After frying 2 fairly large drives during my installation attempts I am
left with 500mb quantum drive ( at least the computer was heaven sent
after not being able to find one fully working 486 board in the pile,
just not sure how far will 32Mb will go).
After removing the Disk managers DDO ( which confused linux,
successfully I hope, with partition magic ) I was unable to boot even
DOS on it.( 524x32 or 1049x16 in BIOS)
I decided to put another DOS 1G drive in as primary ( with DDO ) only
to uncover some hardware incompatibility in this drive.
Incidentally the 1G drive has a dip setting for master with non-ATA
compatible slave but it doesn't help.

At BOOT the DDO states that (for second drive) :
Host Transfer = 32 Bit (CHS) *OK*

32 bits somehow that seams strange , is that the function of the PCI IDE?

When Linux boots/loads it says DMA timeout on the drive and the whole
lot of can't read super-block, this block, that block *.*.

Does Linux have it's own code for all devices ( it does not use BIOS )?
So, is there a way to tell it to use PIO ( or even polling ), where
would I find this code?


Thanks Sam.

sambo wrote:

> After frying 2 fairly large drives during my installation attempts I am
> left with 500mb quantum drive ( at least the computer was heaven sent
> after not being able to find one fully working 486 board in the pile,
> just not sure how far will 32Mb will go).
> After removing the Disk managers DDO ( which confused linux,
> successfully I hope, with partition magic ) I was unable to boot even
> DOS on it.( 524x32 or 1049x16 in BIOS)
> I decided to put another DOS 1G drive in as primary ( with DDO ) only
> to uncover some hardware incompatibility in this drive.
> Incidentally the 1G drive has a dip setting for master with non-ATA
> compatible slave but it doesn't help.
>
> At BOOT the DDO states that (for second drive) :
> Host Transfer = 32 Bit (CHS) *OK*
>
> 32 bits somehow that seams strange , is that the function of the PCI IDE?
>
> When Linux boots/loads it says DMA timeout on the drive and the whole
> lot of can't read super-block, this block, that block *.*.
>
> Does Linux have it's own code for all devices ( it does not use BIOS )?
> So, is there a way to tell it to use PIO ( or even polling ), where
> would I find this code?
>
>
> Thanks Sam.

With older hardware & large drives, I'd boot the Slack install CD, use
cfdisk to make a small first primary DOS partition (type FAT16), say 10M,
then use the rest of the drive for your Linux partitions. Once Slack is
installed, reboot, mount the Linux partition as root (CD boot), mount the
DOS partition, copy loadlin.zip from ~root/ into it, unzip it, copy your
kernel into the DOS partition and edit linux.bat so that it boots the
kernel with your CHS values, maybe similar to this:
c:\loadlin\loadlin.exe c:\vmlinuz root=/dev/hda2 hda=525,16,63
where the values 525,16,63 are the CHS values for your hard drive.

Now, boot with either an MS-DOS boot floppy or the FreeDOS Odin floppy,
invoke loadlin with
c:\loadlin\linux.bat
at the DOS prompt. That should knock you into Linux world.
Using that scheme I've been able to get a 2G drive in an ancient Eurocom
8200 (486dx2-33 w/4M) up and running Slackware9.1 w/pared-down 2.4.24 (it
takes about 5 minutes of swapping to get a networked bash prompt <grin>),
even though the BIOS errors are all over the DOS boot screen.
If your big drives are truly fried, then it won't hurt to experiment with
them? Install one on the primary IDE channel and zero out the MBR by
booting the SLack install CD and issueing
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1
then run cfdisk on it again, see if the disc plays nice again?


--
Slackware9.1, 2.4.24, A7V333-XP2100+, Ti4200
RLU #272755

On Wed, 18 Feb 2004, sambo wrote:
> After frying 2 fairly large drives during my installation attempts I am

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. 'frying' ? you mean like, destroyed?

> left with 500mb quantum drive ( at least the computer was heaven sent
> after not being able to find one fully working 486 board in the pile,
> just not sure how far will 32Mb will go).
> After removing the Disk managers DDO ( which confused linux,
> successfully I hope, with partition magic ) I was unable to boot even
> DOS on it.( 524x32 or 1049x16 in BIOS)
> I decided to put another DOS 1G drive in as primary ( with DDO ) only
> to uncover some hardware incompatibility in this drive.
> Incidentally the 1G drive has a dip setting for master with non-ATA
> compatible slave but it doesn't help.
> At BOOT the DDO states that (for second drive) :
> Host Transfer = 32 Bit (CHS) *OK*
> 32 bits somehow that seams strange , is that the function of the PCI IDE?

32bit is good. otherwise it's 16bit, which transfers slower.

> When Linux boots/loads it says DMA timeout on the drive and the whole
> lot of can't read super-block, this block, that block *.*.

which drive? 500MB hdb ?

i suspect disk manager. read /usr/doc/Linux-HOWTOs/Large-Disk-HOWTO
(a quick trip to google 'ddo disk mananger linux' finds that #1 of
768 related items.


> Does Linux have it's own code for all devices ( it does not use BIOS )?

right, pretty much.


> So, is there a way to tell it to use PIO ( or even polling ), where
> would I find this code?


man hdparm
look at -c, -d, -m


--
William Hunt, Portland Oregon USA

Well actually the comp is not so bad (IBM/Cyrix? 686 233) , just the
drive is ancient, it must have some
problems since it hung my backup/95 machine when I was copying linux to
it ( or deleting zipslack.zip not sure which ).
As much as I would like to believe it that zeroing out the boot sector(
on my 20G and only 7200RPM I ever had!)
would do anything ( even if I could, like getting some code I wrote
about 4 years ago to talk to the controller directly,
which proved to only work in one machine, a 486 ), if the BIOS can't
detect it I can't see any chance.
I already had linux on it, after about 2 days of "WHAT NEXT" and trying
to log in over the serial port, I found some
LINUX magazine FAQs and tips, created new user ( wooohooo) and was ready
to install a network card and a CD
I knew worked. I was so excited that I forgot to reconnect the drive,
and as I stood the case up the drive fell (about 20 inches )
off the drive cage, hitting another case nearby , it's power supply and
the bottom, all with the top of the drive.
The trusty old 1gig claims to be able to withstand 70G that must be a
lot more than 20 inches ( but it is a lot lighter ).
The 40Gig died when I was hooking up a floppy to my main comp for the
second time to make a rescue disk.
Didn't shut it of , missed the holes by one and shorted out the 12V
supply, but same model 40G on the same supply lead survived,
go figure.

Thought I was set for a long time with drives,
AGGGGGGGHHHRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!
What a week.

Ciao.

The disk manager is Quantum one ( smarter than segates which you have to
reconfigure when changing drives ) at boot time
it scans for all drives and sets their translation.

>>compatible slave but it doesn't help.
>>At BOOT the DDO states that (for second drive) :
>>Host Transfer = 32 Bit (CHS) *OK*
>>32 bits somehow that seams strange , is that the function of the PCI IDE?
>>
>
>32bit is good. otherwise it's 16bit, which transfers slower.
>
>>When Linux boots/loads it says DMA timeout on the drive and the whole
>>lot of can't read super-block, this block, that block *.*.
>>
>
>which drive? 500MB hdb ?
>
Yes, the linux drive. It looks like it is calling various file system
modules (one being UM?DOS) trying to mount the drive
( I guess I should add the same switch suggested in zipslack\FAQ.txt for
mounting FAT, -o msdos I think , to my linux.bat.)

>
>
>i suspect disk manager. read /usr/doc/Linux-HOWTOs/Large-Disk-HOWTO
>(a quick trip to google 'ddo disk mananger linux' finds that #1 of
>768 related items.
>
Even though I think there are some DDO remnants in sectors 2 - 63 the
partition table is in sector 1.
The problem seams to be purely hardware.

earlier in the messages I saw " assuming bus 33Mhs ???? PIO overide with
?????"
which I should probably explore

there are 2 email messages after you install, one implying you should be
able to see all the boot messages in a file
somewhere, but my quick attempt (when I had it running the first time )
didn't yield any such think, did I look in
the wrong file or is it scattered over many separate log files.


>
>>Does Linux have it's own code for all devices ( it does not use BIOS )?
>>
>
>right, pretty much.
>
>
>>So, is there a way to tell it to use PIO ( or even polling ), where
>>would I find this code?
>>
>
>
>man hdparm
>look at -c, -d, -m
>
Are you trying to make me install it on my win machine just to read it?
But I don't wanna, HEHE

Cheers , Sam