[syslinux] MEMDISK issue with OptiPlex GX280,620

Shao Miller Shao.Miller at yrdsb.edu.on.ca
Tue Dec 7 07:11:36 PST 2010


On 12/7/2010 09:35, Jason Vasquez wrote:
> A kind request for help please.
>
> MEMDISK is causing an issue with the Dell OptiPlex GX280 and GX620 
> platforms.

I have access Dell Optiplex GX280 hardware.

> Booting a PC-DOS/Ghost, disk image is successful (and proper) when 
> using version 3.83. See results below:
>
> MEMDISK 3.83:
>
> Ramdisk at 0x07eeaa00, length 0x007bc000
> command line: initrd=images/ghostclient/280_620/osbootc.img 
> BOOT_IMAGE=memdisk
> MEMDISK: Image seems to have fractional end cylinder

Fractional end cylinder, you say?  You appear to be using a 7.734375 MiB 
HDD image.

> Disk is hd0, 7920 K, C/H/S = 0/255/63 (MBR/MBR), EDD on, rw

0 cylinders, you say?  What geometry did you use when creating the HDD 
image.  Ghost typically produces a floppy image, so I gather that you 
created the HDD image yourself.

> Using safe INT 15h access to high memory
> Code 1656, meminfo 276, cmdline 66, stack 512
> Total size needed = 2510 bytes, allocating 3K
> Old dos memory at 0x9f800 (map says 0xa0000), loading at 0x9ec00
> 1588: 0xffff  15E801: 0x3c00 0x07dea
> INT 13 08: Success, count = 1, BPT = 0000:0000
> old: int13 = f0005c6f  int15 = f000f859  int1e = f000efc7
> new: int13 = 9ec0000a  int15 = 9ec0038c  int1e = f000efc7
> Loading boot sector... booting...
> Starting PC DOS...
>
> Though, when using any post-3.83 version of MEMDISK, the same disk 
> image results in an unfavorable state. Notably, after booting the 
> image, the system's SATA drive is not visible to the PC-DOS/Ghost 
> environment. MEMDISK is likely the apparent culprit as indicated from 
> the "We lost the last drive in our class of drives" notice during 
> MEMDISK processing. Results below:
>
> ... ... ...
> Any insight to be had? Setting different MEMDISK memory access methods 
> (raw, bigraw, int, safeint) offered no changes. Equally, changing the 
> OptiPlex BIOS 'SATA Operation' configuration from Normal to 
> Combination yielded no difference. And for what it is worth, the 
> OptiPlex 755, 780, and 980 are not affected by this "bug". Please tell 
> me there's hope.

Kindly use this MEMDISK and report its output:

   http://www.etherboot.org/share/sha0/memdisk_dskprobe

It has DBG_DSKPROBE enabled for its build.

- Shao Miller



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