[Techtalk] FreeBSD on ancient Pentium BIOS upgrade question

[Maria Pinjanainen]

On Friday 07 April 2006 17:09, Amanda Babcock Furrow wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 11:22:40AM +0300, Maria Pinjanainen wrote:
> > Hi!
> > I have had same kind of problems. Ok, I run Linux, but belive this works
> > in FreeBSD too.
> > Boot it with the os you have runnig there now and if you can find the new
> > disk, you can use it. (If you can boot kernel, it finds the new hd.)
>
> Ok, the problem is, it won't boot with the disk plugged in.  I have to
> unplug the disk in order to make it past the BIOS disk detection screen,
> otherwise the BIOS hangs and never even looks for a boot loader.

I remember something like that with my experiments... Someway I got the BIOS 
ignore other harddisks (80G and 120G) that I plugged in. I have Award bios in 
my amd-pc, And it boots from the old hd. Or from CD.

> Am I right in thinking that plugging in the disk after booting (even if
> this were a viable long-term solution) could be harmful?

Sounds very dangerous.... You can get an expensive paperweight... 

> On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 06:33:18PM +0930, Robyn wrote:
> > Check the website for the hard drive manufacturer and get the software
> > that 'tricks' the computer into being able to use the drive. It used to
> > be called Disk Manager and it used to work with Linux. Not sure where
> > it's at now but it wont kill your hard drive.
>
> Ok, I do have a CD from them that I haven't tried yet.  But I wonder how
> this will resolve the BIOS conflict?  If the software changes the disk,
> how can I get it onto the disk given that the BIOS won't boot with the
> disk plugged in - and if the software just modifies the OS, then it
> definitely won't help with the BIOS hanging :)
>
> I think this software just compensates for having the jumper on the disk
> that makes it emulate a 32GB disk, but even having the jumper in place
> did not allow my computer to boot (my BIOS must be choking at an even
> lower point than 32GB).
>
> Many thanks for all suggestions,
> Amanda
> (about ready to start looking for cheap computers instead, but willing to
> listen to any advice about how to make this one work :)
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