From: Michael Fletcher <fletcher@smshub.ksc.nasa.gov> Subject: Re: Help w/ SLS on IBM PS/Value Point 486 Date: 1 Feb 1993 14:57:05 -0500
| From: gg10@prism.gatech.EDU (Gregory Lyle Galloway)
|
| Has anyone been able successfully install SLS on an IBM PS/Value Point 486?
|
| I tried on a friends machine. It boots all the way to a prompt. But when
| I run fdisk it says "Unable to read /dev/hda". Any ideas? I thought this
| machines were supposed to be std ISA style.
|
| Please mail
| Greg Galloway
| gregg@discovery.gatech.edu
****** NOTICE: DO NOT BUY THE IBM PS/VALUE POINT TO RUN LINUX !
(Caveat: Unless you want to do brain surgery on their cmos table
and hope that works.)
I bought one and quickly returned it.
Their cmos table has a disk type 0 (none) for both physical drive
entries (found this using "checkit") and the cmos setup routine will
only let you change the floppy drive configs, the bootup method config,
time/date, and shadow bios enable. Therefore, even though you may have
the 212 MB Maxtor IDE hd, when you boot up the Linux installation disk,
it looks at the table, doesn't see a SCSI or ESDI interface, and quite
logically says no hard drive is present!
I called the IBM technical 800 # and talked with a tech. He said the
"uppers" at ibm decided to do this to prevent comp virgins from messing
up the config. He said a guy had installed a 200 mb hd and called in
because the bios "auto scan algorithm" saw it as a 64 mb hd and he
wanted to enter the correct disk type number into the cmos -- get this
-- they have no way to do it! Three cheers for Big Blue.