From: Fred G Martin (fredm@media.mit.edu)
Date: 09/14/92


From: fredm@media.mit.edu (Fred G Martin)
Subject: Re: floppy bootstrap problem
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 16:43:33 GMT

Hello all, I wrote earlier about getting errors when loading Linux's
root image from floppy (the boot sequence seems to go okay).

A few people suggested re-trying with brand new floppy disks;
apparently the bootstrap sequence can't recover from a bad sector. I
tried this and got the same error.

If anyone has seen this before, with the solution being something
other than a bad disk, I would appreciate any assistance.

A copy of my original post follows.

Thanks,

Fred

Received: xxq
wonderful new IBM PS/2 Model 25-386sx machine. Wait, don't shoot me
yet, this IBM has the standard AT bus architecture! It also has 1.44
Mbyte floppy drive and 4 megs of RAM.

I'm using the 0.97 versions which I rawrote to floppies on this
machine. Using the boot disk, things were going okay:

        serial port at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16450
        8 virtual consoles
        4 pty's
        lp_init: lp0 exists (0)
        No bus mouse detected.
        Linux version 0.97-11 Aug 1 1992 13:33:18
        Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
        floppy: FDC version 0x90
        sock_init: initializing family 1 (AF_UNIX)
        scsi : 0 hosts.
        scsi : detected 0 SCSI disks 0 tapes total.
        insert root floppy and press ENTER

But then I inserted the root floppy, pressed ENTER, and things went
bad:

        floppy I/O error
        dev 021c, sector 0
        floppy I/O error
        dev 021c, sector 2
        bread failed
        floppy I/O error
        dev 021c, sector 2
        bread failed
        floppy I/O error
        dev 021c, sector 0
        MSDOS bread failed
        Kernel panic: Unable to mount root

I tried rawriting the root disk again and tried the whole process over
a few times with the same result each time.

If anyone has any ideas, please post or e-mail to me. Thank you.

        - Fred

-- 
Fred Martin | fredm@media.mit.edu | (617) 253-7143 | 20 Ames St. Rm. E15-301
Epistemology and Learning Group, MIT Media Lab     | Cambridge, MA 02139 USA