Hi again,

Perhaps some remember an "installation blues" thread from August, started
by me with the appended, quoted [slightly shortened] message.

Well, I've finally got the thing to work. As expected, and as many advised
at the time, it was a problem with disk geometry translation (what else?)
and it is with embarassment that I confess that Reading the Fine Manual
that came with the Promise EIDE PRO controller, and disabling all 
translation by that smart controller, as the Fine Manual actually
said to do under the heading embarassingly labelled "UNIX", solved every 
problem, and the machine is now happily running 1.2.1.

My thanks (again!) to all who contributed to the thread back in August.

The installation was completely generic, no tricks, no fdisking, no pfdisk,
no os-bs needed, no nothing except a standard disklabel. The 2485/16/63
geometry was given to the BIOS as user-defined drive type, and that was that.

Dave Vanecek

> Hi,
> 
> Installing NetBSD 1.2 on 386DX with IDE ST51270A drive fails
> to boot from hd. (Promis EIDE PRO controller).
> 
> Boots from install floppy; installation by ftp from a pmax proceeds
> normally over NE2K. Kernel installation is GENERICOTHER, or
> kcoth12 from boot floppy (both fail).
> 
> Drive geometry: CHS: 2485/16/63 native or 621/64/63 translated.
> 
> (Have done installs both ways). Before the NetBSD install, disk
> ran Linux (2.0.27) with no problems.

The root of the problem. Linux was using translation, and I had
forgotten what was in the Fine Manual.

> For these installs, there is no DOS partition. BSD has whole disk.
> 
> After copy_kernel from kcoth12 floppy (or cp GENERICOTHER /mnt/netbsd
> during install), and rebooting with out floppy, system
> displays
> 	>> NetBSD BOOT: 635/15360 k [1.28]
> 	use hd(1,a)/netbsd to boot sd0 when wd0 is also installed
> 	Boot: [[[wd(0,a)]/netbsd][-adrs]] :-
> 
> Entering carriage return, nothing further happens.
> 
> Booting from floppy, the disk appears fine, can be mounted, programs
> run from it, and so on.

In retrospect, this last sentence is the dead give-away of a geometry 
translation problem. CAN'T BOOT, BUT CAN BE MOUNTED. Aha!