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From: lim@gate.sinica.edu.tw (Carmay Lim)
Newsgroups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus,comp.os.386bsd.questions,comp.periphs.scsi,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.systems
Subject: Problems with PVI-486AP4, NCR53c810 and FBSD 2.0
Date: 20 Feb 1995 15:07:13 GMT
Organization: Computing Center, Academia Sinica
Lines: 95
Message-ID: <3iab71$5qu@gate.sinica.edu.tw>
NNTP-Posting-Host: lim%@gate.sinica.edu.tw
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]
This is a semi-followup to my wildly popular "List of recommended
hardware components" thread. ;-) For some reason or another, the
dealer I talked to could not get an ASUS PCI/I-486SP3G for me, even
though ASUS is based right here in Taipei. Anyway, he sent me an ASUS
PVI-486AP4 motherboard (Intel Aries chipset) with the SMC Super I/O
card and the PCI-SC200 SCSI-2 card (based on the NCR53c810) instead.
It has an AMD 486DX4/100 with 256K cache installed. The NCR's boot
message says it is running "v3.0 SCSI BIOS, PCI Rev. 2.0,
NCRPCI-3.04.00". A Quantum Empire 1080S is attached to the SCSI-2
card.
When I try to boot with the FreeBSD 2.0-950210-SNAP disks, I get
through most of the device detection process. When the PCI part comes
up though, I see this:
[...]
npx0: INT16 interface
pci0: scanning device 0..31, mechanism=1.
pci0:5: INTEL CORPORATION, device=0x486, class=old [not supported]
ncr0 <ncr53c810 scsi> int a (config) not bound on pci0:9
reg20: virtual=0xf2d04000 physical=0xc0000000
CACHE TEST FAILED: host wrote 1, ncr read -1.
CACHE TEST FAILED: ncr wrote 2, host read 1.
CACHE TEST FAILED: ncr wrote 2, read back -1.
CACHE INCORRECTLY CONFIGURED.
vga0 <display device> on pci0:11
pci uses physical addresses from 0xc0000000 to 0xc0001000
changing root device to fd0c
[...]
Question 1: why does it say "class=old [not supported]" in the
third line? Is this particular motherboard/chipset/CPU combination
not supported under FreeBSD?
Question 2: the NCR is plugged into the first PCI slot and the
Miro S3-964 2-meg graphics card is plugged into the third PCI slot. I
assume this corresponds to the number after the "pci0:" label. Are
there any particular BIOS settings that need to be changed? I scanned
though some old messages and tried some of the ideas mentioned there,
but no luck so far. These are some of my BIOS settings (all set to
"Setup Defaults"):
Slot 1 (master): Latency timer: 80 PCI Clock
Using IRQ: NA
Trigger method: Level (auto)
Video BIOS Shadow: Enabled
PCI Posted Write Buffer: Enabled
CPU To PCI Bursting: Enabled
CPU To PCI Byte Merging: Disabled
Fast Page Code Read: Enabled
Fast Page Data Read: Enabled
Fast Page Write: Enabled
Pipelined CAS: Disabled
DRAM Timing/Mragin: 70ns/Max
SRAM Timing: Normal
Cache Update Scheme: Write-back
Video BIOS Cacheable: Disabled
Question 3: Which cache is it testing? The Quantum's disk cache
or the SCSI controller's? The manual mentions nothing about
configuring disk cache.
Question 4: When it tries to reboot, FreeBSD prints the usual
"Syncing disks" and "Rebooting..." messages, but it never actually
reboots the machine. It just hangs. I have to hit the hardware reset
myself. Also, the memory check stops at 1024K and the subsequent BIOS
boot screen says I have 640K RAM and 0K extended. FreeBSD then hangs
before it gets to its own memory scanner. Sound like a motherboard
defect?
Note that when FreeBSD does continue to boot, sysinstall does not
recognize the drive and therefore I cannot fdisk it. I was able to
swap in an Adaptec 1542C from another 486 and got as far as unpacking
the contents of the cpio floppy. Now if I try to reboot with the
Adaptec, it goes into an endless loop at the FreeBSD boot manager
prompt. It prints "Default: F?" (with the question mark) after listing
the two OS choices (DOS and BSD, in my case). No matter what key I
hit, it just redisplays the prompt.
If I put the NCR SCSI back, it boots up normally. The same PCI
error messages are displayed, and the kernel panics when it can't mount
sd0a as the root filesystem. I don't have another PCI system to play
with, so it could be a motherboard defect for all I know. MS-DOS, of
course, doesn't give a hoot about what kind of drive it boots from,
but FreeBSD certainly takes exception to it. Does someone have a
solution to this, or should I insist that the dealer find me a working
SP3G board? Any advice is greatly appreciated.
- Brian Tao (taob@io.org, pretending to be carmay@gate.sinica.edu.tw)