News Group Posts

floppy drive problems, boot floppy,

docp, dosdir

From: Bela Lubkin <belal@sco.com>
Subject: Re: OSR504 boot STOPS after "Loading kernel ...  .text"
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 07:13:18 GMT
References: <LDdRa.1842$MK4.263@lakeread07>
<20030716192635.GX24551@sco.com>
<DxxRa.4185$MK4.2059@lakeread07>
<SIFRa.7719$zd4.2497@lakeread02> 

Carol Saah wrote:

> I just tried to boot my OSR504 and OSR505 boot diskettes in an
> D875PBZLK machine.  In both cases, the diskette was accessed
> briefly and boot control  passed to the next device in the boot
> sequence.

Again, it looks like this is due to the BIOS enforcing the floppy boot
signature of 0x55 0xAA at address 0x1FE of a diskette.  No other modern
BIOS that I am aware of does this.

I will send you private email with a possible fix for this.

> I also want to mention that the Dell Dimension 8250 which I could
> boot OSR504 both from OSR504 boot/root floppies and from the HD
> off the Adaptec 29160 had problems with "doscp" and "dosdir".
> The floppy drive is a 1.44 Mb drive.  When I tried to use doscp, the result
> was:
> 
> # doscp -r filename a:filename
> # killed
> 
> # dosdir a:
> # killed
> 
> # dosdir /dev/fd0135ds18
> # killed
> 
> I am not planning on loading OSR504 in the Dell so I did not report
> this earlier.

Those messages make it look like your `doscp` and `dosdir` binaries are
corrupt.  Has nothing to do with the floppy drive.  If you run:

  # dosdir
  # dosdir c:

you'll see the same message.  This is so abnormal as to make me think
there is something much more fundamentally wrong with the install.

> The Dell Dimension 8250 has:
> bus speed 533 MHz
> processor P4 2.40 GHz
> and Dual channel memory: 2 RIMM_1 of 256 Mb each (setup)
> Processor ID: F27 (I don't know what this means.)

Those are the three digits "family, model, stepping" returned from one
of the subfunctions of the `CPUID' instruction.  Family 'F' is the
signature of the Pentium 4 family of processors.  F27 is the right
signature for a Pentium 4 "Northwood" 478-pin 0.18 micron 533MHz FSB
CPU.  (I _think_ those are the right code name and line size, but those
are just from memory...)

Basically, that's all fine _except_ that you're using OSR504 on a
Pentium 4, which is unsupported and expected to have trouble.  The
various boot symptoms you're having do not appear to be CPU-related.  I
am much less certain about the `doscp` problem.  I think it very well
_could_ be related to running OSR504 on a CPU that shipped 5 years after
the OS.

>Bela<

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