On Fri, 12 May 2000 wqiu@webcombo.net wrote:

> I set the HD to "NONE" in CMOS setting and it let me boot 
> from the NetBSD CD. Then I "exit" from the NetBSD 
> sysinstall. When I did "fdisk -i wd0", I got error message 
> "fdisk: /dev/rwd0d: Device not configured"( I have only one 
> HD). When I did "shutdown -r now" and tried to reboot from 
> the CD, I got "Read err" and dead machine again even I did 
> not add HD back in CMOS yet.

It's not a scsi, is it? I really didn't think the drive had to be
enabled in the the CMOS to be accessible under NetBSD.

Could it be that it will boot the CD only from a cold start?
 
> I guess the "corrupted MBR" is the right direction to work 
> at, we just have not got it right yet. Fredrick, could you 
> give me some tips on how to "zero out the corrupted boot 
> sector"?

If you can get to NetBSD, via floppy or CD, with the drive connected
and configured, you can zero out the MBR (or whole drive, actually,
since you say it has no data on it) with "dd if=/dev/zero
of=/dev/rwd0d".

If not, Seagate used to post a utility on their web sites (DOS, of
course) to low-level format IDE drives. Maybe other drive
manufacturers, as well. This is a last resort, for drives you would
otherwise discard. I've done it a couple of times, and it works!