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From: Dave Humphreys <dave@datatone.co.uk>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Problems: EISA+1542; NE2000(PCI); onboard MACH-64
Date: Sat, 04 Jan 1997 13:12:15 +0000
Organization: Datatone Ltd
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:33530
I am having several problems with installing FreeBSD on two separate
machines.
Machine 1
=========
This is an EISA based machine, details of which (from EISA ICU) are:
DATAEXPERT EISA 32-Bit 486 System Board
ID: OPT0000
Manufacturer: OPTi, Inc
I have an Adaptec 1542C SCSI controller, set to:
IO port: 330-333
DMA: 5
IRQ: 11
BIOS: DC000
I also have an NE2000 clone, set to:
IO port: 300
IRQ: 5
I also have a standard VGA card.
The machine works fine when booted from MS-DOS. I have a small (50M) DOS
partition on a single Seagate ST31200N 1Gbyte SCSI drive. I intend to
use the remainder of the space on the disk for FreeBSD.
I can run the self tests in the Adaptec SCSISelect utility without any
problems.
So there does not seem to be any fundemental problem with the machine
configuration.
I can boot from the FreeBSD boot diskette, the NE2000 is located as ed1,
as expected, and the Adaptec is detected as aha0.
The probe messages indicate that the Adaptec is found OK at all the
right addresses etc and that the disk itself is found and identified
correctly.
The floppy disks are controlled by the Adaptec and these are located OK
as well.
I can run the FreeBSD installation system without problem; the existing
disk partitions are read correctly.
However, when I get to the very end of the process, at the 'writing
partition information to drive sd0' point, the system hangs and says:
sysinstall: write: Input/output error
panic: Going nowhere without my init!
The second virtual terminal shows:
(list of other DEBUG: messages)
sd0(aha0:0:0): timed out
sd0(aha0:0:0): timed out
adaptor not taking commands.. frozen?!
Debugger("aha1542") called.
AGAIN
init died (signal 0, exit1)
My hunch is that the early disk access is done via the BIOS, which
works, and the later disk access is done via the aha0 driver, which
doesn't. Further, I suspect that maybe the aha0 driver fails due to
cache interference with some communication area in RAM. If this is the
case, I could maybe fix the problem in the EISA configuration relating
to the Adaptec card, but I don't know where such communication happens
(and maybe it is not fixed?).
Anyone any ideas on this?
Machine 2
=========
This is a Pentium PCI based machine (Intel motherboard, I believe
marketed as 'Atlantis'). The motherboard has an on-board ATI MACH-64
graphics chipset with 1Mbyte display RAM. I have a PCI NE2000 clone
network card.
I have installed FreeBSD on this machine, but have two problems:
1) This PCI version of the NE2000 has more IO port address options than
the ISA card (e.g. FF40). This card is designated '8029'. I can set the
IO port explicitly with an MS-DOS utility to 280 (or 300) but as soon as
I reboot the computer, it Plugs-and-Plays and resets to something beyond
my control.
The -c option at boot does not allow me to configure any address for the
NE2000 other than 280 or 300.
Is it possible to configure the NE2000 driver to operate at other IO
port addresses? Will the driver work when it is addressing a PCI card
rather than an ISA card (even though it is a compatible type)?
2) I have not managed to get the X-server to operate as a MACH-64.
Windows 95 seems to work with an "ATI Graphics Pro Turbo PCI" driver on
this machine, so I had much hope. However, using the same selection with
the xf86config program did not result in success. I have fiddled about
with many options, but I have virtually no information about the
hardware. Every time I try to start the server when configured for
Mach-64, the screen goes blank and the machine hangs.
I have successfully got the VGA 640x480 server going.
The startx output (saved to a file) indicates that the Mach-64 server
cannot find a dot-clock to match either 1024 or 800 resolutions, but
settles on 640x480 resolution. There appear to be no other obvious
errors and the last line in the log file says:
"Apperture mapped to 0x4000000"
The only other thing that might be significant is that I did not enter a
RAMDAC configuration parameter and I get a "Ramdac is Unknown (0)"
message followed by "Using 6 bits per RGB value". Is this why I get no
display?
--
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Dave Humphreys // Tel: (+44) 1531 829009 // dave@techimage.co.uk //
// Techimage Ltd // Fax: (+44) 1531 829001 // //
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////