386/ix 2.0.2 install help (long)

[Bill Kennedy]

In article <441 at inebriae.UUCP>, bill at inebriae.UUCP (Bill Kennedy) writes:
> I'm having a problem installing ISC 2.0.2 that I'm sure is something
[ I said it was long... ]

Mostly I was describing a situation where 2.0.2 just would not behave
with a WD-1007-WA2 controller and a pair of 150Mb CDC drives.  Many
thanks to Don Ahn (donahn at gypsum.berkeley.edu), Jim Frost (madd at world.std.com),
A. Lester Buck (buck at siswat.UUCP), Eric Schnoebelen (eric at egsner.cirr.com),
and Randy Smith (rls!randy at tut.cis.ohio-state.edu) for their suggestions
which I will summarize.  The problem turned out to be in my museum piece
motherboard BIOS, Award 2.09.  I moved the controller and drives to a
system with a newer BIOS and both DOS and V/AT (the other machine is a
'286 so I couldn't try 2.0.2) work just fine.  I'm quite sure that ssbn
will too with a more up-to-date BIOS.

The suggestions were all tried and each had some effect.  Don Ahn
discussed two symptoms I had for "hang at boot", the first is where
the system just seeks and seeks but never boots meaning the controller
is configured wrong.  It can also mean that you formatted with the
install program rather than the controller BIOS.  The other is sign
on and die, that's what I got when I enabled alternate sectors.  This
means that the kernel is looking for something it can't find.  In my
case that was the hard disk controller!  The BIOS could wrench out the
primitive and second level boot, but could proceed no farther.

Jim Frost suggested bad spots in unfortunate places and one drive did
have a bad sector on cylinder 200, first one after the DOS partition :-(
The other didn't, it's now drive zero.  A. Lester Buck suggested using
the install formatter and this got me the responses that the documentation
suggested.  That was particularly helpful for entering bad spots the way
CDC reported them (cyl, head, bytes from index).  With the controller
BIOS formatted drive I had to specify absolute sector number (shudder).
Eric Schnoebelen suggested bringing up Microport V/AT to see if it would
play, that's what I eventually did to verify that the drive and controller
were OK.  Randy Smith cautioned me to use only the controller BIOS, he's
right, but it was interesting to see the different personalities and
failures albeit frustrating.

Karl Denninger (kark at ddsw1.mcs,com) had the most novel suggestion,
pitch 386/ix and stick with SCO.  That's not a terrible idea if you
just want to use the thing.  I need to run X-windows and ISC is worlds
ahead of SCO in the variety of displays supported.  My problem is/was
that I couldn't get the underpinning to work.  I'm expecting an update
to my list of OK VGA's and monitors which I will post in another week
or ten days.

The end of the tale is when you first run into trouble, try and have
another system available so that you can isolate the problem.  That's
probably no easier for most of us than it is in Pipe Creek, TX but I
was lucky enough to have a '286 around with a newer BIOS.  The other
thing to do if in doubt is (as Karl suggested) pay a dealer or VAR to
get it up and running.  If I calculate what I saved by doing it myself
(it's still not done) I'd make less than minimum wage...  Thanks again
for the help.
-- 
Bill Kennedy  usenet      {attctc,att,cs.utexas.edu,sun!daver}!ssbn!bill
              internet    bill at ssbn.WLK.COM   or attmail!ssbn!bill