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From: cwr@crash.cts.com (Will Rose)
Subject: Re: Unsolvable - the Sequels... Please help!
Organization: CTS Network Services (CTSNET), San Diego, CA
Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 21:46:49 GMT
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Peter Petroff (e3307976@student.uq.edu.au) wrote:
:      "Unsolvable Problems - The Next Generation":
:  
:      Replacing ROOT with TINYROOT did indeed work, as TINYROOT includes the
: BIOS hard drive driver; and I'd like to offer my grateful thanks to the
: responders. One question - why does ROOT not include the BIOS hard drive
: driver?

ROOT is meant for protected mode, and the bios driver is real mode.

:      However, as I was installing, I wasn't quite sure of some parameters
: (I'm not familiar with Minix or Unix clones to *this* degree, that's why I
: wanted to install and maintain Minix to teach myself), so I chose to use the
: automatic installation script, intending to repeat with the manual
: installation later. The script DID copy a /usr/* file system to the hard
: drive, was perfectly functional and it was made active (that IS what the "*"
: indicates, yes?).

Sounds ok.

:      However after a sync, shutdown, powerdown and powerup, the computer
: refused to boot Minix from the hard drive. It did continue to boot from
: floppies for a _short_ time later - until it all crashed. I re-"rawrite"d
: the images to floppies and tried again the next morning. Not only do BOTH
: ROOTs now result in kernel panics (I'll proceed to process new images
: again), but the hard drive is now COMPLETELY not there - even to DOS v5.00,
: its format and fdisk. I couldn't even (debug g=c800:5, it's what I used to
: do, can anyone tell me why no more?) low level format the hard drive under
: DOS 5 as the machine output "FFFF" and then appeared to hang.

This has to be some coincidental controller crash - I don't know of any
re-programmable controllers that honour the c800:5 formatting convention.
At a guess, either the controller or the hard-drive electronics are dead.
Does the drive still spin up?

The kernel panics are probably from the absent hard drive.

:      Unless there's been some physical damage to the hard drive, connectors
: or controller (somehow I find that hard to swallow though, as everything
: else works as per nominal), I have NO idea what's going on and I can't think
: of any software failures that could cause problems to SUCH an extent that
: even MS-DOG/DOS couldn't fix it with its normal tools.

I once managed to chew up a monitor with experimental software under Minix,
but I find it hard to imagine how you'd chew up a hard drive sufficiently
to stop a low-level format, with *any* software.

Have you tried booting off a new DOS 5 boot disk and working from that?
If that won't find the HD, then it's a hardware problem of some sort.

Will
cwr@crash.cts.com



