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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msunews!uwm.edu!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!pipex!uunet!psinntp!adam.cc.sunysb.edu!newsserv.cs.sunysb.edu!starkhome.cs.sunysb.edu!localhost!gene From: gene@starkhome.cs.sunysb.edu (Gene Stark) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.bugs Subject: Re: Hard reboot when acessing floppy-tape in FreeBSD-2.0R Date: 9 Dec 94 07:09:50 Organization: Gene Stark's home system Lines: 31 Message-ID: <GENE.94Dec9070950@starkhome.cs.sunysb.edu> References: <AVRAAD.94Nov29082515@qssw04.qsss08.gs.com> <3bl9n6$sd4@pdq.coe.montana.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.cs.sunysb.edu. In-reply-to: nate@bsd.coe.montana.edu's message of 1 Dec 1994 19:55:18 GMT >>I just installed FreeBSD-2.0R this weekend and everything went >>fine (great job guys!). However, I was reading the man pages >>on 'ft', the floppy-tape controller which is supposed to work >>with a Colorado Jumbo 250MB tape drive. Whenever I try tar-ing >>something to the tape I get a complete reboot of my system - >>not even a panic - the screen goes blank, and then I see my >>normal reboot BIOS message!! > >I'm pretty sure that a message went by saying there was a conflict >in the 'ft' driver and one of the other drivers. You're best bet >would be to send your question to questions@freebsd.org and see >if the mailing lists people know what to do with it. The reboot is caused by the ft driver failing to check whether the ft device was properly probed at system bootup before trying to use it. I sent a patch for this to the freebsd core team, and it apparently got installed in freebsd-current on Dec 3. There are apparently some reports that the ft driver stomps on the floppy disk drives, but I have not observed this myself. I currently use the ft driver with a Colorado 250. If you want to use the ft driver, you have to make sure that the device is probing properly when the system boots, otherwise when you try to access the device you will trigger the system bug and get a panic. If it is not probing properly, then you need to read the message that comes out during the kernel autoconfiguration when the system boots, which explains why the device did not probe. If the device probes properly, you should be able to use it without getting the panic. - Gene Stark