bill@carpet.WLK.COM (Bill Kennedy) (06/03/88)
This a a pesky nuisance but maybe someone knows the answer. From
time to time the floppy drive zero activity light stays on after
V/AT has loaded from the hard disk. Other times it goes off. If
I boot DOS from the hard disk it _always_ goes off. This is a
12MHz AT clone of some kind with a Phoenix BIOS. Has anyone else
encountered this? Any suggestions? Thanks,
--
Bill Kennedy Internet: bill@ssbn.WLK.COM
Usenet: { killer | att-cb | ihnp4!tness7 }!ssbn!billjames@bigtex.uucp (James Van Artsdalen) (06/05/88)
IN article <76@carpet.WLK.COM>, bill@carpet.WLK.COM (Bill Kennedy) wrote: > [...] From > time to time the floppy drive zero activity light stays on after > V/AT has loaded from the hard disk. Other times it goes off. If > I boot DOS from the hard disk it _always_ goes off. This is a > 12MHz AT clone of some kind with a Phoenix BIOS. After a disk access, your BIOS waits a little bit before turning off the drive. This is a good thing because it can save startup time if you do a disk access soon after a previous access, but not right away. This problem is that when uPort starts up, it has to disconnect BIOS, and hence BIOS sometimes never gets a chance to turn the drive motor back off. What *should* happen is that uPort should turn off the floppy disk after booting, but... I got around this problem in an interesting way. I deliberately fragmented my root partition and then re-copied /unix. I then ran fsck -S to clean it up again. The result is that booting takes long enough to let the floppy drive turn off before unix takes over. Ugly, but it works...-- James R. Van Artsdalen ...!ut-sally!utastro!bigtex!james "Live Free or Die" Home: 512-346-2444 Work: 328-0282; 110 Wild Basin Rd. Ste #230, Austin TX 78746
hack@bellboy.UUCP (Greg Hackney) (06/05/88)
In article <2490@bigtex.uucp> james@bigtex.UUCP (James Van Artsdalen) writes: >This problem >is that when uPort starts up, it has to disconnect BIOS, and hence BIOS >sometimes never gets a chance to turn the drive motor back off. What >*should* happen is that uPort should turn off the floppy disk after booting, >but... I got around this problem in an interesting way. I deliberately >fragmented my root partition and then re-copied /unix. I then ran fsck -S >to clean it up again. The result is that booting takes long enough to let the >floppy drive turn off before unix takes over. Ugly, but it works...-- That's ugly! Wouldn't it work just as well to do something like this after uPort is up: echo < /dev/rfd > /dev/null 2>&1 -- Greg
hack@bellboy.UUCP (Greg Hackney) (06/09/88)
>Adding >/dev/rdsk/fd to your MOUNT.rc works and is not ugly at all. Any file >in /etc/rc.d will do, MOUNT just seemed like the most likely place. Sounds like a sure way to write over the floppy.