Re: OSR504 boot STOPS after "Loading kernel ... .text"

From: Carol Saah (csaah_at_cox.net)
Date: 07/17/03 

Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 09:30:38 -0400

Bela,

Thank you VERY, VERY, VERY much for your comments
and suggestion to take the ad160 out of the machine. There is
a problem with the D865PERL bios booting off SCO OSR504 and
SCO OSR505 boot diskettes. At boot, a brief access to
SCO's boot diskette is made and THEN control is passed on to
boot the next device in the boot sequence. A DOS 5.0 diskette can be
booted.

I am really embarrassed because I knew the BIOS was not
transferring control to the diskette yesterday and I even mentioned the
fact to the dealer from whom I purchased the motherboard and
told him how I had to get the diskette to boot: press "a" at the
Ranish Boot Manager (www.ranish.com/part/) screen. So, in my
tests, the BIOS was transferring boot control to the next boot device
in the sequence -- the hard drive.

I know this is a direct contradiction to what I posted. Somehow the
crucial WAY I was booting from floppies totalling escaped my mind when
I was writing the original posting. Unbelievable except that I have been
troubleshooting a lot of electrical failures resulting from that lightning
hit
and so it is difficult to really concentrate on one thing. And I NEED MY
SCO OSR504 so I didn't want to wait to post.

I had also forgotten that from my research to figure out how to use Ranish
Boot manager to boot SCO OSR504, I could NOT use the "a" method
to boot OSR504. period.

But, please note that I WAS ABLE to boot SCO OSR505's boot
floppy to completion via pressing "a" at the Ranish boot manager.
I didn't have the SCO OSR505 machine in February when I did my
Ranish tests.

On a different note....
I wonder if this also means that SCO's OSR505 COULD be
booted from Ranish's Partition Manager!!!!! If it can, I will be
very, very appreciative because a SCO upgrade would save me a lot
of trouble I have been going through until now to boot SCO OSR504.

In Ranish boot manager, I can either choose to boot with the Ranish boot
manager or the "standard IPL". So, if the Ranish boot manager is the
boot manager, I either have to boot with SCO OSR504 boot/root floppies
and type in the bootstring (which is what I have been doing recently), or
I have to boot to the Ranish boot manager, make sure that SCO's boot
partition is active and set the boot manager to boot with the "standard
IPL". Then, I can reboot into SCO, but then the Ranish boot manager is
unavailable until I boot with a DOS diskette and run part243, to boot and
activate the Ranish boot manager again. And, then, I can run Solaris or
SBS until the next time I need to run SCO OSR504 without the boot/root
floppies. Then, the same boot manager change is needed. (It is too
complicated, I guess.)

I would love it if SCO's new OS would come out with a boot
manager that can boot OS's from the 2nd disk. Then, I would be
set.

By the way, the chipset configuraton I gave in the original
posting are at the default settings. I would not have the slightest
idea what to change there without more research.

My motherboard dealer says that for a few more bucks, he
can exchange the D865PERL motherboard for a D875PBZLK
if I can tell him that it will work with my operating system.

If SCO OSR5 does not support Multi-Threading, then it looks
as though I'll need to change my memory, too, if I upgrade to
D875PBZLK. Does SCO OSR5 support Multi-Threading in the 875i?

My processor is 2.53 GHz with a system bus speed of 533 MHz,
which does not have the Multi-Threading technology.

I have one DIMM of 512 Mb (DDR400) to run in Single Channel
Memory Mode. Is there a version of SCO OSR5 that supports dual
channel memory mode?

Again, thanks for the leads and I hope this posting will help better
than the last one.

Carol Saah

"Bela Lubkin" <belal@sco.com> wrote in message
news:20030716192635.GX24551@sco.com...
> Carol Saah wrote:
>
> > I replaced an Intel P4 D845PESV motherboard
> > with an Intel P4 D865PERL motherboard -- as a
[removed lines]
> The boot stage at which your system is hanging happens long before the
> differences between OSR504 and OSR507 (or between straight OSR504 and
> OSR504 + 17 patches) would make any difference. It's also before the
> use of a BTLD should make any real difference; and and before the
> location of the root filesystem would make any difference. The only
> thing you're accessing is the /stand (boot) filesystem, or the boot
> floppy.
>
> /boot reads a hard disk boot filesystem using BIOS hard disk read
> functions; it reads floppy and CD-ROM filesystems using BIOS floppy disk
> read functions (i.e. the same function, different "drive number"). The
> action is very simple. BIOS is called to read a sector, then a
> different BIOS call is done to copy the resulting data up into high
> memory; repeat. If it hangs, one of those function calls must be
> failing in an odd manner.
>
> From what you've already tried, the next thing I would want to try is do
> exactly the same things on a different D865PERL motherboard (with
> different CPU & RAM -- all components different) -- to see if it's a
> generic problem with OSR5 vs. that motherboard. Of course you probably
> only have one unit, so you can't do that. I guess my next attempt would
> be: try booting removing all hardware not needed to boot the floppy,
> then try booting one of the floppies that hangs. That is, primarly,
> remove the ad160 hardware. If the kernel loads then you can tell
> there's something going on between /boot and the ad160 BIOS or hardware.
> Of course the kernel won't do anything useful if it can't access the
> disks; this is just a probe.
>
> Regarding the detailed BIOS settings (SDRAM timing etc.) -- are those
> default values assigned by the BIOS? Most BIOSes successfully
> initialize themselves to conservative values that work consistently. If
> those are tuned values, reset to BIOS defaults and see if things are any
> better -- then if you need to tune, change one thing at a time until you
> find the culprit, and don't change that!
>
> I haven't seen a D865PERL yet. I'm using an i875P-based motherboard
> (not Intel brand) without problems, and the 865 and 875 chipsets are
> very closely related. That doesn't prove anything about your situation,
> just that OSR5 isn't inherently allergic to that chipset family.
>
> >Bela<

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