Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 17:14:21 -0400 From: Mark Thomas <thomas@clark.net> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Install problems - BIOS? Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.19990621171421.0084c3e0@pop3.clark.net> In-Reply-To: <376BF776.807EA5FA@3-cities.com> References: <3.0.6.32.19990619110430.008b3520@pop3.clark.net>
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I now have this system booting, but it still has a problem. I ended up with
BIOS translation ON both in the system BIOS and the SCSI BIOS. The drive is
set up with a partition rather than dedicated. The boot manager starts, and
presents two options:
F1 FreeBSD
F5 Drive 0
Default: F1
Hitting F1 appears to try to boot of the floppy drive.
Hitting F5 results in display of:
F1 FreeBSD
Default: F1
Followed by a normal boot on either timeout or F1.
fdisk reports [abbreviated by hand]:
parameters extracted from in-core disk label are:
cyl=522 heads=255 sect/track=63 (16065 blks/cyl)
parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are:
cyl=522 heads=255 sect/track=63 (16065 blks/cyl)
Media sector size is 512
Warning: BIOS sector numbering starts with sector 1
Information from DOS bootblock is:
The data for partition 1 is:
sysid 165, (FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
start 63, size 8385867 (4094 Meg), flag 80 (active)
beg: cyl 0/ sector 1/ head 1;
end: cyl 521/sector 63/ head 254
The data for partition 2 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 3 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 4 is:
<UNUSED>
The SCSI BIOS shows the only SCSI HD as Drive C: (80H).
There are no IDE devices attached to this machine.
Plug and Play support is off in the system BIOS.
# uname -a
FreeBSD thomas@clark.net 3.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 3.2-RELEASE #0: Tue May 18
04:05:08 GMT 1999 jkh@cathair:/usr/src/sys/compile/GENERIC i386
Can anyone point me to the cause of the above behavior and a possible
solution? Ideally I'd like to default boot to FreeBSD from the HD of course.
At 01:03 PM 6/19/99 -0700, Kent Stewart wrote:
>Mark Thomas wrote:
>>
>> I'm currently doing an FTP install of a Micron P133 system. I suspect
I've got one of the 'bad' BIOS's that won't deal with FreeBSD. Just hoping
for some confirmation.
>>
>> The system:
>>
>> Micron P133 Millenia MB Phoenix BIOS V4.04 (Flashed to the most recent
version)
>> Adaptec 2940AU SCSI controller BIOS V1.30
>> Seagate ST15230N HD
>> Iomega 1G Jaz
>> Iomega 100M Zip
>> Plextor CD-ROM 6x
>>
>> There are no other OS's on this system. I've tried all reasonable
combinations of dedicated/partition geometries on the drive. I've tried
with DOS/Other > 1 GB drive support in both the system and SCSI BIOS.
W95/98 both install fine on this machine, so I don't suspect hardware.
>
>I have a Micron Millennia and it came with a Phoenix 4.04 BIOS. That
>particular BIOS (M54HI on my system) has real problems but I thought
>they were only with IDE drives. Revision 11 was supposed to take care of
>the Y2K problems. Micro Firmware has an upgrade to Phoenix 4.05 for the
>Micron Millennia that gets rid of most of the IDE problems such as IDE
>drives larger than 4GB and introduces additional PCI features. It is
>item number M5HS10 and costs $79. The have other products for BIOSes
>other than the M54HI.
>
>I have had BIOS'es that won't deal with dangerously dedicated drives but
>have no problem with the DOS mbr. They would not boot past the BIOS
>drive check at startup, which is perfomed immediately after the memory
>check. It seemed to be an interaction with S.M.A.R.T and the HD. Yours
>isn't accepting either MBR. That model Hawk 4 has 3992 cylinders, 19
>heads, and 110 sectors and I kind of wonder if you are bumping into the
>1023 cylinder problem. The support for > 1GB drives would have to be
>turned on otherwise the 1023 cylinder boot rule would limit the first
>partition to less than 1094,691,840 bytes.
>
>Kent
>
>>
>> In all cases the install process works without apparent problems. It
looks like all hardware detects correctly.
>>
>> With any setup that includes a 'dangerously dedicated' drive, the system
fails to find the HD on reboot and reports 'Read Error' until a floppy is
inserted.
>>
>> With a config that includes a non dedicated setup, the boot loader
starts, with the choices:
>>
>> F1 FreeBSD
>> F5 Drive 0
>>
>> Default: F1
>>
>> Selecting either results in a keyboard beep. Waiting for a timeout
produces nothing.
>>
>> If anyone has any ideas, can confirm this is a BIOS problem, or sees
something I've missed, I'd appreciate a heads up.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Mark
>> ---
>> thomas@clark.net ---> http://www.clark.net/pub/thomas
>> PBEM Eldritch --------> http://www.pmpro.com/eldritch
>>
>> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
>> with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
>
>--
>Kent Stewart
>Richland, WA
>
>mailto:kstewart@3-cities.com
>http://www.3-cities.com/~kstewart/index.html
>
Mark
---
thomas@clark.net ---> http://www.clark.net/pub/thomas
PBEM Eldritch --------> http://www.pmpro.com/eldritch
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