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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!uunet!cis.ohio-state.edu!news.sei.cmu.edu!drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu!ghod From: ghod@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: [386bsd] Strange solution to booting problem Message-ID: <1992Sep18.192448.2077@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu> Date: 18 Sep 92 19:24:45 -0500 References: <1992Sep17.004545.2065@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu> <19aneaINNkp@agate.berkeley.edu> Organization: Carnegie Mellon Computer Club Lines: 48 > Ah ha! This is actually very significant! Good for you (and lady luck). > > Some BIOS use slightly different parameters for the floppy disk controller > to make it faster -- if this fails, it should fall back on the "less > efficient" values. > > What I believe happened is this: By inserting the wrong non-bootable > floppy, a program left by DOS was run (hence, your error message). > which adjusted the values to "slow" When you immediately followed up > with the Tiny 386BSD floppy, it worked. In other words, you imposed > a timing delay in the bootstrap (it must be loading too quickly). > Simply trying to boot the floppy over and over could not "readjust" > the values. > > Here's a simple test to validate this -- measure the time between the blink > of the floppy disk light and the keyboard blinks for the failed case and the > successful case. It should lengthen. > > This is an important find. The bootstrap code will have to be carefully > reexamined (as usual). > > Lynne Jolitz. Well, I tried what you suggested, but there's a problem. The floppy drive light never does blink in the "failed case". I did catch it blink off for an instant during the "succesful case", but that doesn't help without something for comparisson. You may be interested to know of a similar problem concerning BSD/386 from BSDI. Someone where I work expressed an interest in it and we wound up ordering it for him. My boss and I tried installing it on a 486DX-33 earlier today but we were frustrated by the same problem I've been having: the boot floppy refuses to boot. It just sits there and spins. In this particular instance, the 'bait and switch' didn't work. By coincidence, we had a Dell 386 notebook computer on hand and it booted perfectly there. (BSDI distributes only 3.5" boot disks and the Dell was the only machine in the place with a 3.5" floppy for a boot drive.) I later obtained a patched boot disk image which I'll be downloading later. In any event, I'm now relatively sure that I'll be able to install 386BSD 0.1 sucessfully and I'm now more anxious than ever to finish downloading the binaries. If you (or anyone else) should come up with a patched bootable you'd like me to test, let me know. --Bill Paul Assistant System Administrator New Windsor Associates L.P. ghod@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu -or- ghod@drycas.bitnet