From owner-freebsd-questions Wed May 1 11:22:34 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id LAA06297 for questions-outgoing; Wed, 1 May 1996 11:22:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from riley-net170-164.uoregon.edu (riley-net170-164.uoregon.edu [128.223.170.164]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id LAA06288 for ; Wed, 1 May 1996 11:22:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from dwhite@localhost) by riley-net170-164.uoregon.edu (8.6.12/8.6.12) id LAA10663; Wed, 1 May 1996 11:25:48 -0700 Date: Wed, 1 May 1996 11:25:47 -0700 (PDT) From: Doug White Reply-To: dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu To: "Craig A. Heilman" cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Q: Install prob. w/ 1 IDE & 1 SCSI drive In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Mon, 29 Apr 1996, Craig A. Heilman wrote: > I finally jumped in and tried to install FreeBSD 2.1 on my system last > night. The install seemed to go fine but now I can't boot DOS or FreeBSD > except from a DOS or FreeBSD boot floppy (ie. the hard drives are somewhat > "broken"). I'm not sure how much system info is needed so I will probably > give more than is needed... [...] > When I rebooted after the install, I see the following in succession: > > - Award BIOS startup message (normal) > - Adaptec BIOS loaded / SCSI devices found message (normal) > - System Configuration screen (normal) > - blank screen with "PRESS A KEY TO REBOOT" in upper left hand corner (most > definately NOT normal) You need to use DOS FDISK and reset the 'active' partition. > I reboot with the FreeBSD boot floppy and type "sd(0,a)/kernel" and > variations on that to try and boot off the SCSI drive. I get a message > like "1049 > 1023 cylinders" (don't remember exact wording). Hmmm, I seem > to remember that it can't boot if root partition is higher than 500MB limit > of DOS BIOS. That is correct. > (3) I assumed that if I installed BootEasy on wd0, then I would initially > boot off wd0 where BootEasy would take over, give me a choice of OS, then > boot FreeBSD no matter where it lives! (ie. above the 500MB BIOS limit). > Is this an incorrect assumption? Will BootEasy work for my situation and > which drive should it go on? BootEasy must go on the first disk, and it does not overcome the DOS BIOS limitation. > I reboot with a DOS floppy and check my C: drive - files are still there > (whew!). I think that maybe I somehow waxed the MBR on my IDE drive. I > try to run DOS's FDISK but it just dies with a "divide by 0" error. I even > copy FDISK to the boot floppy but still get the same error. Why? Don't know. Are you running a disk translator? Doug White | University of Oregon Internet: dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu | Residence Networking Assistant http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dwhite | Computer Science Major