[Soekris] Soekris Booting Problem

[Hendrickson, Kenneth]

joel jaeggli [mailto:joelja at bogus.com] wrote:
> I have a couple systems that required updates
> to 1.33c in order to support the mass-storage
> devices we choose to use.

I upgraded my bios to 1.33c, and it still doesn't work.

When the bios starts, I *do* get the message that the
drive exists, and I get the LBA c/h/s numbers printed.

However, the motherboard won't boot from the drive.  The
bios claims there are no bootable devices.

But, once again, after I get OpenBSD booted (via PXEboot),
the disk works just fine.  This indicates that the
disk controller, the disk, and the cables are all good.
So this looks to me like a bug in the bios.  Or it might
be a bug in the OpenBSD install code.  Or there might
be a problem in the way I laid out my disk slices which
is incompatible with the comBios.

> Some of this limitation is due to nature of low volume
> embedded systems, by their nature they don't recieve as
> much testing with different components as high-volume
> systems do. people who productize around them tend to
> use the same components for a really long time.

It would be nice to make two lists on the Soekris Wiki:
(1) known good devices, and (2) known non-working devices.

Søren: can you please help by publishing relevant snippets
of the bios code for booting from ide/sata drives?

Thanks,
Ken Hendrickson