Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Mon, 26 Nov 2001 18:51:00 -0000
From:      "Dracopoulos, Dimitris" <Dimitris.Dracopoulos@gs.com>
To:        "'freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org'" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org>
Cc:        "'freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.org'" <freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.org>
Subject:   Cannot boot from floppy and cannot read/write it any more  - But it works in Linux somehow
Message-ID:  <E17B00C11DB1D511AA210002A560174C0FDD13@gsln02e.ln.fw.gs.com>

next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Hi,

The floppy in my system stopped working a few weeks ago (I did not notice
this immediately as I was not using it often).

Here are the very strange symptoms I am experiencing:

1) The system will not boot from a boot floppy (I have tried a few different
boot floppies including Linux/Win98 ones which they all work in other
machines). My BIOS (AMIBIOS) complains that it cannot find a boot record in
the floppy). 

The boot sequence set in my BIOS is floppy->cdrom->hard disk. When I disable
booting from hard disk and cdrom then it keeps prompting me for inserting
another floppy with a boot record. Booting from my CDROM or hard disk works
fine! In any case, I have not change any settings in BIOS since it was last
working..

2) I am not able to read or write a floppy while in FreeBSD (version 4.3).
Using mtools the lights comes on but I keep waiting. Mounting /dev/fd0 has a
similar problem and keep reporting errors periodically. Under no
circumstances I am able to read or write a floppy (I tried the GENERIC
kernel as well).

HOWEVER, and while in Linux (Debian potato) read and write in a floppy works
absolutely fine!

My system is able to boot Windows98 as well (for my job purposes only!) and
there I cannot write any floppy as well (but I am only able to list the
files in a floppy something which I cannot do in FreeBSD).

3) I have tried a brand new drive and a different IDE cable as well and the
symptoms are identical. The floppy was working a few weeks ago.

4) I 've tried all the above with a very bare system (just the hard
disk/memory/graphics card) and still I have the same problems.

I started thinking that it might have to do something with a BIOS virus but
then why under Linux it works fine? (and why I am able to boot from a CDROM
and the hard disk).

Has anyone any ideas on this? 

Any help will be appreciated.

My system specs are:

Motherboard: Tyan 1832 (Tiger 100) with AMIBIOS 1.16a 
Dual Intel Pentium 3 (500Mhz) 
(rest of specs not so relevant as I mentioned above that I tried the floppy
with the very bare system as well).

Cheers

Dimitris

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




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?E17B00C11DB1D511AA210002A560174C0FDD13>