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

[Nazo]

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.)