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From: jeremiah@compulink.co.uk (Jonathan Allen)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Minix & Hardcards
Message-ID: <memo.42578@cix.uucp>
Date: 11 Dec 90 07:49:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Lines: 24

In several messages jeremiah@cix (Jonathan Allen) writes:
>I can't get my hard-card working under Minix

I've at last got this hardcard going properly - hooray!

Thanks to Glen Overby (overby@plains.nodak.edu) who suggested
setting AUTO_BIOS to 1 in config.h - with setting NR_SECTORS
back to the '27' that fdisk wanted, that moved me onto:

   Kernel Panic: unable to set up to read parameters drive 0

Further investigation (and a lot of printf's) showed that the
problem was w_reset() returning the ERR value, which in turn
was caused by an inadequate (in my case) delay at the start of
w_reset().  After the RESET condition is set, there is a short
'for' loop to 'spin' for a while until the SELECT ia asserted.
The constant (who's name escapes me now) was divided by, to make
what is presumably a sensible value on most machines ... well
I removed the '/10' and hey-presto! all of a sudden I was working.
Removing all the printf's and I now have a working system.

Thanks to all (four people) to offered suggestions.

Jonathan