in case anyone's wondering, the problem went away when we
installed a 1542B instead.  Wierd.

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	David Christiansen (NT) 
> Sent:	Wednesday, October 08, 1997 1:14 PM
> To:	'port-i386@netbsd.org'
> Subject:	RE: Wierd experience attempting fresh install of 1.2.1
> on a Dell
> 
> > 	The machine is an AMD 486/133, installing on Adaptec 1542CP's
> > sd0.
> > 
> > 	when creating the usr and var partitions, we hit lots and lots
> > of hard errors.  Later, just for grins and giggles, we did a
> > copy_kernel, and that failed with lots of fd0a soft errors.   Sure
> > enough, the machine certainly doesn't boot ;-)
> 
> 	we reduced the DMA rate on the controller, rebuilt the floppies,
> and the problem still happened.
> 	After changing the floppy drive to run off the fd controller on
> the SCSI card instead of the built-in controller, AND using the
> drive's
> physical geometry instead of the logical geometry, and then we only
> got
> one fd soft error, creating /dev/drum.  
> 
> 	The kernel copied successfully.  Now, we reboot the machine, the
> boot loader comes up, but it won't go any further than that-- the
> machine hangs immediately when you hit return at the boot prompt
> (before
> any kernel messages are printed).  
> 
> 	This machine only has scsi drives.  We have tried explicitly
> specifying sd(0,a)/netbsd to the loader, but to no avail.  Mounting
> the
> partition from the filesystem floppy, it appears that the kernel there
> is correct.  In a freak, desperate attempt, we renamed the kernel just
> to make absolutely sure it was loader-related and not kernel-related.
> The problem still happens.
> 
> 	As before, any suggestions would be great.  :-)
> 	Thanks!
> 	-Dave
> 	
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Andrew Gillham
> Sent:	Tuesday, October 07, 1997 7:53 PM
> To:	David Christiansen (NT)
> Subject:	Re: Wierd experience attempting fresh install of 1.2.1
> on a Dell
> 
> In the downright wild guess category..  Is the adaptec configured for
> a high DMA rate?  I believe it can vary from 5.0 to 10.0?  Perhaps
> it is too high.  Also, is the bus clock rate locked at 8Mhz, or not?
> (should be a jumper on the mainboard)
> 
> -Andrew
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From:	Carl Shapiro
> > Sent:	Tuesday, October 07, 1997 7:11 PM
> > To:	David Christiansen (NT)
> > Subject:	Re: Wierd experience attempting fresh install of 1.2.1
> > on a Dell
> > 
> > Hard errors?  Have you tried to "verify media" through the Adaptec
> > BIOS?  Hard
> > errors could be a symptom of bad sectors...  Regarding the soft
> errors
> > with
> > your floppy, I have only run into those problems if 1) I am using a
> > really
> > cheap floppy disk 2) the drive writes bad floppies.
> > 
> > Good luck!
> > 
> > Carl