I'm a little behind in my reading, obviously... Patrick Cummings wrote: >>On 11/10/06, Patrick Cummings <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>>Hi misc, >>> >>>I'm trying to setup a new openbsd 3.9 install on i386. It worked before on >>>that computer when I installed quickly to test for compatibility, but I >>>needed to finish up some hardware stuff on it and then I wanted to install >>>for real but it does not work anymore. >>> >>>It hangs at the disk: line >>> >>>"Loading /3.9/I386/CDBOOT >>>probing: pc0 com0 apm mem[639K 382M a20=on] >>>disk:" >>> >>>and then it stays there forever. >>> >>>The computer has two storage controllers. One is an ami-compatible raid >>>controller. The other is the pciide-compatible sata sil3114 chip. Both >>>appear to be working. >>> >>>If I unplug the scsi drives from the controller and leave the controller >>>in, >>>it will work. >>>Also if I unplug the sata drives and leave the controller in, it will >>>work. >>> >>>However all appears to be working quite well as I can install win2000 on >>>it >>>and all drives work well. Also as I've said openbsd 3.9 worked on it just >>>a >>>few days ago, but I can't find what I've changed. I thought it might be a >>>bios settings problem so I played with the settings, but nothing seemed to >>>help. >>> >>>Overall I think this makes no sense, what are some of the problems that >>>might be happening? >> >>Can you boot from any of the install boot floppies? >>If so, can you provide a dmesg?
Considering how it is hanging, I wouldn't expect booting from floppy if the CDROM didn't work... > > Sure, I can get a dmesg if I use it with the two sata drives unplugged: ok, that sounds familiar... ... > pciide1 at pci0 dev 13 function 0 "CMD Technology SiI3114 SATA" rev 0x02: DMA that looks familiar... (ick.) I think what you have is BIOSs stomping on each other's feet in a way that the OpenBSD boot loader isn't happy about. You actually have (at least) three boot ROMs on this thing -- the RAID card, the SATA card and the motherboard's BIOS. Unplug the drives, the BIOS turns itself off after probing and finding no disks, which is probably why it boots. Consider yourself lucky, I spent a lot of time just trying to get TO the OpenBSD boot loader with those dang cards. I picked up two different cards that used that chip... What a mess. Both demonstrated a different problem, they refused to work with a 1T SATA RAID box that looked like a single SATA disk. I'm not sure if it was the size or the product, but they would hang in the BIOS probe of the SATA channels if the drive was attached. Flashing the BIOS on one card "fixed" the problem, but the card I could flash had only one internal SATA port, I needed two. The other card had an OTP-EPROM (i.e., you ain't changing this). After a lot of puzzlement (and buying a third card which had other quirks I feared), I finally decided a good solution was to pop the EPROM off the non-updatable card, as I didn't want to boot from it anyway. No, it wasn't socketed, but a little gentle work with a screwdriver did the job nicely. So, what I would recommend would be: 1) try to update the BIOS on your card. The one that shipped on the two I had sucked...the newer one worked much better. 2) updating the other boot ROMs (mobo BIOS, RAID card BIOS) might help, too. 3) look for "boot order" options in your BIOS or the ami(4) card's BIOS that let the boot process progress (or even the SATA card's BIOS) 4) If you don't need to boot from this card, consider ripping the ROM/flash/EPROM/whatever off the card. IF you don't need it, of course. 5) fiddle with the order of the cards in the slots. It might help. Nick.
