From owner-freebsd-smp Tue Feb 24 15:26:12 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id PAA04637 for freebsd-smp-outgoing; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 15:26:12 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-smp@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from sendero.simon-shapiro.org (sendero-fxp0.Simon-Shapiro.ORG [206.190.148.34]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id PAA04630 for ; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 15:26:09 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from shimon@sendero-fxp0.simon-shapiro.org) Received: (qmail 17742 invoked by uid 1000); 24 Feb 1998 23:32:55 -0000 Message-ID: X-Mailer: XFMail 1.3-alpha-021598 [p0] on FreeBSD X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <199802242317.PAA16968@dingo.cdrom.com> Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 15:32:55 -0800 (PST) Reply-To: shimon@simon-shapiro.org Organization: The Simon Shapiro Foundation From: Simon Shapiro To: Mike Smith Subject: Re: SMP success on W6-LI Cc: freebsd-smp@FreeBSD.ORG, Mark Blackman Sender: owner-freebsd-smp@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On 24-Feb-98 Mike Smith wrote: >> This is another problem than what I was thinking about. I was thinking >> about where the BIOS declares (silently) the MBR to be R/O, and only >> boots >> Win95, unless you zap the MBR. > > Fortunately, the BIOS has no say in the matter while FreeBSD is running. Me and my futile attempts to be brief; We had a case where installing FreeBSD on a machine would succeed perfectly well except that upon re-boot, the MBR would still try to boot Win95, find FreeBSD instead and barf. The short version of it is that there is some protection in the BIOS against trying to install non-M$ operating system in the machine. This was confirmed by the vendor's support and empirically by swapping drives, or LL format, both which succeed in confusing the check; Turns out there is some signature in the MBR that the BIOS records when first encountering the disk. The excuse is virus protection, but the reality is that even with ``Virus Protection''' OFF, the feature is still alive. I hesitate to quote names here as this is a major little-i partner and I do not have the proof in my hand anymore. ---------- Sincerely Yours, Simon Shapiro Shimon@Simon-Shapiro.ORG Voice: 503.799.2313 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-smp" in the body of the message