From - Wed Apr 21 20:57:15 1999
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Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 20:57:15 -0500
From: bob olbrich <rjob@gulftel.com>
Reply-To: cjclark@home.com
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To: bob olbrich <rjob@gulftel.com>
CC: cjclark@home.com, davon@shires.org,
 	FreeBSD-questions@FreeBSD.org
Subject: Re: boot syntax and 3.1-release
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bob olbrich wrote,

[snip description of what sounded like a successful install]

> This is where the confusion began.I chose to use the booteasy
> and I do get a menu prompt like F1-DOS F2-FreeBSD, but
> only F1 works. I got a reply to this in which somebody said
> that there is a 500MB restriction in the BIOS that prevents
> FreeBSD from accessing the partition at the end of the disk.
> So it was suggested the I try to boot the hard drive from the
> floppy.

Sounds like you are having the old 1024 cylinder problem described to
you. A quick way to check this is to use either DOS or FreeBSD's fdisk
to see how many cylinders your hard drive has. If it has way more than
1024, that could very likely be the problem.

However, I am not sure if booting from a floppy actually gets around
this problem. See,

http://www.freebsd.org/tutorials/multios/multios.html#ch-5

For some possible ways to fix this classic gotcha.

> First off, where is the boot prompt on the 3.1 -release boot
> floppies? It is not simple as in the 2.x.x floppy.
> Someone said you can hit enter to get it but the cursor
> moves a line below it. 

Just hit a key while the system is doing that countdown to booting the
default. 

> I even tried booting with an older (2.2.8)
> version of the boot floppy. That's where I get the error with
> 1:wd(0,a)kernel :
> 
> error D:0x81 C:0 H:0 S:0

That will definately not work.

> Since I could not boot I wondered about the fixit floppy.
> I'm not an experienced system administrator but I
> thought their may be a few simple commands that I
> might use to double-check the download.

Personally, I've never had the need to try the fixit floppy (I guess
good luck), so I cannot be of much help except to say I expect that it
would be able to mount your FreeBSD partitions to actually check that
everything is there.
-- 
Crist J. Clark                           cjclark@home.com
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