Dear NetBSD experts:

I'm having some serious problems getting NetBSD 1.1 installed, and I'm
hoping somebody can help me out.  I've been using 386BSD/NetBSD since
the days of 386BSD 0.1, with nary a hiccup.  But this new version is
giving me major headaches.

I'm using a 486DX-33 (EISA machine with only ISA boards) and I'm trying
to install NetBSD on half of my wd0 drive (the first partition is for DOS.)
The drive is only 200 MB, so most of my NetBSD stuff is on my 1.3GB SCSI
drive.  I've got 16MB of memory and AHA-1542CF SCSI (CD-ROM and hard drive.)

When I try to install NetBSD 1.1, I get a bunch of error messages after
the disklabel and newfs steps are complete.  Basically I am unable to copy
anything sizeable to the new, empty filesystem without getting these
messages:

wdc0: lost interrupt: status 58<drdy,dsc,drq> error 0
wdc0: lost interrupt: status 58<drdy,dsc,drq> error 4<abrt>
wdc0: reset failed
wd0: wdcontrol: recal failed (1): status 0 error 0
... (last 2 lines repeat forever)

The drive light gets stuck on and the system hangs (other than the continuing
error messages).  Resetting the system does not reset the drive.  Powering down
in this condition (my only choice) is apparently causing head crashes, because
I'm suddenly getting bad sectors.

The disktab info for this disk is the same as it has been for years, and the
disklabel and newfs steps seem to complete OK.  fsck doesn't find any errors.

So question #1 is: Is this a new incompatibility with my (admittedly old) IDE
controller card?  Anybody know what these messages mean?

If this problem can't be solved, I'm considering dumping IDE altogether and
buying another big SCSI drive.  Of course this raises more questions:

1. Can NetBSD control my floppy drives properly through my AHA-1542CF card?
   Years ago I recall this was not supported.

2. Does OS-BS work with SCSI disks?  If not, what boot manager would you
   recommend?

Any guidance in these matters would be greatly appreciated, as I'm really
anxious to get 1.1 up and running.

Pete Bartlett
bartlett@exabyte.com