[rescue] Sun Kit Needed for EE Student Here

[der Mouse]

>>>> I suspect your problem was the BIOS doing your thinking for you.
>> Quite possibly.  But it certainly wasn't obvious what I needed to
>> set to what to make it stop.
> Have you tried manually configuring the disk geometry?
> ("User" option)

Hm.  I don't recall trying that.  (But then, it was quite a while back
that this happened.)  I should bring the machine down and try it.

> The fact that you can use the disk AFTER booting from some other
> drive means the OS that you are loading isn't impaired by the BIOS's
> brain damage.

Yes.  It's NetBSD (albeit a somewhat old version), and once it's loaded
the kernel and identified its boot device, I don't think it uses the
BIOS for anything disk-related any longer.

> I would:  [...]
> The most annoying part of this process is that many tools make
> assumptions that get confused in these scenarios.

I actually think the most annoying part in this case will be moving all
the data off that disk so I can play with it in data-destroying ways!

>> That wouldn't help here.  The BIOS was wedging when it first touched
>> the disk, during its enumeration of the attached IDE devices, long
>> before it starts looking anywhere for bootblocks.  Before even the
>> execution of the BIOS code in addon PCI cards.
> Can you get to the SETUP menu (or whatever your machine calls it)?
> As I said, don't let your BIOS do the thinking...  :<

I can get into setup if the drive is not connected.  I don't recall
ever making it to setup with the drive connected - except when the BIOS
is configured to "none" for that slot.

This too I'll have to investigate when I bring the machine down to play
with it.  Probably not until I get another disk to hold the data.

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