Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, David Moberg wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "sindi keesan" <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
>
> > I am having problems even trying to boot linux, without cfdisk.
> >
> > At first I got various error messages during boot about hda not
> > having an IRQ and hdb being non-IDE, kept rebooting, sometimes with
> > ignore=hda (which would not let me boot past the messages: hda:
> > status error
> > hda:  drive not ready for command).  One time I was able to type
> > cfdisk -z /dev/hda and was told the above again.   Sometimes I also
> > got DriveReady DeviceFault SeekCOmplete DataRequest CorrectedError
> > Index, and somethinga about reset.
>
> I didn't know that. This definitely looks like dying hardware. How well
> does DOS (any version) handle the drive? Does the DOS fdisk even detect
> the drive?

I had disabled the IDE controller, and then CMOS identified no drives.  I 
reenabled the onboard controllers and CMOS still finds no hard drives so 
of course neither does DOS.  Either both drives went bad, or something on 
the motherboard.

I can boot from a DOS floppy disk and use programs off it, just not access 
the hard drives or CD-ROM drive.

> > Perhaps the controller has gone bad?  I could try a 40MB drive in
> > here as a test, or put these drives in another computer.
>
> At that disk capacity I doubt a controller replacement is much better
> than a whole HDD replacement.

I thought the IDE controllers on board may have gone bad since neither 
drive is detected and they were both having problems.  Linux sort of found 
hda but not hdb at all.  Or maybe CMOS went bad?   If linux is still 
looking for hda when I disabled onboard controllers, I doubt I can replace 
the controllers with an I/O card (we have one that does large drives).
For a while linux was getting error messages about both hda and hdb.

I will try the drives in some other computer and hope I can fix the 
hda partition table with cfdisk -z.

> > > > Do I recycle this drive now?  Or try a low-level format?
> > >
> > > It's already low-level formatted, if dd didn't produce any error
> > > messages. No need to recycle it just yet.
>
> I take that back. :S

The drive may still be salveagable with cfdisk -z, in some other computer. 
A friend has been trying to give me his 400Mhz and this was only 300MHz.

> > > > Theoretical question:
> > > >
> > > > Is there a way to just overwrite the partition table, which Running
> > > > Linux says is in the first 1024 bytes?  They explain that
> > > > dd if=/dev/hda of=/tmp/stuff bs=1k count=1
> > > > saves the first 1024 bytes of data to a file.
> > >
> > > Yeah, if=/dev/zero and of=/dev/hda should overwrite it if that is true.
> >
> > This appears to have overwritten 1.2G, not just the 512bytes
> > containing MBR and partition table.
>
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda
>
> erases the whole drive.
Did I need to do that in order to fix the partition table?
(It seems to be unfixable though).
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=1k count=1
>
> erases just the first 1k. bs=blocksize, count=number of blocks. Modify
> to suit your needs.

Tody was not a complete waste of time - the scanner started to work with 
my newly compiled kernel after I turned it on and off a few times.  At
first scanimage would find it once then never again until I powered it off 
and on again and rebooted.

So the kernel that I was trying to compile on the dying computer can 
handle scsi zip and scanner.

> David
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keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org