>Number:         10145
>Category:       port-i386
>Synopsis:       Intel 440GX+ server board + AIC7896 + NetBSD boot failure
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       critical
>Priority:       high
>Responsible:    port-i386-maintainer
>State:          open
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Wed May 17 20:19:00 PDT 2000
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Jason R. Thorpe
>Release:        May 5, 2000
>Organization:
Zembu Labs, Inc.
>Environment:
	
Intel 440GX+ server board + 512MB RAM + onboard AIC7896 dual-channel SCSI +
Seagate 18G LVD disk, May 5 i386 snapshot

>Description:
	The problem was discovered by a fellow employee at Zembu Labs
	when installing the May 5 NetBSD/i386 snapshot onto the system
	described above.  Installations went smoothly onto other systems
	which were identical except that they used IDE disks.

	The third system, which was using an LVD SCSI disk, booted from
	floppy, successfully installed the system with sysinst, and then
	rebooted as normal.  However, the system apparently failed to load
	the boot block, as the NetBSD boot banner never appeared, and the
	system was wedged.

	Next step was to load the boot block from the installation floppy
	and instruct it to load the kernel from the SCSI disk.  This also
	failed (printed the size of the text segment and then stopped).

	Next step was to load the boot block from floppy again, and attempt
	to "ls" the SCSI disk from the boot program.  This also wedged the
	system.  However, some I/O was attempted (as implied by printing
	the text size in the previous step), as we observed the disk light
	blink.

	Next we used the AutoSCSI utility to low-level format the disk.
	This had the effect of wiping out the NetBSD boot block, MBR, etc.

	Then, we loaded the boot block from floppy again.  When we ran
	"ls" again this time, the disk light blinked, and the ls returned,
	reporting that no files were found.

	Next, we installed NetBSD onto the disk again, and tried booting
	with Int13 disabled, and again with >1G translation disabled.  No
	joy.

	It is worth noting that the Windows NT boot program works fine on
	a system of identical configuration.

>How-To-Repeat:
	See above.

>Fix:
	Unknown.
>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: