> 	The machine is an AMD 486/133, installing on Adaptec 1542CP's
> sd0.
> 
> 	when creating the usr and var partitions, we hit lots and lots
> of hard errors.  Later, just for grins and giggles, we did a
> copy_kernel, and that failed with lots of fd0a soft errors.   Sure
> enough, the machine certainly doesn't boot ;-)

	we reduced the DMA rate on the controller, rebuilt the floppies,
and the problem still happened.
	After changing the floppy drive to run off the fd controller on
the SCSI card instead of the built-in controller, AND using the drive's
physical geometry instead of the logical geometry, and then we only got
one fd soft error, creating /dev/drum.  

	The kernel copied successfully.  Now, we reboot the machine, the
boot loader comes up, but it won't go any further than that-- the
machine hangs immediately when you hit return at the boot prompt (before
any kernel messages are printed).  

	This machine only has scsi drives.  We have tried explicitly
specifying sd(0,a)/netbsd to the loader, but to no avail.  Mounting the
partition from the filesystem floppy, it appears that the kernel there
is correct.  In a freak, desperate attempt, we renamed the kernel just
to make absolutely sure it was loader-related and not kernel-related.
The problem still happens.

	As before, any suggestions would be great.  :-)
	Thanks!
	-Dave
	

-----Original Message-----
From:	Andrew Gillham
Sent:	Tuesday, October 07, 1997 7:53 PM
To:	David Christiansen (NT)
Subject:	Re: Wierd experience attempting fresh install of 1.2.1
on a Dell

In the downright wild guess category..  Is the adaptec configured for
a high DMA rate?  I believe it can vary from 5.0 to 10.0?  Perhaps
it is too high.  Also, is the bus clock rate locked at 8Mhz, or not?
(should be a jumper on the mainboard)

-Andrew

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Carl Shapiro
> Sent:	Tuesday, October 07, 1997 7:11 PM
> To:	David Christiansen (NT)
> Subject:	Re: Wierd experience attempting fresh install of 1.2.1
> on a Dell
> 
> Hard errors?  Have you tried to "verify media" through the Adaptec
> BIOS?  Hard
> errors could be a symptom of bad sectors...  Regarding the soft errors
> with
> your floppy, I have only run into those problems if 1) I am using a
> really
> cheap floppy disk 2) the drive writes bad floppies.
> 
> Good luck!
> 
> Carl