Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 24 Feb 1998 15:05:35 -0800
From:      Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>
To:        shimon@simon-shapiro.org
Cc:        Mark Blackman <tmb@rcru.rl.ac.uk>, freebsd-smp@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: SMP success on W6-LI 
Message-ID:  <199802242305.PAA16863@dingo.cdrom.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 24 Feb 1998 13:15:18 PST." <XFMail.980224131518.shimon@simon-shapiro.org> 

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> 
> On 24-Feb-98 Mark Blackman wrote:
> 
>  ...
> 
> > Forgot to mention that that the 4.06 Phoenix BIOS won't let me boot
> > FreeBSD from either the IDE or SCSI hard drive, so I'm compelled
> > to use the floppy just to get things kicked off.  This Phoenix
> > BIOS boot problem has been alluded to in a couple of the
> > other mail messages on some of the other lists.  It's an 
> > annoyance but a tolerable one.
> 
> Did you try to low-level format the drives?
> 
> The cause is too sinister to verbalize.  Try to swap drives beween machines
> too.  Hint:  BIOS-MBR-M$

The problem here is most likely actually a known bug in the Phoenix 
BIOS core where they fail to correctly initialise the register which 
holds the BIOS drive ID of the boot device.  

Because FreeBSD is one of the few operating systems that actually 
supports booting any disk using the same bootblock, this causes some 
problems.

Especially when the value that is erroneously inserted is 0 (BIOS drive 
ID for the floppy).

-- 
\\  Sometimes you're ahead,       \\  Mike Smith
\\  sometimes you're behind.      \\  mike@smith.net.au
\\  The race is long, and in the  \\  msmith@freebsd.org
\\  end it's only with yourself.  \\  msmith@cdrom.com



To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-smp" in the body of the message



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199802242305.PAA16863>