paul@infotel.UUCP (paul) (06/26/90)
In article <1990Jun22.052443.184@pilikia.pegasus.com>, art@pilikia.pegasus.com (Art Neilson) writes: > Has anyone had any difficulties installing the new ISC 2.2 release ?? Yes I have the same problem > After inserting the install > disk, I hit enter and an INTERACTIVE Operating Systems copyright > notice appears. The system reads the floppy for a minute or so after > this, and another copyright notice appears. The system reads the floppy > for about 30 seconds more, then stops. forever. After breaking out and modifing all the install scripts to do echo's after almost every step, the problem seems to be in their user interface (ui). > ISC 2.0.2 installs *just fine* on my system, it's quite stable. > I suppose some configuration info may be helpful, so here goes ;^) I have > a 33MHz 386 TransComputer main board with 8MB RAM, and a ST4383E hard > disk driven by an Adaptec 2322B-8 controller. My system is a 33Mhz NIC system (micronics knock off) with 8MB ram 32K cache, pheonix bios, a micropolis 1588 & cdc wren 7 on an adaptec 1542 controler and a monochrome display adapter. I have tried different diaplay adapters up thru VGA with no help (Interactive said it _had_ to be a bad display adapter). I installed these same disk as a test on another machine without problems to remove any doubt as to the integrety of the disk's. Just give me the old fashion install scripts without pick lists and all the fancy stuff and I sure it would install. Paul Bilke StarTel Inc. (texsun|ut-emx)!infotel!paul 1(409)779-2830)
art@pilikia.pegasus.com (Art Neilson) (06/27/90)
In article <542@csource.OZ.AU> david@csource.OZ.AU (david nugent) writes: >In <1990Jun22.052443.184@pilikia.pegasus.com> art@pilikia.pegasus.com (Art Neilson) writes: > >>Has anyone had any difficulties installing the new ISC 2.2 release ?? >>The install procedure hangs on me every time I attempt installation. >>I insert the boot disk into my drive, power up the system, and insert >>the install disk when prompted to do so. After inserting the install >>disk, I hit enter and an INTERACTIVE Operating Systems copyright >>notice appears. The system reads the floppy for a minute or so after >>this, and another copyright notice appears. The system reads the floppy >>for about 30 seconds more, then stops. forever. > > >AHHH! Another fellow suffer. :-( > >I lived with this for literally days trying to figure i out. I poked >around the install disk for a few hours using "echo *" (to display >files :-)), then eventually mounted it for a better look. > >Tried repeatedly all sorts of things. It apparently hangs somewhere in >/usr/lib/ui/init.sh after being called by /INSTALL. Why, I can't figure >it out. Eventually, I grabbed the drive, used another machine and >the whole upgrade when flawlessly using the same set of disks. > >Damned if I can explain it... > >My config had a couple of things in common with yours: > >>I suppose some configuration info may be helpful, so here goes ;^) I have >>a 33MHz 386 TransComputer main board with 8MB RAM, and a ST4383E hard >>disk driven by an Adaptec 2322B-8 controller. > >The machine I had problems with was: > > 33MHZ 386 Micronics motherboard > 16 Meg RAM (taking out RAM made no diff) > Hercules card/monitor (a clone), changing it to a > VGA didn't help either > Future Domain TNC 830 SCSI controller > Maxtor drive (can't recall the exact model, XT-4380 I think) > Anvil 4-port Brumby > WD8003E Ethernet card > >Took out the peripherls, and went through all the usual things. > >One other thing I might mention is that when I broke out of install >as soon as the second copyright came up, I could shut down ok. But >if I broke out after it had hung, it caused a panic trap 0x0000000E >when I executed 'shutdown'. > >Transferring it all to another Micronics (different model) motherboard >running at 20MHZ solved all problems. Once it was on the drive, I >transferred it back to the 33MHZ one, and it's been purring like that >for a few days since without an ounce of problem. That same machine >is now running not only the 4-port Brumby, but 36-40 Telnet sessions >at once, Archives QC tape drive and a parallel printer quite nicely >(in fact, we HAD to upgrade the Unix, since 2.0.2 couldn't support >more than 16 Telnet sessions). > > >>I'd like to know if my problem is an isolated incident >>or a problem many of us are experiencing. > >Apparently not. I think ISC have something to fix. > >Hope this helps track it down. I'm likely to do a few more 2.2.0 >installations in the very near future. Having to use a different >motherboard for the install tends to make clients a little nervous. >;-) > > >david > >-- > * Unique Computing Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Australia. * > david@csource.oz.au 3:632/348@fidonet 28:4100/1@signet YES ... This is *exactly* what is happening to me. I also tried the echo * trick suggested to me by several individuals in response to my original article. I also tracked the problem down to the script /usr/lib/ui/init.sh, which the INSTALL script dots in right at the beginning of the main body of the script (after all the shell function definitions). I have thought of trying what you did, that is put my drive on another box and do the install there. Now that I know it worked for you, I'll go attempt that myself. I hope ISC is reading these articles and responds ;^) I'd really like to have the problem fixed. I did report the problem to ISC last week, they promised to mail me *another* replacement disk today. Based on your response however, the problem is probably a hardware incompatability. Thanks again for the response, nice to know I'm not the only one in this boat!! -- Arthur W. Neilson III | ARPA: art@pilikia.pegasus.com Bank of Hawaii Tech Support | UUCP: uunet!ucsd!nosc!pegasus!pilikia!art
brando@uicsl.csl.uiuc.edu (06/27/90)
Well if there was a place to send a vote on the net, I would be voting... Yes, I too have had the same problems you describe. I do have the luxury of being able to install 2.2 on an RLL, ESDI, and SCSI system. Everything seems to *INSTALL* correctly on the RLL and ESDI systems, but as for the SCSI, forget it. I have the Adaptec 154* SCSI controller on a 25MHz AMI motherboard with 8mb standard video card, etc. I first tried removing all other cards in the machine as well as all other SCSI peripherials except for the 330mb HP drive. Nothing seemed to work. I even took the 338mb ESDI drive and Adaptec controller out of one of the other machines, installed it into the 25MHz machine in question. All seemed to run fine, so I installed the SCSI controller with an Archive 2150 tape drive ONLY, and rebuilt the kernel to include the tape drive. Well, that wouldn't even get past the Booting the UNIX system.... prompt. All three systems worked fine with 2.0.2, so I re-installed this system on the SCSI computer, and tried to get both the ESDI and SCSI drives to work concurrently. With 2.0.2 and both controllers, it wouldn't work either. But (an even more interesting note) if you install 2.0.2 on the ESDI drive (by itself) and then on the SCSI drive (by itself), it seems to load the boot code from the ESDI drive and then continue the boot from the SCSI drive!!!! So, my conclusion is that all should not worry as I did. I kept thinking that it was me doing something wrong, or that my hardware was the problem. I think from all of the swapping and re-installing I can definitely say that interactive is problem in my case. In the most general sense, 2.2 **SHOULD** have worked right out of the box on my SCSI only system since 2.0.2 did. I have to believe that Interactive NEVER tried their system out on an Adaptec SCSI card, because it obviously wouldn't have even booted!! How would the user screw up the installation when it doesn't even proceed past the boot point? I called Interactive several times, and a very helpful Tech support guy named david was very patient in to listening to all the problems I had, and writing them down. I DO believe Interactive will fix the problem.......i hope..... Brando +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Brandon Brown | Internet: brando@uicsl.csl.uiuc.edu | | Coordinated Science Laboratory | UUCP: uiucuxc!addamax!brando!brown | | University of Illinois | CompuServe: 73040,447 | | Urbana, IL 61801 | GEnie: macbrando | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
art@pilikia.pegasus.com (Art Neilson) (07/01/90)
In article <26825@infotel.UUCP> paul@infotel.UUCP (paul) writes: >In article <1990Jun22.052443.184@pilikia.pegasus.com>, art@pilikia.pegasus.com (Art Neilson) writes: >> Has anyone had any difficulties installing the new ISC 2.2 release ?? > > Yes I have the same problem > >> After inserting the install >> disk, I hit enter and an INTERACTIVE Operating Systems copyright >> notice appears. The system reads the floppy for a minute or so after >> this, and another copyright notice appears. The system reads the floppy >> for about 30 seconds more, then stops. forever. > > After breaking out and modifing all the install scripts to do > echo's after almost every step, the problem seems to be in their > user interface (ui). > >> ISC 2.0.2 installs *just fine* on my system, it's quite stable. >> I suppose some configuration info may be helpful, so here goes ;^) I have >> a 33MHz 386 TransComputer main board with 8MB RAM, and a ST4383E hard >> disk driven by an Adaptec 2322B-8 controller. > > My system is a 33Mhz NIC system (micronics knock off) > with 8MB ram 32K cache, pheonix bios, > a micropolis 1588 & cdc wren 7 on an adaptec > 1542 controler and a monochrome display adapter. I have tried > different diaplay adapters up thru VGA with no help (Interactive > said it _had_ to be a bad display adapter). I installed these > same disk as a test on another machine without problems to > remove any doubt as to the integrety of the disk's. > >Just give me the old fashion install scripts without pick lists and >all the fancy stuff and I sure it would install. > >Paul Bilke >StarTel Inc. >(texsun|ut-emx)!infotel!paul 1(409)779-2830) Well, at the suggestion of several people I pulled my hard drive and controller, went over to the local computer store and hooked up my drive to a 386 Micronics 20Mhz motherboard. My ISC 2.2 installed *just fine*. Problem fixed I thought, after all I had gotten net mail from a guy in Australia who had done this same thing to bypass the 2.2 install hang problem. I took my drive home with the new ISC release installed on it, put it back in my system and fired the system up. Lo and behold, the kernel panic'ed. Below you can see the gory details firsthand: PANIC: cr0 0xFFFFFFED cr 0x3FCBB100 cr3 0x00002000 tlb 0x0000118C ss 0x00000EB0 uesp 0x00000080 efl 0x00010212 ipl 0x00000000 cs 0x00000158 eip 0xD0011FBE err 0x00000002 trap 0x0000000E eax 0x00000000 ecx 0x00000020 edx 0x00000000 ebx 0x00000000 esp 0xE0000E70 ebp 0xE0000E88 esi 0x3FCBB100 edi 0x3FCBB100 ds 0x00000160 es 0x00000160 fs 0x00000000 gs 0x00000000 PANIC: Kernel mode trap. Type 0x0000000E Trying to dump 1952 Pages .......................................... ad nauseum ...... 1952 Pages dumped Press any key to reboot The panic occurred right after the following message was displayed during system startup: INTERACTIVE UNIX OPERATING SYSTEM (1-2 USER LICENSE) SERIAL NUMBER: xxxxxx This pretty much proves that the install disks aren't defective, what we have here is a major incompatibility with the new release 2.2 and my TransComputer 386 33Mhz motherboard. Interactive Hollis has pretty much washed their hands of my problem, so I'll have to hope and pray that ISC Santa Monica can work with Transcomputer and come up with a fix ... otherwise I will have thrown several hundred dollars down the proverbial toilet. -- Arthur W. Neilson III | ARPA: art@pilikia.pegasus.com Bank of Hawaii Tech Support | UUCP: uunet!ucsd!nosc!pegasus!pilikia!art
art@pilikia.pegasus.com (Art Neilson) (07/03/90)
In article <1990Jul1.125113.970@pilikia.pegasus.com> art@pilikia.pegasus.com (Art Neilson) writes: >In article <26825@infotel.UUCP> paul@infotel.UUCP (paul) writes: >>In article <1990Jun22.052443.184@pilikia.pegasus.com>, art@pilikia.pegasus.com (Art Neilson) writes: >>> Has anyone had any difficulties installing the new ISC 2.2 release ?? [ lengthy discussion on ISC 2.2 install disk hang problem, possible causes and various attempted resolutions deleted for the sake of brevity ..... ] Today I spoke with an engineer with Transcomputer who has *solved* the mysterious ISC 2.2 install disk hang problem. Evidently the new 2.2 release enables instruction pipelining in the 386 processor, something which ISC neglected to tell us poor souls. Check your 386 processor, just below the i386 logo should be the processor version. If the chip is the SX211 version, you're in trouble because there is a bug in processor regarding instruction pipelining (don't confuse SX211 with the 386SX chip! we're talking about the processor revision number here!). The solution is to replace the chip with the "SX219" version, the hang problem will vanish completely. I indeed checked my processor and I have the faulty 386 chip. intel i386 A80386DX-33 IV SX211 <== There it is! L9310437 INTEL (m)(c) '85 I advise everyone to check their processor version before upgrading or purchasing 2.2, this problem will most likely affect *any* machine with the SX211 version chip. -- Arthur W. Neilson III | ARPA: art@pilikia.pegasus.com Bank of Hawaii Tech Support | UUCP: uunet!ucsd!nosc!pegasus!pilikia!art
tyager@maxx.UUCP (Tom Yager) (07/04/90)
In article <1990Jul1.125113.970@pilikia.pegasus.com>, art@pilikia.pegasus.com (Art Neilson) writes: > Well, at the suggestion of several people I pulled my hard drive and > controller, went over to the local computer store and hooked up my > drive to a 386 Micronics 20Mhz motherboard. My ISC 2.2 installed > *just fine*. Problem fixed I thought, after all I had gotten net mail > from a guy in Australia who had done this same thing to bypass the > 2.2 install hang problem. I took my drive home with the new ISC > release installed on it, put it back in my system and fired the > system up. Lo and behold, the kernel panic'ed. Below you can > see the gory details firsthand: [... detail deleted to spare the squeamish ...] > This pretty much proves that the install disks aren't defective, what > we have here is a major incompatibility with the new release 2.2 and > my TransComputer 386 33Mhz motherboard. > -- > Arthur W. Neilson III | ARPA: art@pilikia.pegasus.com When ISC and SCO publish their compatibility lists, they ain't kidding! I just spent a full month trying to get a system configured to run UNIX. I had a <brand name omitted> 25MHz 386, 16MB of memory, a brand-X ESDI controller and a 300MB disk. The first system that came in passed every test in BYTE's arsenal with flying colors, but panicked the moment I tried to run UNIX. SCO wouldn't even install. ISC would, but died with the same symptoms described above. The long-story-short version is that I went through three replacement motherboards (each a different design and manufacturer), two memory expansion boards, and three complete sets of memory chips. I can't fault the vendor, because in the end I got a 33MHz system for the price of a 25--they felt horrible about all the problems. The third time must have been the charm, for the system's been running around the clock ever since. The moral: Never buy a system mail-order to run UNIX unless a) it's on the UNIX vendor's recommend list, or b) you got it on 30-day terms or have a return privilege. I think the best way to buy these days may be to get the whole sha-bang from someone like Dell, Everex or Mobius. You get the system loaded, it's warranteed for use with UNIX, and you don't get blank stares from tech support people who make you spell U-N-I-X. That's not an endorsement, but I know I'm far from the only person who's been bitten by the "incompatible compatible system" snake. I guess the manufacturers must be at fault, because there are more than enough systems out there that just work. I got fooled into thinking that all ISA-based 386 boxes had enough in common to run UNIX without problems. Baloney. By the way, the techies at this company said they burned the first two systems in using both Xenix and OS/2. I believe them, but neither OS found the problem. On the third one, I told them not to bother. (Hey, maybe it was running OS/2 that fried the other two boards! I must look into that.) Don't be too hard on ISC (and others) for failing to account for every flako timing or similar problem on every motherboard ever made. New Taiwanese and Korean companies are entering the market every day, it seems. No one could ever keep all those workarounds straight. As the man said on Hill Street: "Let's be careful out there." (ty) -- +--Tom Yager, Technical Editor, BYTE----Reviewer, UNIX World---------------+ | NET: decvax!maxx!tyager -or- uunet!bytepb!maxx!tyager | | I speak only for myself "UNIX: It's not a job, | +-------------------------------------it's a Jihad!" -co-worker------------+
art@pilikia.pegasus.com (Art Neilson) (07/04/90)
In article <550@csource.oz.au> david@csource.oz.au (david nugent) writes: >>Today I spoke with an engineer with Transcomputer who has *solved* >>the mysterious ISC 2.2 install disk hang problem. Evidently the >>new 2.2 release enables instruction pipelining in the 386 processor, >>something which ISC neglected to tell us poor souls. Check your >>386 processor, just below the i386 logo should be the processor >>version. If the chip is the SX211 version, you're in trouble >>because there is a bug in processor regarding instruction pipelining > > >Sorry to burst your bubble, but this just doesn't make any sense at all. > Hey. you burst no bubble. The processor replacement fixes the problem on Transcomputer motherboards with the SX211 version of the 386 chip and probably affects anyone with that chip version. If you don't have that chip version, you probably had a *different* problem. Just hit the 'n' key if the article doesn't apply to you. If just one person is saved from the particular problem which plagued me, my posting will have been worth it. >I had this dreaded problem, and after successfully installing 2.2 on >a different machine, I swapped the drive and controller back to the >original machine, where now 2.2 is running without ANY PROBLEMS AT ALL. >ZERO. ZILCH. I'm glad you got it working on your machine, really. I tried exactly what you describe, I pulled my drive and controller and installed 2.2 on my drive in a different box. After the install went successfully, I put my drive and controller back in my machine only to have the kernel panic and dump everytime it tried to load. >If the _real_ problem is anything like what you describe, then it shouldn't >run at all on that machine, no? NO, it shouldn't run on any machine with the SX211 version 80386. I'll bet you don't have this chip in your box. -- Arthur W. Neilson III | ARPA: art@pilikia.pegasus.com Bank of Hawaii Tech Support | UUCP: uunet!ucsd!nosc!pegasus!pilikia!art
cpcahil@virtech.uucp (Conor P. Cahill) (07/04/90)
In article <47@maxx.UUCP> tyager@maxx.UUCP (Tom Yager) writes: >Don't be too hard on ISC (and others) for failing to account for every flako >timing or similar problem on every motherboard ever made. New Taiwanese and >Korean companies are entering the market every day, it seems. No one could >ever keep all those workarounds straight. I agree with this almost 100%. The problem lots of people are having is that 386/ix 2.0.2 works fine on thier machine, but ISC UNIX 2.2 fails. Or, the install fails, but if they install it on another machine then take the disk back to the first machine it works fine. ISC needs to look into this to find out what they did to break things and, if possible, add some configuration option to disable the new option that is breaking what used to be a usable system. -- Conor P. Cahill (703)430-9247 Virtual Technologies, Inc., uunet!virtech!cpcahil 46030 Manekin Plaza, Suite 160 Sterling, VA 22170
david@csource.oz.au (david nugent) (07/04/90)
>Today I spoke with an engineer with Transcomputer who has *solved* >the mysterious ISC 2.2 install disk hang problem. Evidently the >new 2.2 release enables instruction pipelining in the 386 processor, >something which ISC neglected to tell us poor souls. Check your >386 processor, just below the i386 logo should be the processor >version. If the chip is the SX211 version, you're in trouble >because there is a bug in processor regarding instruction pipelining Sorry to burst your bubble, but this just doesn't make any sense at all. I had this dreaded problem, and after successfully installing 2.2 on a different machine, I swapped the drive and controller back to the original machine, where now 2.2 is running without ANY PROBLEMS AT ALL. ZERO. ZILCH. If the _real_ problem is anything like what you describe, then it shouldn't run at all on that machine, no? david -- _______________________________________________________________________________ Unique Computing Pty Ltd Melbourne Australia - Communications Specialists david@csource.oz.au 3:632/348@fidonet 28:4100/1@signet