Date: Fri, 31 Jul 98 09:12:00 -0000 From: mikebw@bilow.bilow.uu.ids.net (Mike Bilow) To: aic7xxx@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Primary channel B? Message-ID: <5c179283@bilow.bilow.uu.ids.net>
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Eugene Blanchard wrote in a message to Mike Bilow: EB> I am using an AHA2742N EISA card. I have set Channel B in the EB> AHA2742 bios as the primary channel for boot purposes. Channel EB> B is internal bus only, A is both internal and external. EB> I need to have Channel B scanned before Channel A so that my EB> boot drive appears as /dev/sda. Currently Channel A is scanned EB> first and my boot drive appears as /dev/sdd. Unfortunately, EB> lilo requires the boot drive to be bios C: (/dev/sda) or D: EB> (/dev/sdb). EB> Is there a simple fix for this, swap channel number variables EB> (0 and 1) in the source files? I don't recognize the "N" suffix, but I assume it is the same as "T" suffix? Anyway, the problem here is really in Lilo. Until Linux is booted, obviously Lilo must go through BIOS to get the kernel loaded. Since most systems originally had BIOS support for only two hard drives, apparently this got written into Lilo. Older Adaptec SCSI controllers, such as the AHA154x, did require that the boot device be ID 0 or 1 for this reason. If the controller ROM supports booting from an arbitrary SCSI device, then Lilo should just make the necessary calls into BIOS and go with that. Until you posted your message, I didn't even know that such a limitation existed in Lilo, and it should be fixed in Lilo rather than in the SCSI subsystem. Hard drives supported by BIOS are accessed by zero-based device number with the high-bit set (0x80, 0x81, and so on) to distinguish them from floppy drives. -- Mike To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe aic7xxx" in the body of the message
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