Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!pacbell!pacbell.com!ucsd!usc!wuarchive!udel!mmdf
From: csc239@central1.lancaster.ac.uk (A. S. Lunn)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: shoelace and PS/2 30
Message-ID: <29110@nigel.ee.udel.edu>
Date: 31 Aug 90 16:32:37 GMT
Sender: mmdf@ee.udel.edu
Lines: 55

Over the last couple of days I've installed shoelace with minix 1.3
system on a PS2 model 30 so that it boots off /dev/hd2 and takes a ram
image from /dev/hd3. The fs has been modified to load the ram disk from
/dev/hd3 without looking at the floppy first. I've run into two
problems, one major and the another minor.

I went through all the stages of using a floppy before actualy  writing
to the boot block of the hard disk and the minix partition and had no
trouble. I then setup everthing on the hard disk and I now can boot
into MS-DOS in partition 1 or Minix in 2. The problem is that on a boot
into minix, the floppy drive doesn't work. When accessing the device
the motor starts, nothing happens for a couple of seconds, the motor
stops and then an errror is printed. eg when I try to mount a file
system I get 

Unrecoverable disk error on device 2/0, block 1 

and the mount fails with in invalid file system error. Also some times
its gives an unexpected interrupt or trap on vector 2. 

If I cat the first couple of blocks of /dev/hd0 onto a floppy and boot that
the floppy drive works fine. 

If I boot into MS-DOS using winiboot the floppy  giving sector
not found error. 

My guess is that its something to do with the parameter table or
initialising the floppy. The man page of Bootlace says that the floppy
parameter table vector is pointed to an internal table if the boot
device is a floppy. When booting from hard disk this isn't done. Also
when booting from floppy the ROM bootstrap may initialse the floppy after
determinig theres a disk in the drive. When there is not a disk it
might not bother and so the floppy drive never gets initialsed. 

The other minor problem is when rebooting from minix with CTRL-ALT-DEL
winiboot prints the partition table, waits for about half a second and
then boot the default partition. With a cold boot it waits the fifteen
seconds before booting the default partition. It also does not check is
there is a bootable floppy in the drive. CTRL-ALT_DEL from MS-DOS works
properly.
 
Since nobody else has reported this bug, I suspect its something to do
with the PS2 model 30.

I'd don't know enough about the rom bootstap to investigate my gueses
and I've got four weeks to get this working before the second year
undergrads start to use the machines and I'm on holiday for the next two
weeks.  All help would be appreciated.

	Thanks

	Andrew Lunn
	csc239@uk.ac.lancaster.central1   	JANET
						University of lancaster
						England.