Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 09:10:19 -0800 From: Ken Key <key@network-alchemy.com> To: freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Here is what IBM thinks about using FreeBSD on their newer Thinkpads Message-ID: <200011291710.JAA88193@sodium.cips.nokia.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 28 Nov 2000 21:51:19 -0800. <200011290551.eAT5pJF28047@mass.osd.bsdi.com>
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Hi Folks, I spent most of last week repeatedly converting an A21P and a T21 into wortless bricks and back, trying to find a way to get FreeBSD running on them. I distilled the death point to: - Do the install (I've used both boot0 and LILO, doesn't matter), it's a brick - won't even get into the BIOS menu. - Pull drive out and boot on my 600X. Fire up fdisk and change it from 165 to something else. Do not touch MBR or anything else. - Put drive back in (A21P and T21) and I can now get into the BIOS screens or actually boot via boot0 or LILO into Win2K. - Put drive back in 600x, change back to 165, back in *21 - It is a brick. So, while I don't know what IBM is doing with partition type 165, I am convinced it is a key to the boot lock-up problem for the T21 and A21P. Now boot0 has grown from 1 to 2 sectors in length, maybe that's what "the story inside IBM" is trying to talk about - I don't know. However, the above pattern was reproduced with LILO, independant of boot0, so I really don't think boot0 is related to the problem. We have a couple of T20s' running FreeBSD, so this particular behavior seems to be related to changes for the *21 models. The T20 guys are never going to "upgrade" their BIOS after this mess. Regards, K^2 > > > No. Some fool at IBM (or whomever they contracted the BIOS development > > > out to) decided to use partition ID 165 for the suspend-to-disk > > > partition, and the IBM BIOS gets very, very upset when it finds what it > > > thinks is an enormous suspend-to-disk partition on the disk. > > > > Are you sure of this? I know the idea had been bandied around, but so > > had some others. If we go to IBM with claims like this, and they turn > > out to be incorrect, we'll be shooting ourselves in the foot. > > Oh, I almost forgot to mention. > > One of the stories going around inside IBM about why there is a problem > with these laptops and FreeBSD claims that "FreeBSD puts the boot sector > somewhere nonstandard and the BIOS can't find it". > > Whose foot was that, again? 8) > > -- > ... every activity meets with opposition, everyone who acts has his > rivals and unfortunately opponents also. But not because people want > to be opponents, rather because the tasks and relationships force > people to take different points of view. [Dr. Fritz Todt] > V I C T O R Y N O T V E N G E A N C E > > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-mobile" in the body of the message -- Ken Key (key@cips.nokia.com, key@Network-Alchemy.com) Nokia, Clustered IP Solutions, Santa Cruz, CA To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-mobile" in the body of the message
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