Installing on IBM Z61t

[Derek Ragona]

Yeah I have seen that happen before, like the boot area didn't burn cleanly 
or the error correction on the drive isn't as good as on other drives.

         -Derek


At 01:06 PM 8/22/2006, Jerry McAllister wrote:

>Problem solved - partly anyway.
>It is apparently a marginal CD burn.
>
> > You can go to bootdisk.org or freedos.org and download an iso image to 
> make
> > a bootable CD.  I think you need to first get your system actually booting
> > a CD of any OS, then move on to installing FreeBSD.
>
>OK.   I scrounged up another boot CD I had around.
>It booted OK.   So, I checked this CD some more.  It booted on
>some machines and not on others.
>
>I had the person in the next office burn the same file and
>it works on the IBM notebook.
>
> > It may be your BIOS isn't booting the CD or you simply have a CD with a 
> bad
> > boot image.  So getting a CD that does indeed boot is the first step.
> >
> > Being able to read a CD is not sufficient.  Bootable CD's have a strict
> > format that must be in place or the boot fails.
>
>What was throwing me off was that I had tried it on a couple of machines
>with no problem, but then I hit the notebook machine and it failed.
>Then, when I was checking further, it failed on another machine that
>already had FreeBSD installed - using a different CD.  So, I got someone
>to burn one on a different machine and it works.
>
>I wonder, though if there is something different with how burncd works
>in FreeBSD 6.0 or 6.1.    First of all, the device name I had to use
>used to be acd0c and now that isn't there and I tried to use acd0 -
>without the 'c'.   It seemed to try and burn, but always failed in
>the fixate step.   Previously I was using FreeBSD 4.9 and this is
>the first time I have tried it in 6.1 and then got the same failure
>on another machine in 6.0.
>
>So, might I be missing something?
>
>I have done lots of burns (successfully) on the one on the 6.1 machine
>so am not totally surprised that it may have died.
>
>But, I hardly expect that that other machine running 6.0 would have
>worn out the burner because I probably haven't done more than one or
>two burns on it since getting it.
>
>By the way, none of this explains why I was unable to boot from the
>boot floppy installation set.   It just kept scrolling up junk on
>the screen.   It worked fine on all the desk machines I have handy,
>but not the notebook machine.
>
>////jerry
>
>
> >          -Derek
> >
> > At 08:14 PM 8/21/2006, Jerry McAllister wrote:
> > > >
> > > > I would check that you have the IDE interface enabled that the CD plugs
> > > > into.  Have you tried booting other bootable CD's like a WinXP CD 
> just to
> > > > see if you get it to boot from CD.
> > >
> > >I don't happen to have any other bootable CDs handy.
> > >But, I was able to read CDs on that drive in XP.
> > >They were just videos, etc.
> > >They were not bootable, though, so I didn't attempt to boot with them.
> > >
> > >////jerry
> > >
> > > >
> > > >          -Derek
> > > >
> > > > At 05:20 PM 8/21/2006, Jerry McAllister wrote:
> > > > >Hi All,
> > > > >
> > > > >I am trying to set up a notebook computer for someone (I only have
> > > > >towers and rackmount servers running FreeBSD myself).
> > > > >
> > > > >The machine is an IBM Z61t Lenova with 2 GHz Intel CPU, 1 GB memory
> > > > >The BIOS version is 1.06  (7FET46WW)  of 2006-04-27
> > > > >
> > > > >I has an:  ATAPI CD0:MATSHITADVD-RAM UK-842-(PM)  cd/dvd 
> reader/burner.
> > > > >
> > > > >I got a USB floppy and put it on too.
> > > > >
> > > > >The boot order in BIOS is currently CD, Floppy Hard disk
> > > > >
> > > > >I have switched floppy and CD a couple of times and removed
> > > > >a number of other thing from the boot order - mostly things
> > > > >that are not actually on the machine.
> > > > >
> > > > >I was able to boot Partition Magic with the USB floppy and fix up
> > > > >the hard disk to make room.   I added a FAT32 (#3) slice and an
> > > > >undesignated slice (#4).  I hoped to add FreeBSD to the undesignated
> > > > >slice and use the FAT32 for communication between WinXP and FreeBSD
> > > > >since the XP slice was NTFS.
> > > > >
> > > > >But, it will not boot the FreeBSD 6.1 installation CD - it completely
> > > > >ignores it and boots WinXP, even though it looks like it is enabled
> > > > >in the BIOS.   It doesn't even seem to try booting the CD and fail.
> > > > >The BIOS doesn't appear to talk to it at all.
> > > > >
> > > > >That CD worked fine in another (deskside) machine - a Dell, by
> > > > >the way.   I had no trouble doing an install with it on that machine.
> > > > >
> > > > >So, I made a set of 6.1 install floppies.
> > > > >Although the Partition Magic (several years old copy) floppies booted
> > > > >just fine, when I started to boot from the boot.flp floppy it read it
> > > > >and then started repeatedly dumping some message on the screen.  It
> > > > >just kept scrolling up too fast to read.  It looked like it might
> > > > >be 5 or 6 lines long.
> > > > >
> > > > >Just in case it was telling me to put in the kern1.flp, I did that
> > > > >and hit enter, but it did not stop scrolling what appeared to be
> > > > >the same message, nor did it appear to read that floppy at all.
> > > > >
> > > > >I have rummaged through the BIOS setup and not found anything that
> > > > >jumps out at me that I should turn on or off.   I did not find
> > > > >anything that looked like 'plug n play'.
> > > > >
> > > > >So, my obvious question is: (questions are:)
> > > > >Is there any hope of installing FreeBSD on this notebook computer?
> > > > >Is there something I can turn on or off to make it work?
> > > > >Why will the old Partition Magic floppy work, but the new FreeBSD 
> 6.1 not?
> > > > >Why doesn't the BIOS even attempt to check the CD for a boot sector,
> > > > >but just ignore it completely and boot the HD?
> > > > >
> > > > >Thanks for any clues or solid informatino,
> > > > >
> > > > >////jerry
> > > > >
>
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