Date: Thu, 13 Apr 1995 08:39:26 -0700 From: Scott Blachowicz <scott@statsci.com> To: "House of Debuggin'" <wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu> Cc: bugs@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: 80387 hangs system at divide by zero Message-ID: <m0rzQzQ-000r3vC@main.statsci.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 13 Apr 1995 02:10:40 -0400." <199504130610.CAA04290@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu>
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"House of Debuggin'" <wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu> wrote:
> Argh... No, it actually means you should tell us exactly what sort of
> Pentium-90 system you have and then provide more details. :)
I've done that to the freebsd-{questions,hackers,current} lists. Guess
I'll try 'bugs', too.
> > The only suggestion I've gotten on trying to figure out the problem is to
> > start disabling things in my BIOS setup to try to dumb things down.
>
> Well, you have to be a bit more specific than just 'sits and spins.'
I'll append details from previous postings to this message.
> what point does it start to 'sit and spin?'
At the point where I would expect it to be reading the kernel or something
from the diskette. The drive light goes on & stays on and I can hear the
diskette spinning if I listen closely enough.
> Have you also tried FTPing new disk images? In binary mode? (Yes, I know:
> stupid questions, but we have to cover all the bases.)
Yup. Also, the first one I did was a boot.flp.gz - I would expect gunzip
to complain about the .gz file if it weren't done in binary mode. I've
used the perl mirror-2.3 script (on a Internet-connected SunOS system)
and/or dired/efs under GNU emacs v19 to do the downloads. They should
both be doing binary mode automatically.
> > I think I'm nearly convinced I've the boot disc right (hmmm...maybe I
> > should try booting a different computer with one).
>
> That would help, yes. If you have another machine handy, please try it.
I just recreated a 0322-SNAP boot disc with 'rawrite' on a work PC (a
486/66 w/32Mb RAM). I got to the "Boot:" prompt which timed out, sucks in
the kernel off of the floppy, then drops me into the "Welcome to FreeBSD!"
screen. Now I'll have to go try that at home with the exact same disc
just to be sure. I suppose it's possible that there was some problem
writing the boot disc at home, but I find that hard to believe.
> One way to see if this is a problem is to keep a sharp eye on your
> keyboard LEDs. The keyboard probe actually tries to reset the keyboard,
I'll check for that.
Thanx!!
Scott Blachowicz Ph: 206/283-8802x240 StatSci, a div of MathSoft, Inc.
1700 Westlake Ave N #500
scott@statsci.com Seattle, WA USA 98109
Scott.Blachowicz@seaslug.org
---------- Start of forwarded message
I just pulled down the 950322-SNAP tree to use as my first attempt at
installing FreeBSD on my home system. That system is:
Pentium-90; 16 Mb RAM; 256K cache
CAF Tech motherboard / SiS chipset / Award 4.50G BIOS
PCI IDE - boot disk
NCR 8150S PCI SCSI - Toshiba 3501 CDROM, Exabyte EXB-8200 8mm drive
ATI Mach64 (2Mb)/17" display
Sound Blaster AWE32
floppy/2S/1P/game card
one 3.5" floppy drive; no 5.25" floppy drive
I've tried using both RAWRITE & RAWRITE3 from the tools/dos-tools
directory to put a gunzip'd boot.flp.gz onto a 3.5" diskette, then boot
from that. My first attempt (with RAWRITE) ended up having my boot
process completely ignore the inserted diskette. My 2nd & 3rd attempts
using RAWRITE3 ended up just sitting there spinning the diskette drive for
a while with no output to my screen before I came back and tried
CTRL-ALT-DEL with no results and the RESET button. I then pulled the boot
floppy out. The reboot sequence got to the point where I think it
normally scans the system & spits out the Award BIOS banner and just hung.
I power cycled and got the same hang. I then turned the system off for a
while and turned it back on - it came up fine.
After all that, I repeated the same business with a the 950210-SNAP
boot.flp and got the same results.
Possible explanations?
1) Do I really need a 1.2Mb 5.25" drive in order to use that boot.flp
image? If so, what are the chances of getting a 1.4M 3.5" drive
boot.flp image? It seems many systems are shipped without 5.25" drives
these days.
2) Is there something about my machine configuration that is confusing the
boot code?
So, does anyone have any idea
1) what I'm doing wrong?
2) how I can do it right?
3) what the heck is happening here?
4) has anyone successfully booted the SNAPs using the supplied boot.flp on
a 1.4M 3.5" drive?
help? [whimper]
---------- End of forwarded message
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