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isolinux not booting - old 486 with SCSI CD writer

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syslinux at mailinator

Feb 13, 2008, 6:43 AM

Post #1 of 7 (9466 views)
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isolinux not booting - old 486 with SCSI CD writer

I am trying to install Debian Linux on an an old Intel Classic R+ computer that
uses an internal Yamaha SCSI CD writer model CRW8424S connected to an Adaptec
ISA SCSI card (I think its a 1542CP). The CD writer is is the only device
connected to the SCSI card. The computer has one hard drive connected to the
on-board IDE interface, a 1.44MB 3 1/2 inch floppy and a 1.2MB 5 1/4 inch floppy.
The hard drive is 1.6GB and contains EZ-Drive as the BIOS only supports drives
up to 500MB approx. However, EZ-Drive only loads when booting from hard drive.

During the boot the following messsages were output by the Adaptec BIOS
Press ^A for SCSISelect(TM) Utility!>>>
SCSI ID #1 - Yamaha CRW8424S
A BOOTABLE CD-ROM IS DETECTED IN YOUR CDROM DRIVE.
The boot sections on your bootable CD-ROM are:
0. DEFAULT ENTRY
YOUR CD-ROM DRIVE IS INSERTED AS - DRIVE D:(81h)
BIOS Installed Successfully.

Once the BIOS had finished I received the following messages
ISOLINUX 3.51 2007-06-10 isolinux: Loading spec packet failed, trying to wing it.
...
isolinux: Found something at drive = 81
isolinux: Failed to locate CD-ROM device; boot failed.
See http://syslinux.zytor.com/sbm for more information.

The Microsoft Windows 98SE installation CD does boot on this computer.

I downloaded syslinux-3.61 and made a CD that used the debug version. The messages
from this were
ISOLINUX 3.61 2008-02-03 Copyright (c) 1994-2008 H. Peter Anvin
isolinux: Starting up, DL = 01
isolinux: Loading spec packet failed, trying to wing it...
isolinux: Trying BrokenAwardHack first ...
isolinux: BAH: Original Int 13 vector : DC002343
isolinux: BAH: FAILURE
isolinux: Found something at drive = 81
isolinux: Failed to locate CD-ROM device; boot failed.
See http://syslinux.zytor.com/sbm for more information.

Having found the “El Torito” Bootable CD-ROM Format Specification
http://www.phoenix.com/NR/rdonlyres/98D3219C-9CC9-4DF5-B496-A286D893E36A/0/specscdrom.pdf
I made changes to isolinux.asm to display the spec packet and accept drive 81h.
I've attached a diff of my changes.

Using the changed isolinux (again debug version) the last few lines were
isolinux: Found something at drive = 81
13 00 00 00 00000047 01 00 0000 0000 0004 57 A0 3F 00
isolinux: Loading main image from LBA = 00000048
isolinux: Sectors to load = 0006

The computer then sits there continuously accessing the CD drive.
The computer did reboot when Ctrl-Alt-Del was pressed.

I tried again. This time I ejected the CD when the computer was
continuously accessing the CD drive. This resulted in the following message
isolinux: Disk error 80, AX = 420081

I don't have time to continue at the moment. Does any one have any good
references on the BIOS functions used or suggestions as to how to continue
when I do have time.

Attachments:

isolinux-diff.txt (1.37 KB)

hpa at zytor

Feb 13, 2008, 10:51 AM

Post #2 of 7 (9120 views)
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Re: isolinux not booting - old 486 with SCSI CD writer [In reply to]

Bruce Robson wrote:
>
> The Microsoft Windows 98SE installation CD does boot on this computer.
>

But not the Windows 2000 CD, I bet.

I think you have one of the old machines which only could boot from a CD
in floppy emulation mode. Those will not work with isolinux (without
SBM), but you can create a floppy image using SYSLINUX and boot it.

There were a lot of such crappy bioses until Microsoft started using El
Torito native mode, at which point they quickly got fixed.

-hpa

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syslinux at mailinator

Feb 13, 2008, 8:21 PM

Post #3 of 7 (9122 views)
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Re: isolinux not booting - old 486 with SCSI CD writer [In reply to]

Bruce Robson wrote:
> I am trying to install Debian Linux on an an old Intel Classic R+
> computer that uses an internal Yamaha SCSI CD writer model CRW8424S
> connected to an Adaptec ISA SCSI card (I think its a 1542CP).
> The CD writer is is the only device connected to the SCSI card.
> The computer has one hard drive connected to the on-board IDE
> interface, a 1.44MB 3 1/2 inch floppy and a 1.2MB 5 1/4 inch
> floppy. The hard drive is 1.6GB and contains EZ-Drive as the
> BIOS only supports drives up to 500MB approx. However,
> EZ-Drive only loads when booting from hard drive.
>
<snip>
> Using the changed isolinux (again debug version) the last few lines were
> isolinux: Found something at drive = 81
> 13 00 00 00 00000047 01 00 0000 0000 0004 57 A0 3F 00
> isolinux: Loading main image from LBA = 00000048
> isolinux: Sectors to load = 0006
>
> The computer then sits there continuously accessing the CD drive.
<snip>
> I don't have time to continue at the moment. Does any one have any good
> references on the BIOS functions used or suggestions as to how to continue
> when I do have time.

I found that the problem that caused the computer to sit there
continuously accessing the CD drive was that all the extra
print code I inserted meant that variable MaxTransfer was
no longer in the first 2k. Hence it did not get initialised.

Now that I have removed the code to print the spec packet,
my modified isolinux based on syslinux-3.61 works.

I've attached a diff of my changes. The first two changed
lines fix a comment and the 13 v 13h bug I raised in another
thread. The remaining changes fix my initial problem of
isolinux not finding my CD drive.

Attachments:

isolinux-diff.txt (0.61 KB)

syslinux at mailinator

Feb 16, 2008, 4:05 AM

Post #4 of 7 (9108 views)
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Re: isolinux not booting - old 486 with SCSI CD writer [In reply to]

> I've attached a diff of my changes. The first two changed
> lines fix a comment and the 13 v 13h bug I raised in another
> thread. The remaining changes fix my initial problem of
> isolinux not finding my CD drive.
>

Peter,

Will you be changing your future isolinux releases so that it
works on my hardware?

i.e. if when scanning drives numbers you find one that returns a
spec packet which doesn't have the sp_drive field set, accept the
drive number if it matches the drive initially passed in dl OR 80h.

Bruce

p.s. I see from http://git.kernel.org/?p=boot/syslinux/syslinux.git;a=shortlog
that you've done the 13 to 13h change.

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hpa at zytor

Feb 16, 2008, 11:05 AM

Post #5 of 7 (9105 views)
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Re: isolinux not booting - old 486 with SCSI CD writer [In reply to]

Bruce Robson wrote:
>
> Peter,
>
> Will you be changing your future isolinux releases so that it
> works on my hardware?
>
> i.e. if when scanning drives numbers you find one that returns a
> spec packet which doesn't have the sp_drive field set, accept the
> drive number if it matches the drive initially passed in dl OR 80h.
>
> Bruce
>

I need to think through the implications of the patch; I should have
some time to do that today. If I don't find any gotchas (as in, would
break other systems) I'll probably put it in the next prerelease, and
testing would be appreciated.

-hpa

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hpa at zytor

Feb 16, 2008, 4:01 PM

Post #6 of 7 (9127 views)
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Re: isolinux not booting - old 486 with SCSI CD writer [In reply to]

Bruce Robson wrote:
>
> I made changes to isolinux.asm to display the spec packet and accept
> drive 81h.
> I've attached a diff of my changes.
>

Could you re-send this as a unified diff (diff -u)?

-hpa

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hpa at zytor

Feb 16, 2008, 4:54 PM

Post #7 of 7 (9115 views)
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Re: isolinux not booting - old 486 with SCSI CD writer [In reply to]

H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> Bruce Robson wrote:
>> I made changes to isolinux.asm to display the spec packet and accept
>> drive 81h.
>> I've attached a diff of my changes.
>>
>
> Could you re-send this as a unified diff (diff -u)?
>

Nevermind. I got it sorted out and included it in 3.62-pre9.

-hpa

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