Re: Booting to "non-dos" diskette
From: Bill Vermillion (bv_at_wjv.com)
Date: 11/16/04
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Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 22:25:01 GMT
In article <Pine.SGI.4.40.0411161454520.1342590-100000@shell01.TheWorld.com>,
Bob Parkhurst <bobp@theworld.com> wrote:
>On Tue, 16 Nov 2004, Bob Bailin wrote:
>
>> "Bob Parkhurst" <bobp@theworld.com> wrote in message
>> news:Pine.SGI.4.40.0411151712060.1245443-100000@shell01.TheWorl
>> d.com...
>>
>> >I have just installed SCO OpenServer 5.0.7 on a PC with an
>> >Intel mother board (D865GLC) with the latest version of the
>> >BIOS. Everything is fine except the computer won't boot from
>> >the diskette that came with OpenServer, the emergency boot
>> >diskettes, or the diskettes from BackupEDGE. It does boot
>> >from an MS-DOS diskette so I believe the boot order in the
>> >BIOS is correct, and the other diskettes boot ok in two other
>> >computers. The light on the floppy drive flashes only briefly
>> >before it switches over to the hard drive. So far our supplier
>> >and Intel have not been any help at all.
>> I'd agree with Bill that it's probably a floppy drive problem,
>> but why aren't you booting from the CD instead?
>> Your new floppy drive may have heads that are slightly out of
>> alignment. The original OSR507 floppies may also have been
>> written on a drive slightly out of alignment in the other
>> direction. If you want to experiment, just borrow the floppy
>> drive used to create the emergency boot diskettes and try it
>> out in the new system.
>I tried the diskettes formatted, written, and verified on this
>machine in two other other machines and they work fine. I took
>the floppy drive out of one of those other machines and put it in
>this one, but to no avail. The emergency boot diskettes from one
>of the other machines didn't work on this one. (Of course the DOS
>diskette from Windoze always works!@#$%^&?) I don't usually get
>these jobs unless everyone else has given up and I've never seen
>anything like this before either.
You didn't say that was what you had done.
Now I can make a better guess.
I said before that MS and Unix handle hardware differently.
MS uses a lot of things in BIOS but Unix looks to the base hardware
and once the HD is found in Unix BIOS is not looked at again.
If this is what I think may have happened the floppy was installed
and the wrong connector was placed on the floppy because of
1) a mistake or 2) the one for the first drive wouldn't reach
but the second one would. Then someone went into the BIOS
and chose 'swap floppy' which makes A appear as B and B appear
as A >IN MS SOFTWARE ONLY<.
>We installed unix by booting to the CD before this mystery
>started. The diskette was intended for BackupEDGE's RestoreEDGE.
>We've solved the problem by transferring their "cdrom.iso" image
>to another PC and creating a bootable CD which our client would
>only have needed if we hadn't been able to provide it.
>Thank you very much for your help. I would still like to know why the
>floppies wouldn't boot, but right now it's more of a mystery than a
>problem.
Check the BIOS as I suggested.
You also said you swapped floppies. But I suspect the answer
to this next question is NO. Did you swap the floppy cables too?
Check the bios and change cables. See if that fixes it.
Bill
-- Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com
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