[ale] Defective BIOS?

[Randal Jarrett]

If this is one of the older motherboards, as you say 9yrs, you might
need to check to see if the drive is properly defined in the bios setup.
The older motherboards and bios required that you set the cys, hd and
sectors for each drive.  If that is not right it can cause your problem.

Randy

On Thu, 2005-04-21 at 22:05 -0400, Cor van Dijk wrote:
> One of my older machines has  windows  on /dev/hda and redhat on 
> /dev/hdd. It suddenly refused to boot the /dev/hda. Will only boot 
> redhat from a floppy. When I do "/sbin/lilo -t" it tells me
>         "Warning: BIOS drive 0x82 may not be accessible"
> Initially I thought it was the physical drive, so I tried 3 (three) 
> different
> drives on /dev/hda, all with the same result, so I am tending to believe 
> that the problem is actually were the message says that it is, in the BIOS.
> When I try to put the boot record on /dev/hdd I get the same message.
> Replacing the 3 volt battery does no good (old one still had over 3 volt 
> after nine years!)
> Curious thing is that I can mount /dev/hda from /dev/hdd just fine.
> Does the BIOS prevent me from accessing the boot sector in /dev/hda?
> The mobo is probably a pirated item from china, but the BIOS chip is an 
> AWARD, and is  probably tailored to fit the mobo, might be hard to find 
> a replacement.
> Any pointers? What is BIOS drive 0x82? Is it actually the BIOS? Can it 
> be fixed?
> Thanks in advance for any help. Cor van Dijk
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-- 

Randal Jarrett  <rsj at logix.net>
RSJ Consulting, Inc
Lawrenceville, GA
(770) 822-1096