I am currently having a lot of trouble with my SCSI disks during
installation of NetBSD on my DECstation 2100. The problem is that during
boot, approx. two out of three times the system goes down during the scsi
detection, and it does so on different random disks every time, giving me
a TimeOut error. If I manage to get through the boot in one piece, the
system fails when sysinst tries to run disklabel on the disk I'd like to
install to. (I have two disks, one containing the install image, and
another blank one to which i want to install the system.)

At first I suspected an incorrect disktab file, but as I have another
identical disk to the one I am trying to install to (old Quantum 240Mb
siks), containing Ultrix, I managed to get the disktab file from that one
(which actually turned out to be taken from a NetBSD system and being
practically identical to the one that came with my NetBSD), and there
should therefore, as far as I can see, be no problem with the target disk.
The source disk however, is a newer 3Gb disk borrowed from a friend. Could
there be a problem with this one? It probably has no disktab entry that
fits, and I guess it's rather large compared to what they had in mind for
the DECstation originally. Could perhaps a disktab entry for the new
source disk solve the problem, or does this sound like a hardware problem?
(NetBSD usually gives med a TimeOut error, and then locks up). As I have
three DECstations (all model 2100) and experience the same error on all of
them I guess it's nothing wrong with the DECs themselves.

By the way. Every time after reboot I have to do a fsck on the source disk
(the 3Gb disk) before remounting the fs read/write, and every time there
is a lot of new errors. (This is a new disk, working perfectly under
Linux, so I guess the disk itself is ok).


Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

PS: Does anybody know which value to set in the BIOS to point the
automount to the right disk and have it run automatically?

--
Ole Jakob Skjelten (olesk@stud.ntnu.no) www.stud.ntnu.no/~olesk
Tlf +47 73966054 / 91820113. Visit: www.stud.ntnu.no/studorg/snow