No "boot0" menu on Soekris, net5501 vs net4521

[Charles Owens]

Charles Owens wrote:
> Hello,
>
> We're working with two different Soekris models (net5501 and net4521),
> working withFreeBSD 7.1 (nanobsd).  We've found that the two models
> exhibit different boot behavior.   Summary:  the 4521 works fine, and
> the 5501 doesn't seem right.  Here's what we see when we boot either:
>
> net4521  (BIOS ver  1.33) --
>
>     * "boot0" menu appears (letting you pick either of two FreeBSD slices)
>     * OS loads properly from chosen or default slice
>
>
> net5501  (BIOS ver 1.33c) --
>
>     * "boot0" menu does _not_ appear.
>     * system boots directly to slice 1 or 2, as chosen via BIOS option
>       BootPartition
>
>
> Have others seen this behavior?  For our application, we really need
> the 5501 to boot just like the 4521.  Is this a bug (in BIOS, I'm
> guessing), or am I doing something wrong?   It seems like there should
> be a way to clear the BootPartition setting, or set it to "MBR" or
> somesuch. 
>

Issue resolved.  The syntax for resetting the BootPartition parameter in
BIOS was non-obvious (to me).  This can be accomplished with:

set BootPartition=Disabled


... my thanks to maintainer of wiki: 
http://wiki.soekris.info/What_do_all_those_BIOS_settings_do%3F

...


Charles Owens
Great Bay Software