mckenney@talos.pm.com (Frank McKenney) (11/07/90)
I need to have OS/2 operational on my office machine within the
next six months or so. I have been able to borrow copies of IBM
OS/2 1.1 and 1.2 for testing, but so far I have not been able to
boot either a 1.1 or a 1.2 Installation diskette.
System description:
Everex System 1800 10MHz AT Clone
AMI BIOS: S286-2098 Rev-F3-20 04/26/89-KD
5MB, serial, parallel, etc.
A: 1.44Mb 3.5" B: 360K 5.25"
C: 40 Mb Seagate ST-251-1 (Everex controller)
D: 80 Mb Seagate ST-296N / ST01 adapter
Video-7 Vega VGA adapter
Attempting to boot with either OS/2 Installation Diskette causes
the A: drive to spin, and the following message on the monitor:
A disk read error occurred.
Insert a system diskette and restart
the system.
I am using the 1.44Mb drive under DOS 3.3 on a regular basis and
seeing no problems. Both the system and keyboard BIOS chips have
been upgraded to what is supposed to be the "current" level.
Everex says that they "don't support" IBM OS/2, but won't offer
any suggestions as to WHY IBM OS/2 won't run on my machine.
Any suggestions on what might be causing this problem would be
appreciated. From my standpoint, the critical question is whether
this is a simple, patch-able problem which occurs only with the
initial boot of the OS/2 starter system, or whether it is a
fundamental incompatibility between my machine and IBM's OS/2. If
it's the former, I don't mind writing a new boot sector, but if
it's the latter I need to buy a new motherboard (Ack! Phht!).
Frank McKenney
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--------------------------------------------------------roelofs@nas.nasa.gov (Cave Newt) (11/08/90)
mckenney@talos.UUCP (Frank McKenney) writes: >I need to have OS/2 operational on my office machine within the >next six months or so. I have been able to borrow copies of IBM >OS/2 1.1 and 1.2 for testing, but so far I have not been able to >boot either a 1.1 or a 1.2 Installation diskette. I'm in virtually the same situation, except my clone is an early Toshiba 386 and I've only been able to try 1.2. Read on... >Attempting to boot with either OS/2 Installation Diskette causes >the A: drive to spin, and the following message on the monitor: > > A disk read error occurred. > Insert a system diskette and restart > the system. > >I am using the 1.44Mb drive under DOS 3.3 on a regular basis and >seeing no problems. Both the system and keyboard BIOS chips have >been upgraded to what is supposed to be the "current" level. >Everex says that they "don't support" IBM OS/2, but won't offer >any suggestions as to WHY IBM OS/2 won't run on my machine. The problem on my machine was a bug (apparently) in the Award BIOS. For some reason it sets up the BIOS area of RAM with a pointer to a drive table which specifies only 15 sectors per track (0Fh), not the 18 (12h) sectors of a 1.4MB drive. It's been a couple months since I looked into this so I've forgotten some of it, but basically it boiled down to the fact that the IBM OS/2 boot record assumes you can read a full track right from the start, and that's not possible with an incorrect parameter table. My solution was to hack the IBM boot record so that it first changes the pointer (at 0:0078h?) to point at a valid drive table (yes, there IS one in the BIOS; god knows why it's not used), and then continue with whatever it did before. Took a bit of experimentation, but eventually it worked--loaded OS2LDR, transferred control, brought up the IBM banner...and died a horrible death. After asking around, the consensus of local gurus and Folks With Opinions was that RAM crunch was at fault--I only had 2MB at the time. So I finally installed another 2MB just this past weekend, and it STILL doesn't work. I haven't had a chance to call Toshiba about this yet, but I'm wondering if the BIOS is just too old (dates from around 1987, I believe). The next question, of course, is whether I can get a BIOS upgrade from Toshiba. Anyway, I'd REALLY like to know that IBM OS/2 works on this machine before I take the plunge. Toshiba does have their own version, but they haven't even released 1.2 yet (it's supposedly due the 15th), and I'll be long since in my grave by the time they finally release their 2.0. Perhaps more to the point, I own a copy of PC-DOS 3.0, which at one time was worth a $125 discount on IBM OS/2. I don't suppose anybody knows if that offer still stands? So I'm continuing to check into things. In the meantime, if you'd care to try fooling with the boot record, send e-mail and I'll mail out a debug script or something. You'll have to do some sleuthing to find where the correct drive parameter table is in your own BIOS, but that's all that should be necessary. With any luck at all, *yours* will work with just the boot record patch... Greg
swonk@toshais.UUCP (Glen Swonk) (11/14/90)
> Anyway, I'd REALLY like to know that IBM OS/2 works on this machine > before I take the plunge. Toshiba does have their own version, but > they haven't even released 1.2 yet (it's supposedly due the 15th), > and I'll be long since in my grave by the time they finally release > their 2.0. Perhaps more to the point, I own a copy of PC-DOS 3.0, > which at one time was worth a $125 discount on IBM OS/2. I don't > suppose anybody knows if that offer still stands? > > Greg Toshiba's version of OS/2 V1.21 is available now. I think there is a upgrade policy if you have version 1.1. Please contact the sales/customer service at 714-583-3000. glenn -- Glen L. Swonk Toshiba American Information Systems uunet!toshais!swonk 714-587-6475