From: drew@ophelia.cs.colorado.edu (Drew Eckhardt) Subject: Re: ST-02, ST-51 disk controllers coexisting? Date: 29 Jul 1992 08:22:05 GMT
In article <tlhilde.712386705@roby.ecn.purdue.edu> tlhilde@roby.ecn.purdue.edu (Troy Hildebrand) writes:
>Hello,
>
> I am trying to install Linux on my 386sx16, 2M, with an ST02
>controlling an (80 Meg) ST-296N and an st-51 controlling a 74Meg MFM
>drive (i'm not sure what kind, but the ST-51 bios recognizes it).
>
>Neither of the drives are in the ROM Bios (Phoenix), because the
>controllers take care of it. The Problem is, when I boot linux from
>floppy, it recognizes the SCSI drive, but not the MFM drive. And
>then later, it gives a warning, "READ CAPACITY FAILED" or something
>about the SCSI drive.
If the MFM disk is not in CMOS, it will not be supported. If the ST51
is an AT controller, you can use the controller, just disable the BIOS on it.
If it's an XT controller, you are SOL.
You can pick up MFM/RLL controllers for < $20 if you talk to the local
technicians - they pull them from equipment when upgrading systems
to IDE drives, and practically give them away.
Note that if you change controllers on an MFM drive, it may not be reliable
unless you re-lowlevel format it.
As far as the SCSI disk : newer SCSI drivers (kernel binary / sources
available from headrest.woz.colorado.edu as /pub/linux/scsi* and vmunix* -
pickout the newest files) handle things more gracefully. Note
that you'll need to jumper the card for IRQ5, and will also have to
change the bytes at offset 508 and 509 into the image so it doesn't try to
mount root of dev 0x301. Changing the bytes to 0,0 will cause it to
>I would like to keep the SCSI drive for use under dos, and install
>linux onto the MFM drive (64 meg now, with extra partition for swap).
>Does anyone see a problem with this setup? Will I be able to boot
>selectively ie, either OS, without hassle?
See above, and after you have it working, you can use a program like winiboot
to selectively boot DOS or Linux.