Trouble installing 6.1 on an old machine

[Andreas Widerøe Andersen]

Thanks for your help!

Yeah, can't get any BIOS upgrades anymore. I doubt that I'll spend time on
removing harddrives again. I may just stick to 4.11 then. It's just a
testserver on my local network anyway.

Best,
Andreas

---

On 9/4/06, Bob <bob at a1poweruser.com> wrote:
>
> I have same problem with my 10+ year old server boxes.
>
> First the boot bios scan has changed between 4.11 and 6.0. You can upgrade
> your old PC's bios. In most cases the mfg does not support the motherboard
> any more so chance of getting upgrade to burn the bios chip is most
> un-likely. You can get 3rd party replacement bio chip from www.umicore.com
> for around $80.00.
>
> Second problem is the size of the 5.2 and newer FreeBSD install kernel. It
> has gotten bigger and will not function properly on pre-2000 equipment.
> Solution is to take the hard drive from old PC and plug into newer box and
> do install. After base system install is completed just return hard drive
> to
> old pc and boot from it. Will work fine from that point on.  This works
> fine
> on my 386 cpu 33 mhz server pc manufactured in 1994 and its currently
> running FreeBSD 6.1.
>
> Good luck.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Andreas Widerøe
> Andersen
> Sent: Monday, September 04, 2006 6:47 AM
> To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: Trouble installing 6.1 on an old machine
>
> I just downloaded version 4.11 from the FreeBSD ftp archives, burnt a boot
> CD and tried to reinstall the system via FTP from the archives. This
> worked
> perfect. No problems.
>
> I guess this means it's not a hardware problem, but rather some changes
> made
> to newer versions of FreeBSD.
>
> Anyone know what I can do to get 6.1 up and running on this ancient
> machine?
>
> Cheers,
> Andreas
>
> ---
>
> On 9/4/06, Andreas Widerøe Andersen <wodfer at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I have an OLD machine (from 1996) that's been running FreeBSD for about
> 8
> > years now steady and reliable. It has gone through several versions and
> was
> > running 4.11 untill today when I decided to make a fresh 6.1 install.
> >
> > When booting from the installation CD the only way I can make it skip a
> > lot of harddrive errors is when I boot in safe mode. I did this and
> > installed the system. However, the same problems are there when I reboot
> > from harddrive after the install (not in safe mode).
> >
> > Here are a few of the error messages I get:
> >
> > ad0: Failure READ_DMA timed out LBA=0
> > ad1: Failure READ_DMA timed out LBA=13281487
> > ad1: Timeout READ_DMA retrying (1 retry left) LBA=0
> > and so on...
> >
> > It ends with a mountroot> prompt.
> >
> > Any ideas what I can try?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Andreas
> >
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