From owner-freebsd-hardware Mon Nov 26 10:51:10 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Received: from inswsod02.gs.com (inswsod02.gs.com [207.17.37.11]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 244B237B41A; Mon, 26 Nov 2001 10:51:03 -0800 (PST) Received: from insdbod02.inz.gs.com (unknown [207.17.36.75]) by inswsod02.gs.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 82FB21BE9F; Mon, 26 Nov 2001 13:51:02 -0500 (EST) Received: from gsln02e.ln.fw.gs.com by insdbod02.inz.gs.com with ESMTP; Mon, 26 Nov 2001 13:51:02 -0500 Received: by gsln02e.ln.fw.gs.com with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) id ; Mon, 26 Nov 2001 18:51:01 -0000 Message-Id: From: "Dracopoulos, Dimitris" To: "'freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org'" Cc: "'freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.org'" Subject: Cannot boot from floppy and cannot read/write it any more - But it works in Linux somehow Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2001 18:51:00 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org 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