Boot-CD problems with _some_ PCs

C-Otto · Last edited by C-Otto on Fri Apr 04, 2003 4:00 pm; edited 1 time in total

Hello.
When I insert a Gentoo-LiveCD (no matter what version, I tried several) into one of the "faulty" PCs and enable boot via CD in the BIOS I just get a blinking "_" after the POST. Normally I see the nice Gentoo-Logo, but it does not work here.

I tried this with my notebook, Acer Travelmate 223x, and a very old IBM-machine (Edit: NOT HP! Was wrong before...) (P100, 32MB RAM, ...). Switching the CD-Drive in the IBM-Machine does not work, I tried three very modern ones (all of them can boot the CD in an other PC), so it has to be a BIOS-problem or something like that.

The odd thing is: Win2k, Win98, NetBSD, Debian, Knoppix and several other CDs boot without any problem!

I need to know
a) how to boot from CD without using the default method
b) how to fix the CD/BIOS to enable CD-boot with Gentoo-CDs

Thanks, C-Otto

masseya · Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2003 3:58 pm Post subject:

You might be interested in using a boot floppy. If you are adamant about installing by booting the CD, then we'll need to know what BIOS the computer uses that you are trying to install it on. There are a large number of BIOS systems out there. They are all different interfaces that do basically the same thing.
_________________
if i never try anything, i never learn anything..
if i never take a risk, i stay where i am..

C-Otto · Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2003 4:03 pm Post subject:

Here is the information I found out about the IBM-Bios:
- "Headline" says: "IBM Installation - (C) Copyright IBM Corporation 1995"
- The first thing I see when booting is a text-graphical blue IBM
- Bios-Date: 04.02.1998
- German
- machine-type: 658659T

Stay tuned for the notebook-bios-info.

C-Otto · Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2003 4:13 pm Post subject:

Ok, my notebook (Acer Travelmate 220 series, 223x is the exact model):
- BIOS manufacturer: Wistron Corporation
- String displayed at bottom: "ACRF8000-I1E-020417-R01-A0I3-EN"
- Version reported inside BIOS: "V3.3 R01-A0I3"

masseya · Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2003 4:26 pm Post subject:

Well, I'm not particularly familiar with either of those.

Try looking for something that says "To enter setup press <key>" where <key> is your BIOS-specific key. This is sometimes the Delete key, F10, F1, or any other random key that they felt would be nice.

This will take you to the BIOS setup page that's contains highly optimized algorithms to obfuscate the particular thing you want to setup at any given time.

I know I can never find what I'm looking for in those things without several minutes of searching.

Anyhow, you'll want to look for the setup to change the boot order or the boot devices or however they word it on those BIOSes.
_________________
if i never try anything, i never learn anything..
if i never take a risk, i stay where i am..

C-Otto · Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2003 4:33 pm Post subject:

The fact that it says "n00b" above the citron-head does not mean I don't know how to switch on my PCs

I enabled booting from CD on both machines, as mentioned before, and it works with CDs like Knoppix and Debian (as mentioned before, too). The notebook-bios is VERY small, there is nothing which hints at being a possibly solution for the problem and the IBM-Bios has several Interrupt/Memory/ISA/...-Settings which I don't know (anymore), but I think they aren't useful for me.

PS: I just recognized both PCs have onboard-VGA, could that be the problem? My notebook "steals" the memory, the IBM-Machine has 2MB dedicated VGA-RAM...

C-Otto · Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2003 6:00 pm Post subject:

I successfully booted from CD on the IBM-machine using the "Smart BootManager" (http://btmgr.webframe.org) which was mentioned in some FAQ thread around here. One trick was needed, though. I had to rescan the partitions and/or the drives, I don't know exactly (hidden in the tab-menu -> system settings). Before that the CD-Drive did not show up.
This unfortunately does not work on my notebook

SBM just shows the harddisk and floppy, no CD-Drive.
I will try to fiddle around with the "set cdrom i/o ports" setting, perhaps that will help.

C-Otto · Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2003 6:20 pm Post subject:

I don't know if I understood it correctly...
My Debian on the notebook reports "0xB060 - 0xB067" and "0xB068-0xB06F" for the IDE-channels, are these the values I have to use?
I tried "B060,B067", "B068,B06F", "B060,B06F" and "B060,B068", but I cannot find my CD-drive

mpsii · l33t Joined: 11 Mar 2003 Posts: 658 Location: Jackson, TN

Use tomsrtbt boot floppy to get into a linux environment... then follow the instructions. Once you get to the point where you need the Stage*.tar.gz file, manually mount the CDROM drive to get it...

From that point onward... It is all cake.

livewire · Retired Dev Joined: 03 Mar 2003 Posts: 42

try latest experimental livecd
www.gentoo.org/~livewire
Has worked for others with buggy ibms

nerdbert · l33t Joined: 09 Feb 2003 Posts: 981 Location: Berlin

bludger · Guru Joined: 09 Apr 2003 Posts: 389

I am currently installing my first gentoo system on a laptop and had the same problem booting it from the gentoo cd. Luckily I have a bit of experience with boot systems and so wasn't put off this distribution.

I also managed to get it working by booting the knoppix cd and the using wget to copy the bz2 setup file to my hard drive.

I also have an old pc, on which I am installing gentoo. This one has the problem that it is not possible to boot from the cdrom drive, although it can be used once the system is running. I managed to get the installation running by setting up two floppies, one with grub and the initrd file from the isolinux directory (the kernel and grub did not fit on one floppy) on the livecd and one with the kernel from the livecd (fille gentoo in the isolinux directory). Boot from the grub floppy and enter the following (swapping floppies accordingly).

root (fd0)
kernel (fd0)/bzImage append initrd=initrd acpi=off root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc
(this is from the file isolinux.cfg on the livecd)
initrd (fd0)/initrd

make sure the livecd is in the cdrom drive and enter:
boot

This worked for me.