Uh-oh, FC3 install boot from CDROM error on new machine

[Jess Anderson]

The good news is the hardware did not belch smoke when powered
on for the first time and I was able to make BIOS settings,
thus to see that the CDRW/DVDROM drive was recognized as ATA
ch1 master, the hard disk was recognized as SATA HDD0, and to
set the boot drive order to CDROM, then HDD0, then floppy. End
of good news.

Booting from the FC3 install CD #1, I see loading vmlinuz...
with quite a few dots, then a goodly wait (30-40 seconds)
during which the CD drive appears to be reading. But then
it hangs with the error message

isolinux disk error 80 AX=4280 drive 9F
press any key to try again

same result booting with linux mediacheck, linux rescue or
linux noprobe. I have no clue what "drive 9F" might be, but
since I was reading *something* (the install image?), I'm
guessing the CD drive is perhaps OK, at least for reading.

SATA/RAID 0 support is built into the mobo. As this is my first
experience with Serial ATA, I'm just guessing the issue is the
hard disk. Since it's recognized as SATA drive 0, the
electrical connection is probably fine. Could be a driver
problem (Maxtor 120 GB drive), though.

I didn't do anything explicit about creating a RAID array
(ignorant on that subject except in broad conceptual terms),
though I see the BIOS offers options for doing so. But I
associate RAID with multiple drives, and there's just one hard
drive in this machine.

One other thought is memory size. Back in my RedHat 7.x days,
if you had more than 512MB of RAM you had to pass a mem=512
to the install boot. Surely that is no longer a problem? The
machine has 1.5GB of memory.

Suggestions on where to go from here would be most welcome.

--
[] Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires,
[] but according to our powers.
[] -- Henri-Frederic Amiel
--
* Copyright 2005 Jess Anderson
* www.jessanderson.org * anderson@wisc.edu
* Window Maker Themes: www.jessanderson.org/wmthemes

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[Scot L. Harris]

On Mon, 2005-03-14 at 17:00, Jess Anderson wrote:
> The good news is the hardware did not belch smoke when powered
> on for the first time and I was able to make BIOS settings,
> thus to see that the CDRW/DVDROM drive was recognized as ATA
> ch1 master, the hard disk was recognized as SATA HDD0, and to
> set the boot drive order to CDROM, then HDD0, then floppy. End
> of good news.
>

Getting the magic smoke back into a box is difficult at best... :)

Glad that did not happen. :)


> Booting from the FC3 install CD #1, I see loading vmlinuz...
> with quite a few dots, then a goodly wait (30-40 seconds)
> during which the CD drive appears to be reading. But then
> it hangs with the error message
>
> isolinux disk error 80 AX=4280 drive 9F
> press any key to try again

>
> Suggestions on where to go from here would be most welcome.


Three possibilities come to mind.

First try to find out which SATA controller chip set you have on board.
I recently built a system which has two SATA controllers, the Silicon
3114R worked with no problems. The other one, an Intel controller, did
not see the SATA drives I had connected to it. I may have fixed that in
the bios by turning off fastscan option but have not retested it.

If you can find out which SATA controller you have you should be able to
google or find out if Linux supports that chipset.

Second you might try installing using a nodma option. Have seen many
problems during install where dma caused problems. You can specify this
as an option during install.

Third, make sure your CDROM is defined as the initial bootable drive for
your system. But I think you are past that if you are seeing the
vmlinuz statement.


And you might grab a copy of knoppix or one of the other live CD
versions of linux and try booting that. Those don't need hard drives to
boot to a running linux system. This will let you know what parts of
your system are compatible. And if you get it booted you should be able
to try and see the harddrive and format it using the live CD.


--
Scot L. Harris
webid@cfl.rr.com

"The vast majority of successful major crimes against property are
perpetrated by individuals abusing positions of trust."
-- Lawrence Dalzell

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[James Wilkinson]

Jess Anderson wrote:
> isolinux disk error 80 AX=4280 drive 9F
> press any key to try again

isolinux is a Linux boot loader (http://syslinux.zytor.com/iso.php). It
is responsible for getting the Linux kernel and initrd images off the
CD. Once it's done that, it hands over control to the Linux kernel, and
stops running. The kernel is what detects your hard drives.

So an isolinux disk error message is an error message about the CD disk
or drive.

You could try re-burning your CD, possibly with a different brand.

You could try swapping out your CD drive for a known good model.

You could try using diskboot.img to boot from a USB pen (and then, if
necessary, do a network boot).

Good luck!

James.

--
E-mail address: james | 'In a serial interface, the data bits move down a
@westexe.demon.co.uk | single channel one after the other, like railway
| trains. This is different from the parallel interface
| in which groups of bits arrive together, like London
| buses.' -- 'The Computer Dictionary', Jon Wedge

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