[syslinux] Can't boot Syslinux from HD directly. Can indirect ly?

[Luis.F.Correia]

Hi!

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nazo [mailto:nazosan at gmail.com] 
> Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2005 1:37 AM
> To: syslinux at zytor.com
> Subject: Re: [syslinux] Can't boot Syslinux from HD directly. 
> Can indirectly?
> 
> 
> On 8/1/05, H. Peter Anvin <hpa at zytor.com> wrote:
> > Nazo wrote:
> > > I've installed Syslinux on a somewhat old system.  The 
> motherboard 
> > > is based on an Intel 440GX chipset (specifically it's the 
> Supermicro 
> > > P6DGE if that means anything.)  The harddrive has been 
> split up into 
> > > partitions of one hidden FAT16 (marked as active) to 
> which syslinux 
> > > is installed (hda1), one normal FAT32 which has windows and dos 
> > > (hda2.) It also has an extended partition containing an EXT2 and 
> > > linux swap partition, however, it didn't originally have 
> these when 
> > > I first saw the problem so I know they aren't the issue.
> > >
> > > The issue is that for some reason it won't boot the harddrive 
> > > directly.  It just freezes every time.  It shows the word 
> SYSLINUX, 
> > > the version (3.09) and date (2005-06-17) but stops there.  Never 
> > > clears the screen or any of that either.  I have installed it in 
> > > safe "slow" mode, but, what's more importantly, this same setup 
> > > worked perfectly fine for several weeks on the previous 
> board I had 
> > > in that system, an Asus KN-97-X (Intel 440FX.)  This leads me to 
> > > believe it's something weird to do with the bios.
> > >
> > > Currently I'm having to boot my rescue disc using 
> isolinux and load 
> > > chain.c32 to manually boot that partition for it to work. 
>  When I do 
> > > this, it boots without a problem.  I'd say definitely 
> bios, however, 
> > > before this latest time I've installed syslinux on there, 
> it was set 
> > > to boot partition "0" (aka the MBR!)  As far as I can tell, it 
> > > doesn't cross the 1024 boundary (I haven't the vaguest 
> idea how to 
> > > verify this, but, the FAT16 partition is the first 510 or 
> so MB of a 
> > > 60GB drive, so it's hard to imagine it would do that.)
> > >
> > > Any idea what's going on?  Is it somehow still past the 1024 
> > > boundary?  Any way to verify short of knowing how to add up those 
> > > numbers on the drive (which is such a pain to get to 
> right now I'm 
> > > not sure it's worth the trouble.)
> > >
> > 
> > Do you know if this problem goes away with an older version 
> of syslinux?
> >   There seems to be some issues with newer syslinuxes on some old 
> > hardware, which is still unresolved.
> > 
> >         -hpa
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
> Yikes.  I had just assumed later version = greater 
> compatibility and gone straight for the latest...  Well, I 
> had to go all the way back to 2.13 (even 3.00 didn't work,) 
> but, it seems to be working alright now.  I guess that it 
> doesn't make much difference if I have to use an old version 
> in this case, it seems to have all the features I need for 
> this particular setup.  It's strange that I was ok with the 
> latest version on that older KN-97 though.  Still, I can 
> understand better Asus compatibility than Supermicro (who 
> apparently are actually still around -- I found a website and 
> it still has archives for the old products even -- just they 
> aren't exactly concentrating on many desktop systems anymore.)

H. Peter would appreciate if you could detect where it did got broken,
Testing all the releases and the pre also...

Luis Correia