Baslinux mailing list

[Justin Gombos <mindfuq AT sbcglobal.net>]

* 3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org <3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org> [2006-11-17 22:18]:
> 
> Alternatively, it could be something unusual in your 
> hardware/firmware.

I'm speculating my HDD controller is the problem.  The loadlin
freezing occured on both the test machine and the target machine, and
the IDE controller is the only component that was used on both
machines (besides the drive).  It's a unique controller: GSI Model 32.
It was high-end in its time, and included a BIOS that superceded CMOS
BIOS to do LBA translation while most folks used free software-based
LBA translation.  Using a different ISA IDE controller would confirm
my suspicion if I had one to test with.

The other clue is that after doing an HD install, LiLo froze and
displayed an error like "invalid partition table".  Is loadlin related
to LiLo?  The only way to boot the hard drive installation using LiLo
was to boot the floppy, and enter the kernel location.

So the fix was to replace LiLo with XOSL.  XOSL (which implements SBM
underneath) has no issues booting the DOS or BL3 from the hard drive.

I appreciate all your help Steven.

BL3 seems to outperform Win95 on a 486dx2-66 w/ 8MB ram, but then it's
also feature poor.  I'm expecting it to be quite useful once I get
Opera installed on it.