Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 21:46:28 -0700 From: Kent Stewart <kstewart@3-cities.com> To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> Cc: Missouri FreeNet Administration <measl@mfn.org>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Resolution: k6-2/400 and 2.2x Message-ID: <37117AA4.249E305@3-cities.com> References: <Pine.BSF.3.96.990411202704.489A-100000@pub2.mfn.org> <37115402.CBA31DC5@3-cities.com> <19990412135136.N2142@lemis.com>
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Greg Lehey wrote: > > On Sunday, 11 April 1999 at 19:01:38 -0700, Kent Stewart wrote: > >> On Sun, 11 Apr 1999, Kent Stewart wrote: > >>> Missouri FreeNet Administration wrote: > >>>> > >>>> On Mon, 12 Apr 1999 09:31:41 +0930, Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> wrote: > >>>> <snip> > >>>>> What kind of disks and controller are you using? > >>>> Controllers are on the motherboard (Asus P5A-B). > >>>> > >>>>> What chipset? > >>>> ALi AGPset. 100mhz front end bus, Western Digital 1.6gb IDE drive, > >>>> Standard 3.5" Mitsumi floppy, 32mb of 100mhz SDRAM, Generic 4 mb PCI video > >>>> card, SMC800x Network Card: all known to be good. As I said, this system, > >>>> unchanged, boots and runs NT4/SP4, RHL 5.2, etc... > >>>> > >>>>> Does it freeze, or does it hang? > >>>> It hangs. CTL-ALT-DEL still reboots, numlock still functions, etc. It > >>>> appears to read the first boot sector before dying. > >>>> > >>>>> Does it still occur if you go back to a 66 MHz bus speed? > >>>> Unknown right now: I will try it later this weekend. > >>>> > >>>>> I suppose it's possible that there is an incompatibility with 2.2.5R, > >>>>> just that we haven't seen it, and it's unlikely to be directly related > >>>>> to the processor. But it would still make sense to install > >>>>> FreeBSD-3.1, since you're not going to get much help following a real > >>>>> bug in 2.2.5. > >>>> I wasn't aware that 3.1 was out: last I checked, 3.0 was available, but, > >>>> to paraphrase the FBSD warning: "3.0 [was] not ready for prime time" ;-) > >>>> > >>>> Is there continuing support for 2.2.8R? We are *very* pleased with the > >>>> 2.2.x series, and are not exactly thrilled at changing over to the 3.x > >>>> line... (Why fix something thats not only not [usually] broken, but > >>>> usually picture perfect???) > >>> > >>> I had problems with WD drives and non-DOS mbr. I found an > >>> incompatability between SMART and the bios. You start the power up > >>> sequence, it counts through memory, and then it checks the hard drive > >>> and hangs. I had to use a startup disk from Win98 to "fdisk /mbr", > >>> left that mbr in place and my problems went away. > >> > >> This was it! Once I disable S.M.A.R.T., the problem disappeared! > >> > >> THANKS! > > > > I don't know what it is but the FreeBSD mbr sure trashes some of the > > new systems. You were lucky. I couldn't turn off SMART. > > OK, this looks like the discussion we had about "dangerously > dedicated" disks. If your BIOS requires a Microsoft partition table > at the beginning of the disk, you're going to have to install a > Microsoft partition table at the beginning of the disk. > Hi Greg, It was another one of those cases. His system was new enough that he could turn off SMART. Motherboards that are 2-3 years old, such as my system was, don't understand anything beyond PIO 4 and can't cope. The DOS mbr is one solution at that point. Since IDE drives consume more cpu than SCSI, a unique solution is building system's like yours where you use all SCSI. However, the market is full of pretty powerfull systems for sale out there that come configured with IDE drives. These systems aren't going to disappear and the administrator's will have problems. BTW, SMART is one of those new features where the drives self-monitor. The concept is basically a self-healing drive. Turning it off is a step backwards. Even the new SCSI are coming out with it as a built in feature. I don't know if I like a drive deciding that a sector is going bad and on it's own replace it with a good spare. -- Kent Stewart Richland, WA To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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