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Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 03:52:11 -0500 (CDT)
From: Rob Snow <rsnow@lgc.com>
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To: Gary Palmer <gpalmer@FreeBSD.ORG>
cc: Rob Snow <rsnow@palmer.demon.co.uk>, dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu,
        "Timothy P. Sparks" <Timothy.Sparks@GDEsystems.COM>,
        questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Release Notes 2.1, Ref Hard Drives/Controllers 
In-Reply-To: <4435.834222560@palmer.demon.co.uk>
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On Sat, 8 Jun 1996, Gary Palmer wrote:

> Rob Snow wrote in message ID
> <Pine.SGI.3.93.960607174711.4450C-100000@dympna>:
> > Maybe I'm missing something here, do you mean a Promise 2300 on the
> > motherboard or PCI doesn't work (Didn't know there was either one of
> > them)? If so, that is a possibility, however if you mean the Promise 2300
> > VLB doesn't work I'd beg to differ. (I will assume that reciept of this
> > message will do for validation)
> 
> He means the 2300+ EIDE VLB controller, and it does NOT work as
> shipped, I have verified this myself. The cards on-board BIOS does
> something whacky and confuses our boot loader, causing boot to
> fail. You have to disable the on-board BIOS to get it to work, which
> if I remember right, turns it into an ordinary IDE card, which you
> could have got a lot cheaper.
> 
> Gary
> --
> Gary Palmer                                          FreeBSD Core Team Member
> FreeBSD: Turning PC's into workstations. See http://www.FreeBSD.ORG/ for info
> 

The BIOS on the 2300+ does indeed have to be disabled to get it to work
with FreeBSD.  My tests of turning the BIOS back on was a VERY short lived
experiment, one boot and my partition table got whacked.  However, I
believe that the BIOS only sets 32bit and block mode enable which can be
adjusted in MB BIOS on some systems (at least mine).  After that it works
great, I've got a drive on the primary channel and a CD-ROM on the
secondary (ISA) channel.

--
Rob Snow