P3B-F and SCSI - no OS boot \ VOGONS

P3B-F and SCSI - no OS boot

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First post, by marquisor

Posted on 2018-01-26, 23:13

marquisor Offline

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Posts: 28
Joined: 2011-10-13, 11:42
Location: Germany

Hello,

the P3B-F is wrecking my nerves.
I installed a LSI Logic 53C1010R U160 PCI64 card, along with a 72 GB HDD. HDD ID is 0, set to bootable in Adapter Configuration, all ok. Testing in Linux BootCD and other OS booting from IDE are fine and fast.

Now I installed Win98SE on the SCSI drive, the IDE is disabled in BIOS (Controller set to secondary for CDROM boot, IDE is on primary, so it is OFF).
All fine but it does not boot: Error "E/A Fehler" - I only have a German Win98SE original CD, could be the same as "Disk error"
Boot order in BIOS 1. Floppy, 2. CDROM, 3. SCSI, 4. IDE Harddisk disabled.

With Smart Boot Manager Floppy I can manually choose the FAT32 partition and it boots up very well.

Partition Magic - Boot Magic can install a boot menu, but can't boot the OS.
Same with Win2k installation after Win98SE, "Disk error" ...

So what's wrong here, any weird bootloader issues with that particular SCSI card?
win98se fdisk /mbr, win2k fixboot, fixmbr gone all through it, nothing.

What I've found out though is installing MS-DOS 6.22 with sys A: C: does boot directly from SCSI...
EDIT:
Did the same as in MS-DOS for Win98; booted via Smart Boot Manager Floppy
In Windows empty disk formatted with systemfiles copied, put C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\SYS.COM to A:\, rebooted with that floppy, did sys A: C: and now it boots from harddisk without any floppy anymore.
But what the heck will I be doing for Win2k if I get problems with that, have to install it again ... *sigh*

And: What exactly is sys.com doing better and where/what does it write to and why it was not done correctly before in the installation process?

Regards
maq

Reply 1 of 4, by Auzner

Posted on 2018-01-26, 23:55

Auzner Offline

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Posts: 347
Joined: 2014-01-24, 11:28

The SCSI drive only has one primary filesystem formatted to it?
Is it boot flagged or the active partition?
Does the motherboard bios have separate menus for "boot other device enable" and "boot other device selection" and both are setup?

Reply 2 of 4, by marquisor

Posted on 2018-01-26, 23:56

marquisor Offline

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Rank: Newbie
Posts: 28
Joined: 2011-10-13, 11:42
Location: Germany

Yep, all set.

BTW: I use SysRescueCD for prepping, doing backup and restore of my HDDs/Partitions. It is a gentoo Linux based environment.

With parted I created a 30 GB Win98SE FAT32 partition aligned to cylinders. Starting at sector 63s -> 30 GB. Flags: boot, lba
Formatted with mkfs.vfat. I do that for nearly all my systems, but mostly IDE/SATA.
Win98SE Boot CD directly checks the disk ok and installs to it.
I also have backup of bootloader, mbr and alls sectors til 63 CHS. So I can play around fast and restore without every time a new fresh install.

Last edited by marquisor on 2018-01-27, 00:08. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 3 of 4, by Radical Vision

Posted on 2018-01-27, 00:01

Radical Vision Offline

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Location: The Bat Cave

Are you sure the controller and the HDD are ok, bcuz they can have some problems, also the cable.
Try normal HDD on the P3B-F, or try the SCSI controller and the disk on other machine.

Mah systems retro, old, newer (Radical stuff)
W3680 4.5/ GA-x58 UD7/ R9 280x
K7 2.6/ NF7-S/ HD3850
IBM x2 P3 933/ GA-6VXD7/ Voodoo V 5.5K
Cmq P2 450/ GA-BX2000/ V2 SLI
IBM PC365
Cmq DeskPRO 486/33
IBM PS/2 Model 56
SPS IntelleXT 8088

Reply 4 of 4, by marquisor

Posted on 2018-01-28, 01:42

marquisor Offline

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Rank: Newbie
Posts: 28
Joined: 2011-10-13, 11:42
Location: Germany

OK guys, so what I've found out is:

- Installations of Win98SE and Win2k on freshly erased drive works both, but does not boot either. Installation of MS-DOS does
- Installation of Win98SE not bootable, installing Win2k afterwards also does not boot
- Installation of Win98SE and SYS A: C: with Win98SE Bootdiskette does fix the boot problem, installation of Win2k afterwards can also boot then. Further hidden Win98SE also Win2k can boot.

So what's the MAGIC with all that? Bootsector of 512 Bytes on EACH PARTITION and a pointer in the bootloader, rather partition table or how is it done? I just want to know, before i spend hours, if i could type in 512 Bytes even with a hex editor manually to fix a problem.
I also used the hex editor for comparison of the MBR between non-bootable Win98SE and bootable. The key Bytes are in 01CF - 01DD which changed in the MBR that is the partition table. So the bootloader was ok. Can't see any changed flags or diff size in parted though!

LEFT BOOTING, RIGHT NOT BOOTING