[syslinux] Problems booting with SCSI CD (fwd)

[Theodore Kilgore]

This message is in reply to yesterday's message from HPA, which contained
a new isolinux-debug.bin as an attachment. For economy, I am using this
old message as a "template," because it contains most of the error
messages.

What is new is added below, where it happened. Briefly, the
machines with Adaptec 2940 and SCSI CD-ROM still do not boot. I tried the
new CD on 3 of them.

One box said simply it cannot find a SCSI boot device (It still has WinNT
on an IDE drive in it; this may be the problem in spite of the fact that I
checked 3 times if the BIOS tells it to boot from CD? I dunno; this is
quite mysterious).

The other two boxes (which already have Linux installed on a SCSI drive
and no IDE devices at all in them) gave a more serious treatment (see
below). Also I tried the same new CD-ROM on a non-SCSI box, and it
still works OK there. No doubt, this is the good news...

(appropriate extracts from previous message)

> >
> > Okay, here are the exact error messages and what leads up to them:
> >
> > -------------------------begin-------------------------
> >
> > Adaptec AHA-2940 Ultra/Ultra w BIOS v.1.23
> > (c) 1996 adaptec, Inc. all rights Reserved.
> >
> > Press <Ctrl> <A> for SCSI Select (TM) Utility!
> >
> > * SCSI ID: LUN NUMBER #:# 0:0 - IBM-PCCO DGHS - Drive C: (80h)
> >   SCSI ID: LUN NUMBER #:# 5:0 - MATSHITA CD_ROM CR-506
> >
> > (next line in box)
> > A BOOTABLE CD-ROM IS DETECTED IN YOUR CD-ROM DRIVE...
> >
> > The boot sections on your bootable CD-ROM are:
> > 0. DEFAULT ENTRY
> >
> > * => "Plug and Play" peripheral -- SCSI ID auto-assigned
> >
> > BIOS installed successfully!
> >
> >
ISOLINUX 2.01 0x3dc81d46 Copyright (etc)
isolinux: Starting up, DL=00
isolinux: Loading spec packet failed, trying to wing it...
isolinux: extremely broken BIOS detected, last ditch attempt with drive=00
isolinux: Loading main image from LBA=00003B73
isolinux: Sectors to load=0004
isolinux: Disk error 01, Ax=4273, drive 00

Boot failed: press a key to retry...


-----------------------end boot sequence; nothing further happens--------


Pressing a key causes the machine to try again to boot, ab initio, so
essentially does nothing new.

Hope this helps to track down the problem.

Theodore Kilgore