*BSD News Article 32872


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From: nate@bsd.coe.montana.edu (Nate Williams)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.bugs
Subject: Re: FreeBSD endless reboot woes :-(
Date: 14 Jul 1994 19:10:10 GMT
Organization: Montana State University, Bozeman  Montana
Lines: 49
Message-ID: <3042ii$9g8@pdq.coe.montana.edu>
References: <CsuDsG.B98@helios.physics.utoronto.ca> <2vvoab$of1@pdq.coe.montana.edu> <CsvyA4.HDK@helios.physics.utoronto.ca>
NNTP-Posting-Host: 153.90.192.29

In article <CsvyA4.HDK@helios.physics.utoronto.ca>,
Jacques Legare <jacques@helios.physics.utoronto.ca> wrote:
>In article <2vvoab$of1@pdq.coe.montana.edu>,
>Nate Williams <nate@bsd.coe.montana.edu> wrote:
>
>>What version of the O.S.?  How did you install it?  What happened
>>when you installed it?  Details, details.
>
>1) FreeBSD v. 1.1 From the Walnut Creek CD-ROM.
>2) I can't. At least not on my MAGUS 486-66 machine.
>3) The kcopy obtained from the CDROM will not boot.

If won't boot from the floppy or from the hard-disk?  I implied from
your original article that it booted from the floppy, but not from the
hard-disk.

>This is a real cheapo flea market brand motherboard that my employer
>uses for OS/2 development.  I have a feeling this board _may_ be stealing
>some RAM for something it does in a way that does not affect DOS and OS/2
>but that is nonetheless nonstandard.

Possibly, but see below.

>Naturally I have tried Enabling/Disabling the shadow ROM options
>in all combinations, to no avail.

Most of the memory type problems would be eliminated by the above tries.

>I suspect that the solution will be to change the default calculations
>that boot uses to decide where to load the kernel.
>
>This suspicion is strengthened by two things.  When I attempt to boot
>on the cheapo the addresses reported are different from when I boot
>on other machines (with identical memory configurations), also FreeBSD
>detects _639K_ of conventional memory.

It's *possible* that the it's a bug (?) in the bootblocks that was fixed
in the 1.1.5.1 bootlblocks.  Certain motherboards (notoriously notebooks)
do things a bit differently, and this was accounted for in the new bootblocks.


Nate


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