News Group Posts

Strange problems with IDE CDROM on

installation

SCO Unix originally supported only SCSI cd devices. IDE support became available, but it was confusing to configure as the system did not auto-detect; you had to show it where the devices were connected. The IDE driver itself went through several iterations. See the "wd.delay" section of Booting OSR5 - Definitions for some of the EIDE issues.

This particular problem surely had something to do with a timing issue in the wd driver.

From: Roberto Zini <freddy@strhold.it>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sco.misc
Subject: SCO OS 5.0.5 on IBM Thinkpad 380 [Succesfull]
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 1999 15:12:41 +0100
Message-ID: <36F25B59.38DD5FF3@strhold.it> 

Howdy !

This is the second IBM model we had the pleasure to test (the
first one was the 600). Since I know that dejanews is widely
used to gather tech info about SCO problems, I decided to post
the following issue, for those interested.

A customer our ours was unable to install SCO OS 5.0.5 on the
above beast; we received the machine and we noticed that during
the installation from the floppy (this machine is unable to
boot SCO OS5 from the CD-ROM), the hwconfig screen did not
show the EIDE/ATAPI adapter (ie, it didn't show the
%adapter 0x1F0-0x1F7 14 - ... line). After hitting [ENTER]
to continue, the installation froze while reading the floppy
(after reading 1032k of data).

We tried a wide number of boostring parameters, but unsuccesfully.
We were able to solve it by acting as follows; just a few seconds
before the "hwconfig" screen was depicted (while a bunch of dots were
shown on the screen), we inserted the OS CD in the driver, we did close
the slot and we let it spin during the hardware recognition. Thus making, 
the system was able to recognize the adapter and the installation device 
(EIDE/ATAPI CD-ROM, Primary/Slave) and was able to complete the installation
succesfully.

We were able to replicate it; in fact, if the CD reader was empty during
the installation phase, the system was unable to detect it. If the CD-ROM
was inserted but "inactive" (ie, not spinning), the same; we were able
to complete the installation only by letting the CD spin during the HW
recognition screen.

The strange think was that, once installed and rebooted, the system was able
to correctly see the CD even if the slot was empty (ie, no CD in drive). Only
the installation procedure failed to recognize it.

We did tried with the notebook image and also by using the new wd adapter in
the new 5.0.5 BTLD disk.

Since we succeed in the installation, the customer is now happy but I'm
still puzzled ;->

Anyone ?

Thanks,
Roberto

-- 
P.S. =  Please remove the ending "dy" from my Email address
        if you want to reply.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roberto Zini                                  email : freddy@strhold.it
Strhold Sistemi EDP                                                
Reggio Emilia      ITALY                                           
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Has anybody around here seen an aircraft carrier?"                
        (Pete "Maverick" Mitchell - Top Gun)

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