Boot Problem

[Mike Bilow]

matthew tebbens wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:

 mt> Anyways,
 mt> If I turn on my system and the harddrives at the same time,
 mt> the system will come to a halt as the 2940 looks at the
 mt> first drive. Like it trying to access information from it,
 mt> but it can't 'spin' it up.

 mt> BUT, if I boot my system first. Get past the 2940. Then
 mt> power up the harddrives at the lilo prompt. 
 mt> The kernel will spin up the harddrives with no problem,
 mt> everything will work.

 mt> Why isn't the 2940 able to access the harddrives, or spin
 mt> them up first ??

 mt> Does anyone have any information on this ??

You don't say what brand and model of hard drives you are using, nor whether
they are configured to start on their own.  You also dom't say whether the
controller is configured to send a "START UNIT" command to the drives, which is
configurable in the Ctrl-A setup.

If your problem manifests before any operating system is loaded, then it
obviously is not an operating system issue.
 
-- Mike