Deskpro: can't boot from hd, or run setup from floppy; not newbie, have rtfm
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From: gana1nm on 27 Nov 2006 13:59 Posting to c.o.l.s because machine runs only Linux, to a.s.p.c because it's clearly a Compaq firmware issue, and to c.o.l.h because the firmware might as well be hardware, since I don't (yet) know how to change it. This problem is not for the faint of heart. I have read the manuals on the Compaq website, tried the obvious remedies (see below for gory details) and they haven't worked. My other Linux machines work just fine :-) The Problem Machine is one of the Compaqs from about 1997/8 without a "real" BIOS. It's a compact desktop Pentium II 233Mhz 96MB 2.1GB+2.4GB. There is no obvious way to tell its exact model number, but at boot time the screen displays "Deskpro 4000", a category containing at least 20 models. When I installed Linux on this machine, it had its original HDs which had been used for Windows 9x. I deleted the Diagnostic/ Setup partition, not knowing any reason not to :-), repartitioned and reformatted for Linux. There was no problem - Linux booted fine from the first HD or floppy or CD. When I wanted more HD space, I replaced the first HD (HD0, or /dev/hda) with a known good one containing a bootable Linux, and also replaced the second HD with a larger one. (The first HD is now a Maxtor 10GB, and the second a Western Digital 10GB. I mention the manufacturers because I have heard rumors of boot-time incompatibility of certain pairs of drives, but I have no definite info. 10GB is also , I think, greater than a magic number - 8.x GB? - in certain kinds of BIOS firmware.) There are no MSDOS or Windows partitions. Now the Compaq firmware won't boot from the HD ("1790 - Disk 0 error"), and it wants me to run the Compaq setup utility (at one point it displayed "If you are running Unix, you still need to use the Compaq utility to configure the hard disk"). The new first HD is in fact present and functioning, because I can boot its active partition from a SmartBootManager floppy, or mount, read and write it when booted from a Linux CD. No problems with the second HD or the floppy drive either, once booted. So I didn't _obviously_ botch the hardware replacement, though there may still be something subtly wrong. The new first HD was the first HD of two on the same controller in its previous machine, and also in its current machine. I just left its jumpers as they were, though I have no key for how they should be. OK. I downloaded the self-extracting archive sp8126.exe (PC Diagnostic and Setup Utilities) from the Compaq website, verified it using unzip -vt on another Linux machine and ran it under dosemu (because I don't have an MS machine). The resulting 2 setup/diagnostic boot disks will happily boot to menus on this other machine, but on the Problem Machine, they each just give "Starting MS-DOS" followed by a hang. FWIW, soft reboot (shutdown -r now) also hangs (and always did) under Linux on the Problem Machine even if I've booted from a CD which remains in the drive. The floppy drive is OK, because I was able using the "other" machine to create two different bootable floppies (FreeDos and SmartBootManager) which successfully boot on the Problem Machine. I found an apparently similar case on the net where someone claimed that the problem could be solved (and the setup utilities could be run) by moving the floppy drive to "the other connector on the ribbon cable, the one without the twist". On the Problem Machine, there is no such other connector, and never has been, and if there were, it is not clear how it would help, because it would presumably move the floppy drive to the B: role (/dev/fd1), which is not supposed(?) to be bootable at all, whereas I can currently at least boot SmartBootManager or FreeDos from A: (/dev/fd0). I'm fairly indifferent about actually restoring the setup partition, since Compaq says the setup can be run from floppies, and I don't expect to need to run it often; but I would _really_ like to be able to boot the Problem Machine from its present HD. Any clues will be much appreciated. -D
From: Chris F Clark on 27 Nov 2006 15:35 gana1nm(a)hotmail.com writes: > This problem is not for the faint of heart. [Many possibly relevant details deleted.] Which boot loader are you using on the problem machine, LILO or GRUB? How do you have the partition(s) on the 1st hard drive laid out? What partitions do you have on the 2nd drive? What happens if you have only 1 of the 2 drives connected to the cables? What happens if you replace the 1st drive with the old 2.1GB drive? Is the 1790 error message from the BIOS? Are there "drive parameters" set in your BIOS?
From: Bill Marcum on 28 Nov 2006 00:19 ["Followup-To:" header set to comp.os.linux.hardware.] On 27 Nov 2006 10:59:04 -0800, gana1nm(a)hotmail.com <gana1nm(a)hotmail.com> wrote: > > The floppy drive is OK, because I was able using the "other" machine to > create two different bootable floppies (FreeDos and SmartBootManager) > which successfully boot on the Problem Machine. > Have you tried a memtest86 floppy? > I found an apparently similar case on the net where someone claimed > that the problem could be solved (and the setup utilities could be run) > by moving the floppy drive to "the other connector on the ribbon cable, > the one without the twist". On the Problem Machine, there is no such > other connector, and never has been, and if there were, it is not clear > > how it would help, because it would presumably move the floppy drive > to the B: role (/dev/fd1), which is not supposed(?) to be bootable at > all, > whereas I can currently at least boot SmartBootManager or FreeDos > from A: (/dev/fd0). > On some machines it was possible to swap the A: and B: drives in the BIOS, so you could boot from either 3.5 or 5.25 inch floppies. If your machine never had a second floppy, it's unlikely that the drives would be swapped. -- We seldom repent talking too little, but very often talking too much. -- Jean de la Bruyere
From: gana1nm on 28 Nov 2006 14:41 Chris F Clark wrote: > Which boot loader are you using on the problem machine, LILO or GRUB? On hda, Lilo; of course, when I boot a floppy or a cd, these use whatever they have on them. > How do you have the partition(s) on the 1st hard drive laid out? hda1: 20MB ext2 kernel images and boot maps; placed first in case the BIOS has the cylinder 1024 problem; ext2 so I can use kernels too small to have ext3 builtin. hda2: ~3GB ext3; active; Linux root hda3: ~128 MB Linux swap hda4: extended partition containing: hda5: ~3GB Linux data hda6: ~3.6GB Linux data This is off the top of my head; I'm not at home right now. > What partitions do you have on the 2nd drive? Pretty similar. I like this sort of layout because you can just move it to the hda position in another machine and it's ready to go. > What happens if you have only 1 of the 2 drives connected to the > cables? > > What happens if you replace the 1st drive with the old 2.1GB drive? These are last-resort questions I'll investigate if I can't find a software solution. The mechanical design of the machine is compact (read as "awkward and cramped"), and it has to be dissassembled like a sliding-block puzzle just to get at some of the disk connectors; to actually replace the disks is no fun at all. > Is the 1790 error message from the BIOS? It's from the resident stub of the boot firmware. There's no ROM BIOS such as most pc clones have. That functionality lived on the manufacturer-provided 2MB partition on the original hda, which I overwrote :-). The Compaq utility I downloaded claimed to provide equivalent functionality by either restoring the setup partition (destroying the existing partitioning in the process) or creating setup floppies. > Are there "drive parameters" set in your BIOS? The "drive parameters" seem to be stored in NVRAM, but the user interface to change them isn't resident; at one point I got a message saying "drive 0 has changed - you must re-run setup". This is what I am now attempting to do. I got the machine second-hand, without manuals or software, and just used the configuration it came with.
From: gana1nm on 28 Nov 2006 14:55
Bill Marcum wrote: > Have you tried a memtest86 floppy? Afer I installed Linux, but before I replaced hda, I booted a memtest86 floppy, and ran it for a couple of hours just to check out the memory hardware. No errors were found. I've still got that floppy, and I'll try it again; I expect the same result. |