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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!newshost.telstra.net!asstdc.scgt.oz.au!metro!metro!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.ysu.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!gatech!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.msfc.nasa.gov!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!proto.ida.org!dthomas-mac.oed.ida.org!user From: dcthomas@ida.org (Dean Thomas) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: New IDE controller and machine won't boot Date: 28 Mar 1996 18:29:55 GMT Organization: IDA, Alexandria, Virginia Lines: 48 Message-ID: <dcthomas-2803961329290001@dthomas-mac.oed.ida.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: dthomas-mac.oed.ida.org Whoops --- sent the message with the wrong e-mail address... A couple of years ago I installed FreeBSD on my 486 computer. I set it up as a dual boot system using Booteasy. The first partition contained FreeBSD version 1.0, the second contained MS-DOS/Windows. The system worked until I changed the IDE controller. The short story... 1) I bought a new Western Digital 1.28 Gig hardrive. 2) Since I already had two Western Digital harddrives and my BIOS did not support harddrives over the 500ish Meg limit, I also bought a new IDE controller with onboard BIOS. The board supports upto 4 IDE drives, automatically configures the system, and letters the drives. 3) I installed everything, afterward I booted in DOS/Windows and started to fdisk and format the new drive. The system crashed, and I tried to reboot. The system hung during boot. I also tried booting FreeBSD, and it hung during boot. 4) Trying to isolate the cause, I booted off of floppies. I could mount both the DOS and FreeBSD partitions. 5) Starting with DOS, I stepped through the boot process and came to the conclusion that MS-DOS had been corrupted. I reinstalled it and everything worked fine on the DOS/Windows side. 6) However, the MSDOS reinstallation also wrote over the Booteasy. I had to reinstall it. 7) I moved to FreeBSD -- I still could not boot off the harddrive, but I could boot off a floppy. I ran fsck -- no problems. I mounted the paritions -- no problems. I replaced the kernal and tried to reboot off the harddrive. It booted thru the first three lines that FreeBSD pauses after, and hung. 8) Digging further, I noticed that the "automatic setup" performed by the new IDE controller card used a different set of parameters for the harddrive than I had used previously. The old BIOS had used 1024 cylanders, the new used 1048. I'm guessing that this caused my problem. (The harddrive was just over the 5?? Meg limit). My question -- I assume that during boot, the system is not looking in the right place for the kernel. Is there a way to fix this WITHOUT completely reinstalling the system. While I backed up the critical files before playing with the system, I did not have enough floppies to back up everything. I certainly don't want start all over. Thanks in advance...Dean Thomas