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Date:      Mon, 12 Feb 2001 22:11:40 +0100
From:      Francesco Casadei <fcasadei@inwind.it>
To:        Danny Braniss <danny@cs.huji.ac.il>
Cc:        Paul Saab <paul@mu.org>, John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>, Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>, freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.org, hackers@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: Really odd "BTX halted" problem booting - PXE/diskless
Message-ID:  <20010212221140.B413@junior.kasby>
In-Reply-To: <E14RAYf-0004Tu-00@cs.huji.ac.il>; from danny@cs.huji.ac.il on Fri, Feb 09, 2001 at 12:13:40PM %2B0200
References:  <E14RAYf-0004Tu-00@cs.huji.ac.il>

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On Fri, Feb 09, 2001 at 12:13:40PM +0200, Danny Braniss wrote:
> In message <20010207031637.A32676@elvis.mu.org>you write:
> }It its the bios disk probe that is causing the machine to fault.
> 
> I can now confirm that it's a divide by zero in the Adaptec BIOS GRRRRRR.
> (in biosdisk, when 'probing' the adaptec) and it happens on a AIC 7899, but
> works ok on some other ADAPTECs.
> 
> the problem is nasty because it's not easy to zero out the first block of the
> disk if you can't get the os working :-)
> 
> }I suppose you really dont need to probe the disks when you are netbooting.
> 
> i got the pxeboot not to check the disks but then the kernel stepped on it :-(
> 
> is there a way to prevent BTX to halt if the 'caller' expects a div/zero?
> 
> (in the days of the PDP/11 i could trap such things,  print a message, and
> continue).
> 
> danny
> 
> 
> 
> 
> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
> with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
> 
> end of the original message

I had this problem a couple of days ago with an Adaptec AHA-2940UW SCSI
controller and an IBM DDRS-34560W SCSI disk. I created one large slice in
dangerously dedicated mode and I wasn't able to boot anymore: I got "BTX
halted" and the registers dump. I low-level formatted the disk using the
controller BIOS, recreated the slice (this time in coperative mode!) and
everything worked!

	Francesco Casadei

P.S. The DDRS-34560W uses part of the buffer for the firmware so I could
safely low-level format the disk. Check if you can low-level format your
disk without destroying it! 


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