[Soekris] Cold boot failures on Net5501?

[K K]

Is anybody else seeing cold boot failures on Soekris Net5501-70
with comBIOS v1.33b and OpenBSD 4.3?  I asked earlier on the
soekris-tech list, received no replies.


The console shows the following, and then hangs for about five seconds:

1 Seconds to automatic boot.   Press Ctrl-P for entering Monitor.
Using drive 0, partition 3.
Loading...
probing: pc0 com0 com1 pci mem[639K 511M a20=on]
disk: hd0+


The cursor sits at the '+' for several seconds, then a '*' is printed,
then error messages:

disk: hd0+*
>> OpenBSD/i386 BOOT 3.01
open(hd0a:/etc/boot.conf): Unknown error: code 102
boot>
booting hd0a:/bsd: open hd0a:/bsd: Unknown error: code 102
 failed(102). will try /bsd
boot>
booting hd0a:/bsd: open hd0a:/bsd: Invalid argument
 failed(22). will try /bsd
Turning timeout off.
boot>


If I now type 'machine diskinfo' at the prompt, I see the following:

boot> machine diskinfo
Disk    BIOS#   Type    Cyls    Heads   Secs    Flags   Checksum
hd0     0x80    label   971     64      63      0x1     0x0
boot>

If I type 'reboot' at the prompt, then on the second try,
the disk line reads "disk: hd0+" (no *, no delay),
and in diskinfo the "Flags' entry is different, a checksum is shown,
and booting is ultimately successful!

Using drive 0, partition 3.
Loading...
probing: pc0 com0 com1 pci mem[639K 511M a20=on]
disk: hd0+
>> OpenBSD/i386 BOOT 3.01
boot> machine diskinfo
Disk    BIOS#   Type    Cyls    Heads   Secs    Flags   Checksum
hd0     0x80    label   971     64      63      0x2     0xc7f794bc
boot>


Looking through the source code for 'boot', I think the '*' indicates
getdisklabel() failed?  I am not sure what the cause or fix would be.
Without upgrading comBIOS (to "ver. 1.33b 20080501"), the compactflash
card (Kingston 2GB) isn't detected at all.

Any ideas?


Thanks,

Kevin