Bootable floppy
W. Paul Zola
paulz at sco.COM
Mon Nov 26 13:28:26 AEST 1990
In article <1990Nov18.223343.564 at cjbsys.bdb.com>
cliffb at cjbsys.bdb.com (cliff bedore) writes:
[detailed problems with creating an emergency boot floppy deleted]
I know that the original poster asked for e-mailed responses, but I think
that this is of general interest. These symptoms are due to a hardware
problem with certain brands of 16-bit VGA cards.
Here is an entry from SCO's Information Tools database, describing the
problem and its solution.
. Mkdev fd does not work properly with some video adapters.
.
. KEYWORDS: mkdev fd video adapters 16 bit floppy disk filesystem root boot
. xenix unix vga
.
. RELEASE: SCO XENIX System V Operating System Generic
. SCO UNIX System V/386 Operating System Generic
.
. PROBLEM: Both 16 bit video adapters and the floppy drives use DMA channel
. 2. Therefore, when writing to, or reading from, a floppy disk drive
. the video adapter controller may add or intercept characters from
. the floppy disk data stream, thereby corrupting the floppy.
.
. SOLUTION: Move the video adapter to an 8 bit slot.
.
Note that this is a *hardware* problem, and cannot be worked around by any
software fix.
-p
-
Paul Zola Software Support Engineer
paulz at sco.COM
We only know in theory what we are doing. - Kate Bush
DISCLAIMER: I speak for myself, and not for SCO.
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