Hi list, as I've just received a 6501-50 today, I've been trying to get the hardware up and running with OpenBSD. However, I already faced a bit of trouble before arriving at installing the OS.
I tried to boot and install it in several ways, getting some steps further, but the actual state does not really feel satisfying. The BIOS revision is 1.41a. Short version ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1) Booting from an USB floppy seems not to be possible. The floppy is just not seen in the BIOS (no motor sound at all). Shouldn't this be remedied by the USB boot code from the latest BIOS revision? Attached USB sticks are present in the BIOS BTW. Has anybody yet successfully booted a 6501 from a USB floppy drive? 2) Detection of mSATA modules seems to be a problem. As of now, I have not seen the suggested module brand showing up within the BIOS. Is this a known bug? I suppose the BIOS should see mSATA modules. 3) Plain spinning SATA disks are unreliably detected at boot. Furthermore, the detection time is vastly different. It looks like if it depends on what SATA port the disk is on. I'd be interested if there are people encountering the same problem and if there is any solution to this. Long versions ---------------------------------------------------------------- Right now, I got: a) A USB floppy drive (MITSUMI USB FDD 061M) with an OpenBSD floppy50.fs image on it b) A wiped 80 GB Fujitsu S-ATA drive (MHV2080BH) c) A 32 GB Transcend PCIe mSATA board (TS32GMSA300) 1) In the following, b) is not connected, while c) is in slot J6. I tried to boot with a), which worked well with other machines (non-SOEKRIS) in the past. I was hoping the USB bootcode now does the deed, which is obviously not true, as the drive is not detected at all (no floppy motor sounds at all at boot-time). In the end I resorted to PXE booting. 2) No long story available, as the device just doesn't show up. As I'm using the module suggested (and sold) by http://www.soekris.eu, I expected this to work out of the box. 3) As the mSATA was not visible at all, I decided to pop in a plain SATA disk (mSATA still inserted). The SATA disk was running without any problems in a notebook until last week. When connected to J1, the BIOS takes up to 210 seconds until it continues from Controller Bus#02, Device#06, Function#00: 02 Ports to Controller Bus#02, Device#06, Function#00: 02 Ports, 01 Devices Port-00: Hard Disk, Port-01: No device detected It does not boot afterwards. The BIOS seems to hang and does not react at all. After quite some time, it tries PXE and enters monitor mode then. (ethernet unplugged, thus no PXE). When the drive is connected to J2 it takes about 10 seconds until it continues with Controller Bus#02, Device#06, Function#00: 02 Ports No device found or Controller Bus#02, Device#06, Function#00: 02 Ports, 01 Devices Port-00: No device detected Port-01: Hard Disk, or Controller Bus#02, Device#06, Function#00: 02 Ports, 01 Devices Port-00: No device detected Port-01: Hard Disk, FUJITSU MHV2080BH In the last case, it really starts booting from the drive, while in all other cases it does not. It seems to be completely random if the disk is correctly detected or not, while when connected to J2, it tends to return faster independent of the result. Feeling is not a very helpful category when dealing with deterministic machines, but nevertheless I'm tempted to attribute this strange behaviour to a timing issue. I've been using a power supply delivering 3 A at 12 V, which should be overly sufficient. ---------------------------------------------------------------- I'm happy about any suggestion to get one or all of the above into a reliably working state. Thanks in advance, /Markus NB: There are indeed cases, where the device boots from the SATA disk and OpenBSD detects the floppy while booting. The mSATA disk however doesn't work as well. See the dmesg here: http://aloha.target23.de/20111229_dmesg_Soekris6501-50 _______________________________________________ Soekris-tech mailing list [email protected] http://lists.soekris.com/mailman/listinfo/soekris-tech
