In article <00030514454503.00597@Vagabond>,
Adrian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sun, 05 Mar 2000, Stefan Bellon wrote:
> [snip]
> > BTW: I know more about Linux in general than I know about x86
> > hardware. Is it possible to flash another BIOS into my flash BIOS?
> > Or does just the one supplied work?
> Maybe, maybe not. There might be an updated BIOS availible from the
> company you purchased the notebook from. As for a BIOS from some were
> else, it depends on the board. BIOS tends to be a very board specific
> thing. Given that many so called "manufacters" are nothing more than
> resellers of one companies notebook (with the resellers own label on
> top) if you know the true maker of your notebook you can try the
> makers website or the website of a different reseller with the same
> basic notebook.
Well, I have a Gericom (http://www.gericom.com/) 1100MT notebook. And
I've installed the latest BIOS that is available for it from their ftp
site. And - per email - they told me, that it's the latest available.
Hmmmm.
[snip]
> > Well, in fact I did a similar thing immediately after I've
> > recognised that LILO in MBR doesn't work, i.e. even before my first
> > posting:
> >
> > 1) run Linux, run LILO in /dev/hda
> > 2) dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hda1 bs=512 count=1
> > 3) marked /dev/hda1 bootable with cfdisk
> > 4) rebooted with Win98 startup disk, then "fdisk /mbr"
> > 5) rebooted: "Please insert boot-disk and press any key"
> >
> OK, now I'm really confused. If you have a DOS MBR and the Windows
> partition marked active then it boots,
Yes, that's the setup Windows 98 installs, isn't it? And that works ok.
> but if the Linux patition is active then it gives the error?
Yes.
> Are you sure only 1 partition was marked active at a time?
Yes, definitely!
I don't understand why you're confused. If the BIOS checks a checksum
of the boot sector, then it can do it not just only for the MBR, but
for the boot sector called from this one as well, as it /expects/ the
DOS MBR to be there. So it looks at the active boot partitions and
checks its boot sector as well. I don't see why this couldn't apply
here.
> [snip]
> > Well, I assume your notebook boots even from the MBR without
> > problems.
> >
> I just tried this on my notebook as well as my old 486 desktop. Both
> work fine with a DOS MBR and LILO on a Linux partition marked active.
Here it doesn't. Honestly, it doesn't work!
> If 2 partitions are marked active, I get an "Invalid partion table"
> error at bootup, presumably from the DOS MBR.
I never had two partitions marked active with the boot flag.
> Below is my setup:
> [root@Vagabond /root]# fdisk -l /dev/hda
>
> Disk /dev/hda: 240 heads, 63 sectors, 839 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 bytes
>
> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
> /dev/hda1 1 277 2094088+ b Win95 FAT32
> /dev/hda2 * 278 281 30240 83 Linux
> /dev/hda3 282 829 4142880 5 Extended
> /dev/hda4 830 839 75600 a0 IBM Thinkpad
> hibernation
^^^^^^^^^^^^
What's that? Some kind of suspend to disk partition?
> /dev/hda5 282 559 2101648+ 83 Linux
> /dev/hda6 560 577 136048+ 82 Linux swap
> /dev/hda7 578 618 309928+ 83 Linux
> /dev/hda8 619 829 1595128+ 83 Linux
> hda is DOS MBR
> hda1 hexdump shows as MSWIN4.1
> hda2 hexdump shows as LILO
Yes, that's what I'd expect it to be. But it doesn't. It's just a real
damned BIOS, I have to say. :-(
Greetings,
Stefan.
--
Stefan Bellon * <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * <http://www.sbellon.de/>
... A)bort R)etry G)et a stick and kill it.
