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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!not-for-mail From: mike.long@analog.com (Mike Long) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pc-clone.gateway2000,comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: FreeBSD install problems on Gateway2000 DX66V Date: 12 Oct 1993 02:06:37 -0500 Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway Lines: 73 Sender: daemon@cs.utexas.edu Message-ID: <9310120705.AA01452@cthulhu> Reply-To: Mike Long <Mike.Long@analog.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu I think my hardware is giving FreeBSD fits! Has anyone gotten FreeBSD (or NetBSD or plain 386bsd) to work on hardware like the following: HARDWARE: Gateway 2000 DX266V system (shipped 8/30/93) with: * Micronics JX-30 VLB motherboard with 486DX2-66 processor, 256K external cache, and 16M of memory (4M SIMMS). This board has two built-in serial ports with 16450 UARTS, now configured as COM2, IRQ3 and COM3, IRQ 5; and a built in parallel port configured as LPT1, IRQ7. * ATI Graphics Ultra Pro 'XLR' VLB video card w/2MB video memory and RAMDAC upgrade. The video memory is mapped into the system's address space starting at 0x04000000 (64MB). This board has its video ROM BIOS in the standard place (as far as I know), 0xC0000-0xC7FFF. * Western Digital WDAC2420 IDE hard drive (405 MB real capacity) on the motherboard's built-in IDE controller. Dimensions 989 cylinders, 15 heads, 56 sectors (checked with ide-conf). * one 3.5" 1.44MB floppy, on motherboard's built-in controller. * Maxi-Switch 'Anykey' 124-key keyboard. This keyboard has some nonstandard key remapping and macro programming features. * Digicom Connection 96+ modem, installed in 8-bit ISA slot as COM1:, IRQ 4. This board has no onboard ROM as far as I know. This is the only part of the system which is not Gateway-standard. SYMPTOMS: The system gets to a certain point and stops responding to the keyboard; no error message is ever given. In order to get even partway into the install process, I had to disable both the internal and external caches on my system. I also got better results by turning BIOS shadowing on, but I left video BIOS shadowing off. Also, in order to get the install process to work I had to hit the hardware reset button whenever I rebooted (after the halt was complete, of course, unless it hung). Warm boots seemed to always bring about the keyboard lockup problem. I've tried installation with both the kcopy-ah-floppy disk and the kcopy-bt-floppy disk with no real difference in results. I followed the installation notes faithfully. THINGS I HAVEN'T TRIED YET: * Pulling the modem. The Digicom modem 'emulates' a UART, insted of using an actual chip. MSD sees it as an 8250, other software I got off of the net identifies it as a 16450. The UART 'emulation' may be confusing the serial port driver. * Replacing the keyboard. The Anykey keyboard's nonstandard key remapping and/or macro features may be confusing the console driver. SUMMARY: Has *ANYONE* gotten FreeBSD to work on hardware like mine? How about NetBSD or straight 386bsd+patchkit? I'm pretty sure Linux will work, but I've always preferred BSD to SYSV (no *BSD vs. Linux flames please). I have used UNIX extensively as a normal user (mostly SunOS 4.1.x, some HP-UX 8), but I am almost totally ignorant of system administration. Thanks for any help that you can provide. -- Mike Long Mike.Long@Analog.com VLSI Design Engineer voice: (617)461-4030 Analog Devices, SPD Div. FAX: (617)461-3010 Norwood, MA 02062 *this = !opinion(Analog);