Problems installing freeBSD 6.2 on older computer

[Eric Mesa]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Chris Slothouber wrote:
> On 2007-05-17 16:50, Eric Mesa wrote:
>> Chris Slothouber wrote:
>>> On 2007-05-16 19:41, Eric Mesa wrote:
>>>> Just acquired an old computer from someone and want to put
>>>> freeBSD on it.
>>> (snip)
>>>> acd0:  FAILURE - READ_BIG ILLEGAL REQUEST asc=0x64 ascq=0x00
>>>> 5. Then it gives me:
>>> Hi Eric, Have you tried disconnecting the CD drive and doing an
>>> FTP install?
>
>>> - Chris
>> That still leaves me at mountroot> prompt and I have no idea what
>> to do there.
>
> What are the errors presented before that?
>
> It sounds like it can't mount the kernel floppy image for whatever
> reason.  I'd have to suggest that you've try other floppy disk
> drives and disks to rule out those as points of failure.
>
> Also think of the drive that you used to make the floppy diskettes.
>  Since floppies rely on an magnetic medium, with heads to record a
> stream of data across the surface, certain types of alignment
> issues can occur. Think of this like a cassette tape recording that
> sounds fine in your stereo at home but has a horrible hissing sound
> in your car.  Or even the white 'noise' with rented video
> cassettes, where one must adjust the 'tracking'.
>
> I wouldn't give up on this yet but certainly try other floppy
> drives in both ends and different diskettes.  You could even try
> using the *same* floppy disk drive to make the floppy disks in
> another computer and re-transplant it back into the target machine.
>
>
> I hope these suggestions help!
>
I don't want to declare victory too early, but I think I figured it
out.  You're probably right, but who the f- still has floppies lying
around?  I certainly couldn't use pristine ones as I was warned to.
However, part of the problem with the cd is that at the mountroot
prompt I kept typing ufs:acd0 and it barfed.  While googling on
mountroot, I found cd9660:acd0 (it'd be nice if a list of possible
filesystems was provided along with the list of things you can boot
from) it then booted off the cd (YAY!) it made like it was booting
into freeBSD.  Then at the amnesiatic login, I put root then
sysinstall and it SEEMS to be going ok.  I stopped to write this reply
while it was fresh in my head.

So it seems that potential crisis was averted.  I can read from the
cd, just not boot.  I'll attempt a cd install and if that doesn't
work, at least I can get far enough to do an ftp one.


Thanks for your help,
- --
Eric Mesa
ericsbinaryworld at gmail.com
http://www.ericsbinaryworld.com
Note:  All emails from this address should have a GPG signature.  If
you have the proper setup you can use this to confirm my identity and
that the email was not changed in transit.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFGTMWsPvU+8ApmWXIRAjrjAKDGSzqG4A9CptRSUfJfO+ooEU997ACg1KXc
x2Mikt1AbU9Pm/HF655D6SM=
=+awy
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----