Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!mcvax!botter!ast From: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: Re: Problems compiling kernel; problems with build(?) Message-ID: <1168@botter.cs.vu.nl> Date: Tue, 5-May-87 13:27:16 EDT Article-I.D.: botter.1168 Posted: Tue May 5 13:27:16 1987 Date-Received: Thu, 7-May-87 05:01:09 EDT References: <5692@eddie.MIT.EDU> Reply-To: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) Organization: VU Informatica, Amsterdam Lines: 35 In article <5692@eddie.MIT.EDU> wjc@eddie.MIT.EDU (Bill Chiarchiaro) writes: > > [Lots of problems described] Can anyone give me any advice? > A couple of things come to mind. First, you said you were using 320K diskettes. If you really were, that would explain some things. MINIX expects 360K diskettes. Check that carefully. The error that intrigues me the most is the automatic reboot loop when trying to boot a newly built diskette. That loop is generated by the bootstrap program (tools/bootblok.s). The bootstrap reads in the operating system using the BIOS, and it gets an error, prints that message and tries again, forever. Thus the BIOS is returning errors when reading the operating system. My guess is that either you really do have a 320K diskette or you have a 360K diskette with bad spots on it. In any event, I would take a new diskette, format it for 360K and try that one. If the problems go away, it is clearly due to a rotten diskette. The next thing that I suspect is a controller that has different timing than the IBM's. The greater success at 4.77 MHz is an indication. You probably need to handshake the controller. A fix doing just that was posted a few weeks ago. If you are getting floppy disk errors or hard disk errors, that could explain everything. Another thing worth doing is writing a little test program in C that opens a file, seeks to a random block, writes a known pattern (e.g. 512 times the block number), and then repeats this 100 times to purge the buffer cache. Then read them all back and verify all the bytes. Run this program for an hour simultaneously on the hard disk and the floppy. If it reports errors, the problem is the driver and controller and not matched up. Incidentally, if anyone has such a disk test program, please post it. Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)