibits
me from splitting up the ZIP and the CDROM.  So the only way I could do
that, is if I put the Hard drive on the second controller (which I
haven't tried...)

Note two;  I don't have 2.2.5, or I'd be installing it.

My questions:

1) Is there a simple way to restore my MBR for NT?  Using NT's Emergency
Restore Disk doesn't seem to work.  Can I use FDISK?
2) When I install FreeBSD 2.2.2, should I tell it to use BootEASY?  the
other Bootloader?  None?
3) Can I put the HD on the second controller, and put the ZIP + CDROM on
the first.  Does anyone think this will help?
4) Any other big tips? 


When responding, please cc: david.small@usa.net...

thanks,

-David
---------------------------------------
David B. Small
Telesis Technologies Laboratory
http://www.ttl.pactel.com/~dbsmall





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