Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!uknet!yorkohm!u8acb From: u8...@ohm.york.ac.uk (Alex Barclay) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Recompiling the bootcode. Fix for my PC Message-ID: <1992Apr11.210239.2673@ohm.york.ac.uk> Date: 11 Apr 92 21:02:39 GMT Organization: Electronics Department, University of York, UK Lines: 29 Could anyone out there in net land help me with a cure that I'm trying to make BSD 386 boot on my PC (386SX AMI Bios, IDE H/D Seagate). I can get the thing to boot off the floppy by... Wait for it... 1) Telling the BIOS that the HD isn't present so it doesn't try to boot from it 2) Waiting after switch on till the machine realises that there isn't a bootable device and aska for a boot disk. 3) Inserting the dist.fs disk and pressing the key as instructed. The OS now boot perfectly. And I can play with it, including the tty hangup demonstrated by the more command. 4) I can access the hard disk, label it, make a file system but the machine displays the same problem trying to boot off that as off the floppy. The strange bit is that the floppy drive light comes on when the HD boot fails. This is definately strange and I'm am looking for a cure, involving going through the chip datasheets that I have and checking what the code is doing. The problem is that I have no way of testing my theories. Is there anyone who could compile/assemble up some boot code that I send them on a working 386BSD system, then send the resulting binaries back so I can glue them onto the front of a boot disk??? Any help appreciated... Alex.
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Path: sparky!uunet!usc!sdd.hp.com!hp-col!bdale From: bd...@col.hp.com (Bdale Garbee) Subject: Re: Recompiling the bootcode. Fix for my PC Sender: no...@col.hp.com (notes) Message-ID: <1992Apr12.041455.25340@col.hp.com> Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1992 04:14:55 GMT References: <1992Apr11.210239.2673@ohm.york.ac.uk> Organization: HP Colorado Springs Division Lines: 23 u8...@ohm.york.ac.uk (Alex Barclay) writes: > I can get the thing to boot off the floppy by... Wait for it... Fascinating! I tried your sequence of operations on the 16Mhz 386SX system I've been trying to boot 386BSD on, and it worked exactly as you document!. My system config is: - no-name 386SX 16Mhz motherboard with Intel 387SX16, 4MB RAM, AMI Bios - WD1006 with Maxtor XT-2190 and a 1.44M floppy drive - no-name hercules-clone video card and Northgate keyboard This system had exactly one time booted 386bsd correctly from floppy, but on every other attempt hung after the 'color' token as has been so often described. As you noted, it still hangs that way when attempting to boot off the hard disk. I wonder what happens when a disk isn't found that is tickling the kernel/hardware? Maybe a double-initialization, or something? I don't currently have any easy way to build a new kernel, so this still doesn't leave me with a useful 386BSD system... Bizarre, but thoroughly amusing! :-) Bdale
Path: sparky!uunet!munnari.oz.au!goanna!minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au!s871780 From: s87...@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au (Antony Suter) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: Recompiling the bootcode. Fix for my PC Message-ID: <1992Apr13.104624.16982@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au> Date: 13 Apr 92 15:46:24 GMT References: <1992Apr11.210239.2673@ohm.york.ac.uk> Organization: RMIT Computer Centre, Melbourne Australia. Lines: 19 u8...@ohm.york.ac.uk (Alex Barclay) writes: >I can get the thing to boot off the floppy by... Wait for it... >1) Telling the BIOS that the HD isn't present so it doesn't try to boot from it I believe that Advanced AMI bioses have a CMOS config option specifying which drives and the order in which to boot. You can set it to 'A: C:' or 'C:' etc. Look at yours, its probably 'C:' ! If you dont know how to get to your CMOS setup... 1) Be careful changing it! 2) Press the 'DEL' key just after the memory count before the rest of the boot is completed. (cold boot). Enter advanced CMOS setup. 3) Be careful changing it! 4) Be very careful changing it! -- Antony Suter s87...@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au Melbourne, Australia ant...@werple.pub.uu.oz.au "Call me Jack, stranger things have happened!"
Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!uknet!yorkohm!u8acb From: u8...@ohm.york.ac.uk (Alex Barclay) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: Recompiling the bootcode. Fix for my PC Message-ID: <1992Apr13.111123.5981@ohm.york.ac.uk> Date: 13 Apr 92 11:11:23 GMT References: <1992Apr11.210239.2673@ohm.york.ac.uk> <1992Apr13.104624.16982@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au> Organization: Electronics Department, University of York, UK Lines: 20 In <1992Apr13.1...@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au> s87...@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au (Antony Suter) writes: >I believe that Advanced AMI bioses have a CMOS config option specifying >which drives and the order in which to boot. You can set it to 'A: C:' or >'C:' etc. Look at yours, its probably 'C:' ! If you dont know how to get to >your CMOS setup... 1) Be careful changing it! 2) Press the 'DEL' key just >after the memory count before the rest of the boot is completed. (cold boot). >Enter advanced CMOS setup. 3) Be careful changing it! 4) Be very careful >changing it! Well from what you describe I haven't got an advanced AMI BIOS. The boot sequence is always A: then C:. The point of disabling the hard drive was so that I could get the BIOS to barf up the insert boot disk message. BSD doesn't need the bios to tell it about the hard drive so it's a case of the BIOS behaving differently on booting first time of a 3.5in floppy and booting after the message. It's very odd but I'm looking to have a go at fixing it, by first printing numbers to the screen from the boot sequence at various points. When the numbers stop then I've found the problem! Alex.
Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!uknet!icdoc!news!lmjm From: lm...@doc.ic.ac.uk (Lee M J McLoughlin) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: Recompiling the bootcode. Fix for my PC Message-ID: <LMJM.92Apr14145237@raquel.doc.ic.ac.uk> Date: 14 Apr 92 14:52:37 GMT References: <1992Apr11.210239.2673@ohm.york.ac.uk> Sender: use...@doc.ic.ac.uk (News System) Organization: Dept. of Computing, Imperial College, London. U.K. Lines: 29 In-Reply-To: u8acb@ohm.york.ac.uk's message of 11 Apr 92 21:02:39 GMT Nntp-Posting-Host: raquel.doc.ic.ac.uk Have you tried the locore.s patch? A copy of my kernel with this patch applied along with the recent collection of patches to get kern_execve to work is in: src.doc.ic.ac.uk:incoming/386bsd.lmjm The two patches applied to this kernel are given below. I also rebuilt it to allow NFS. I cannot promise that these are the only patches. I've been hit by an odd problem with login and have been bouncing in and out of RCS revisions. From: ja...@raid.dell.com (James Van Artsdalen) Subject: a20 bug in locore.s Message-ID: <1992Mar31....@raid.dell.com> Date: 31 Mar 92 02:28:30 GMT From: ting...@plains.NoDak.edu (Mark Tinguely) Subject: Re: Fixed problem with long command lines Message-ID: <16...@plains.NoDak.edu> Date: 9 Apr 92 02:50:02 GMT Copies are in, respectively: src.doc.ic.ac.uk:386BSD/comp.unix.bsd/volume92/Apr/920401.11.Z src.doc.ic.ac.uk:386BSD/comp.unix.bsd/volume92/Apr/920409.20.Z -- -- Lee McLoughlin. Phone: +44 71 589 5111 X 5085 Dept of Computing, Imperial College, Fax: +44 71 581 8024 180 Queens Gate, London, SW7 2BZ, UK. Email: L.McLo...@doc.ic.ac.uk