*BSD News Article 79878


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From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@FreeBSD.org>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Can't install 2.1.5R on Gateway 2000
Date: Fri, 04 Oct 1996 04:58:49 -0700
Organization: Walnut Creek CDROM
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Message-ID: <3254FBF9.41C67EA6@FreeBSD.org>
References: <521dap$luh@wn3.sci.kun.nl>
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To: Aleksander Wittlin <wittlin@sci.kun.nl>

Aleksander Wittlin wrote:
> I am trying to install the 2.1.5R on Gateway 2000 Pentium 100 MHz PC.
> Booting from the floppy disk I get the first boot prompt, then
> after a few seconds the screen scrolls with:
> Error: C:0  H:0  S:0
> Error: C:0  H:0  S:0
> ...
> and so on until I reset it. Attempts to play with the setup options
> did not seem to help.
> The same computer boots from the 2.1.0R floppy,

This is a problem for which we're currently testing work-arounds, but
the root cause would appear to be some bad AMI BIOS code going around. 
Since many motherboard manufacturers use the same code, this appears to
be hitting everyone from Dell to Gateway to Packard-Bell.  Happily, both
Dell and Gateway (don't know about P-B) have jumped to offer BIOS
upgrades on their WEB sites which fix these problems, and several
Gateway and DELL users have reported success with 2.1.5 after upgrading
their BIOS code to the latest vendor supplied versions.

In the longer term, we hope to have work-arounds in place which permit
older versions of the BIOS to work.
-- 
- Jordan Hubbard
  President, FreeBSD Project