Return to BSD News archive
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!nsisrv!nasahq!mnewell From: mnewell@nhqvax.hq.nasa.gov Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: Re: Booting 386bsd from a 486dx2 machine Message-ID: <1993Apr14.115402.346@nhqvax.hq.nasa.gov> Date: 14 Apr 93 11:54:01 +0600 References: <1993Apr11.011315.342@nhqvax.hq.nasa.gov> Organization: NASA Headquarters, Washington D. C. Lines: 61 I found part of my problem. After removing all the boards except the Adaptec 1542B and ATI VGA Wonder XL, the system STILL wouldn't boot. I finally noticed a paragraph in the BIOS manual that indicated that the "power on defaults" option set "safe" parameters, rather than restoring the power on values... So, I selected it and BANG! I got the copyright notice. After teasing through the parameters it turns out that setting the option to leave the NUMLOCK off after boot was the culprit. Wow... Unfortunately BSD still doesn't boot. The copywrite message does come up now, but the only other thing that happens is the floppy disk light comes on (and if a disk is present it spins). This is true when I try to boot from the SCSI disk or from the floppy. As I said, all I have in the machine now is the Adaptec SCSI controller and the ATI VGA board. Does anyone have any ideas on this??? Thanks, Mike Newell NASA Science Internet In article <1993Apr11.011315.342@nhqvax.hq.nasa.gov>, mnewell@nhqvax.hq.nasa.gov writes: > I have been running 386bsd for a couple of weeks now on a 386/20 machine > I bought back in '87. This machine has developed the unfortunate habit > of haltin periodically [anywhere from every few minutes to every few days] > for no apparent reason [the problem is not bsd related!] so... > > I trundled down to my neighborhood computer store and acquired a shiny > new 486DX2-50 machine. It has 8Mb memory, 256K cache, 245Mb IDE drive, > and a Paradise SVGA board. The IDE drive is implemented on a combination > board that provides an IDE controller, floppy controller, 2 com ports, > 1 parallel port, and one game port. > > The only problem is I can't get 386bsd (or Linux for that matter) to > boot. I have tried turning off all caching, all BIOS shadowing, etc. > In fact, I even swapped all the boards from the old machine to the new > one with no effect. Symptoms are: > > - When booting from floppy, the floppy does a few seeks, then dead > silence (with the select light on and the drive spinning.) No > messages are printed on the console. CTRL-ALT-DEL has no effect. > This happens with the original dist.fs, my kernel (which has the > fixes for the memory-reporting problem), and the dist.fs.pk-0.2 > disk. > > - When booting from the old disks (SCSI disks on an Adaptec 1542 > board) a small theta symbol is displayed in the upper left hand > corner of the screen; otherwise symptoms are identical to the > floppy boot. > > As I said I have tried various combinations of turning caching and > shadowing off. As far as I can tell there is no option for turning > off parts of the bios a la the HP Vectra problem previously reported. > > Any help would be appreciated! > > Mike Newell > mnewell@nsipo.nasa.gov > > > Did try turning off the cache...