Re: old machine--booting problem

[George Lewis <schvin_(_at_)_schvin_(_dot_)_net>]

Sorry to follow up on my own post, but I just realized that I should
be able to use boot -a and then load the disk there. I'll try that
this evening as well.

I should have noticed/tried that before, doh.

George

George Lewis (schvin_(_at_)_schvin_(_dot_)_net) wrote:
> It's a P-60. IIRC it is the NCR SCSI chipset, and I've whacked the
> drive and installed and played with the (annoying) Compaq management
> stuff several times. This evening I'll look for SCSI BIOS options
> though, thanks for that tip.
> 
> BTW, OpenBSD does work with the SCSI bus, at least enough to pick
> it up and let me use the disk while installing, which is nice.
> 
> George
> 
> Nick Holland (nick_(_at_)_holland-consulting_(_dot_)_net) wrote:
> > Well, I have run OpenBSD on a number of "older Compaqs" (right off the
> > bat, we got a problem.  I consider "older" P75 and before.  I've seen
> > some people call PII-266s "older", and just had someone "throw out" a
> > pair of PII-333s in my direction, and if judged from a utility
> > standpoint, "older" could mean pre-486), and found normally the
> > hardware either is recognized or isn't.  Some of them have SCSI chips
> > (old NCR, AMD) that are just not supported by OpenBSD at this time
> > (and given the forward direction of the project, will probably not be
> > supported), others work fine.  
> > 
> > >From your description, I would hazzard a guess that you have a
> > configuration problem with the system.  Blow the drive clean, and
> > install the Compaq Maintenance partition stuff on it (it always seems
> > to get nuked by someone wondering "what's this 'NON DOS PARTITION'
> > here?").  If the machine has a jumper to clear the NVRAM, do it.  My
> > guess is you have the SCSI BIOS disabled on the machine, which would
> > match what you are seeing (not bootable, but you probably could
> > install to a HD).    
> > 
> > Some concrete details would be nice.  Someone could say "Yeah, tried
> > it, didn't work" or "works great for me"
> > 
> > George Lewis wrote:
> > > 
> > > Hi all,
> > > 
> > > I have an older Compaq machine that has bizarre BIOS issues. I can
> > > install OpenBSD fine, but it doesn't setup the boot correctly on
> > > the hard disk. This in itself is not a big deal, I've read the man
> > > pages and done the installboot and all of that stuff, but not much
> > > luck.
> > > 
> > > I used to have slackware loaded on this box, and to get around this
> > > same problem I just put in the slackware boot disk that doubled as
> > > a rescue disk, loading the kernel off of the floppy but loading the
> > > system off of the root partition on the hard disk.
> > > 
> > > The box is SCSI based, and I assume that since the OpenBSD boot
> > > doesn't list sd0 as a boot device (thus thwarting boot sd0a:/bsd...only
> > > listing fd0)
> > > 
> > > I can't boot at all. OpenBSD (and all other OS's I've had on this
> > > box have this problem, so it's got some weird issues) doesn't know
> > > about the SCSI devices until it loads the controller driver and
> > > then it finds the disk. The SCSI controller (NCR chipset IIRC) is
> > > onboard. I've tried setting image and device variables at the boot
> > > prompt, but no luck. Perhaps I'm missing something there.
> > > 
> > > Any clues or things I can do to work around this? I may end up doing
> > > a network boot or something, but would rather use the internal disk
> > > to load the OS if possible.
> > > 
> > > If more details about the disk/controller/bios/etc would be helpful,
> > > please let me know, but I assume this is a more generic question
> > > of is it possible to boot a hard disk while loading the boot/kernel
> > > from a floppy, if the boot loader doesn't know about the upcoming
> > > hard disk already?
> > > 
> > > Thanks in advance!
> > > 
> > > George
> > > 
> > > --
> > > George Lewis
> > > http://schvin.net/
> > 
> > -- 
> > http://www.holland-consulting.net/
> 
> -- 
> George Lewis
> http://schvin.net/

-- 
George Lewis
http://schvin.net/