Re: Etherboot & Freedos

["Robb Main [Genedyne]" <genedyne@aci.on.ca>]

As per the ATA spec, the master IDE drive on any channel is supposed to wait
up to 30 seconds for the Slave to complete internal diagnostics, and
indicate to the master it is present & OK (by diddling with the Drive Active
Slave Present (DASP) signal line).  Many manufacturers try to mess with this
spec (usually by reading / writing to IDE IO ports before the drive has
completed diagnostics - although per spec behaviour is "undefined" during
this period) in an attempt to circumvent this requirement, which can delay
bootup significantly.

It is possible the hang you thought you saw was freeDOS waiting for this
maximum timeout (31seconds) for IDE drives to "appear".

Of course it is also possible the code could simply be spinning in a loop
waiting on a bit to toggle in an register that doesn't exist without the IDE
or floppy controllers present.  If this is the case, check accesses to IO
ports 0x1F0-0x1F7, and 0x3F0-0x3F7.  In particular, check the 0x3F6, 0x3F7
IO ports, as there are some shared bits here that were always pretty messy.

Cheers,
RMain.

----- Original Message -----
From: Christoph Plattner <christoph.plattner@alcatel.at>
To: <netboot@baghira.han.de>
Sent: Monday, July 31, 2000 3:24 AM
Subject: Re: Etherboot & Freedos


>
> I had the problem months ago with the `netboot' package:
> If there is no IDE controller in the machine (or perhaps disabled),
> the the dos loader hangs. I don't know why. I put a empty floppy+IDE
> controller in the old 486PC (no FDD+IDE onboard) and suddenly it works !
>
> With friendly regards
> C. Plattner
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
> private: christoph.plattner@dot.at
> company: christoph.plattner@alcatel.at
>
> ben wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >     I one of your postings on xxx talking about getting freedos to boot
> > from a tagged image.
> > I have tried with mknbi-1.0-2.rpm and etherboot-4.6.4 with freedos
> > 1.1.20 build 2020.
> >
> > The problem that I am having is that it is hanging before freedos gets
> > to load.... The last
> > thing I see is the netboot image loader message.
> >
> > I need to get freedos booting, and am willing to debug code to do this,
> > any ideas?
> >
> >
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===========================================================================
> This Mail was sent to netboot mailing list by:
> Christoph Plattner <christoph.plattner@alcatel.at>
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>

===========================================================================
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"Robb Main [Genedyne]" <genedyne@aci.on.ca>
To get help about this list, send a mail with 'help' as the only string in
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send a mail to netboot-owner@baghira.han.de.