edwards@dogie.macc.wisc.edu (mark edwards) (01/07/90)
Hi,
Just got a 386sx from Gateway 2000.
- Friend-386sx MotherBoard with the Neat Chipset
- Both 3 1/2 and 5 1/4 floppys
- 2 megs of simm memory (EMS)
- MicroScience 1060 65 RLL Hard Drive
- Adaptec 2372C RLL disk controller
- Hercules compatible Monochrome card and monitor
- Dos 4.01
When I tried to boot Minix 1.3 it croaked. It booted to fsck control
but croaked when loading the root partition in memory. The error
"Unrecoverable disk error on device 2/0 block 1"
and the hard drive light was lite. At first I thought it was a bad disk or
my 1.2 meg floppy was having problems reading a 360k floppy. But it booted
fine on a Zenith 386 and a Real PC AT. I made a copy with Minix and tryed the
new floppy. Same problem. I said hey even though it says device 2/0 (the
floppy drive /dev/fd0) the hard disk light was on. I used the config to
tell my machine there was no hard drive then it booted fine.
Since my hard drives a RLL and I've read of problems with RLL's, thats my first
guess. In my quick search I found the error message in fs/cache.c. But that
didn't make sense to me. I don't know much about the boot process of Minix
but I suspect it checks out the hard drive after the "=" sign is depressed.
Can some kind soul tell me where the check is made, if it indeed is at all?
The machine came with Dos 4.01 on the hard drive already partitioned, so
using Minix's fdisk may or not fix my problem. I realize I'll have to diddle
at_wini.c.
Does Minix work with EMS memory?
I was able to recompile and build the kernel, fs, and mm from scratch with
only minor trouble with two unlike floppies. Great stuff.
thanks
mark
--
edwards@vms.macc.wisc.edu
UW-Madison, 1210 West Dayton St., Madison WI 53706