Can't boot after adding tx2plus card

[Ben Stuyts]

On 5 Apr 2007, at 01:37, telmnstr at 757.org wrote:

>> Any ideas what else I can try?
>
> I hit something similiar... basically, your card comes up first, so  
> you would need to customize your fstab and perhaps kernel regarding  
> the change in boot devices.
>
> My hack was nassssty. Basically, we changed the first few bytes in  
> the firmware image for the promise ultra-ATA card, so that the  
> system bios wouldn't recognize it... reflashed the firmware  
> (basically killing it). Then NetBSD saw the card once it was  
> booting, but the onboard card was picked up first.
>
> We had 3 x ultraATA cards on top of whatever was in the system, and  
> the # of drives was to change all the time...
>
> See if you can disable the onboard Promise BIOS.... probably not.

No, I can't disable the BIOS. Your solution (if I could reproduce  
it...) would seem to work. If I disconnect all drives from the  
TX2plus, but boot with the card still installed, booting works fine,  
and FreeBSD sees the card.

> Promise was of no help, and their flash utility checksummed the  
> firmware so it had to be hacked. I no longer have access to any of  
> that, and a co-worker helped with it as he had experience with the  
> promise cards and knew that the first few bytes of the firmware are  
> what the system bios sees when it scans for other bioses to execute.

Nice hack!

Ben