bouyer@chassiron.ensta.fr wrote:
> 
> I don't think it's a problem with NetBSD's bootblocks. I've seen this
with
> a certain drive/motherboard combination, and the bios was hung just
after
> probing for disks. In fact it didn't finish the disk probe: it
reported
> the disk name correctly, but the geometry mode (normal/large/lba)
probe
> made things hang. Disabling disks autoprobe and hardcoding the
geometry and
> adressing modes in the bios solved the problem.
> 
> PS: the disk was a 1G2 seagate. I don't know the name of the
motherboard,
> it's a old one we got with a p90.

OK, that's the second report of problems with certain Seagate HD and
motherboard combinations.

I've tried setting the geometry manually, I've tried "NORMAL", "LARGE"
and "LBA" modes, all to no avail. If I turn off all probing, i.e.
manually enter the geometry of the boot disk and set all other drives to
"None" it still won't boot. That's the strange thing...

I see the same symptoms as you though, all IDE devices (two HDs and one
Creative CD-ROM) all probe correctly if set to autoprobe. The BIOS just
doesn't get beyond the probe. All this is a bit strange though, why
should the BIOS even bother with the bootblocks at this early stage?
Does it read the bootblocks to help determine the correct geometry or
mode? Why on earth does the BIOS hang at this stage instead of after the
setup summary screen when it should start booting from the disk?

Another ultra-weird thing is that both motherboards I've tried were
happy to boot (from floppy) with the Seagate Medalist ST32122A disk as
Primary Master as long as it didn't have any bootblocks and as long as
the other Medalist with bootblocks wasn't connected to _either_ IDE
controller. The minute I wrote NetBSD bootblocks (didn't try DOS) on the
ST32122A the motherboard would hang on that disk as well.

Ah well, off to my pusher to borrow another disk (non-Seagate).

Gunnar

--
Gunnar Helliesen   | Bergen IT Consult AS  | NetBSD/VAX on a uVAX II
Systems Consultant | Bergen, Norway        | '86 Jaguar Sovereign 4.2
gunnar@bitcon.no   | http://www.bitcon.no/ | '73 Mercedes 280 (240D)