[syslinux] CD-ROM won't boot. BIOS problem?

[H. Peter Anvin]

Anmol Khirbat wrote:
> 
> I plugged the hard disk back in the mainboard. The CD-ROM board has
> room for another hard drive, so I plugged one in there too.
> 
> hda: FUJITSU MHT2060AT, ATA DISK drive
> hde: CD-224E, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
> hdh: IC25T060ATCS05-0, ATA DISK drive
> 
> Now my debug CD tells me this.
> ISOLINUX 2.08 2003-12-12 Copyright (C) 1994-2003 H. Peter Anvin
> isolinux: Starting up, DL = A0
> isolinux: Loading spec packet failed, trying to wing it...
> 
> There are no more messages and looks like the system is hung. I then
> removed the hard drive from the mainboard and got this.
> 
> ISOLINUX 2.08 2003-12-12 Copyright (C) 1994-2003 H. Peter Anvin
> isolinux: Starting up, DL = A0
> isolinux: Loading spec packet failed, trying to wing it...
> isolinux: Extremely broken BIOS detected, last ditch attempt with
> drive = A0
> isolinux: Loading main image from LBA = 000028C1
> isolinux: Sectors to load = 0004
> isolinux: Loaded boot image, verifying...
> isolinux: Main image read, jumping to main code
> 
> There were a few more messages before I got the menu and everything
> worked. Does this information tell us more? I read the comments in
> isolinux.asm. Is function 4B01h broken or unimplemented on my system?
> Is there a way I can verify this?
> 

Okay, this pretty much means your adapter BIOS and your mainboard BIOS 
are stepping on each other in several fundamental ways; my inclination 
would be to blame the adapter BIOS rather than the mainboard, especially 
since AMI 7 is usually OK.

I would guess that as long as you have the adapter in the system you 
have to put your hard drive(s) on the adapter, not the mainboard.

	-hpa