Sorry in advance for the long post! I am completely new to pegasos and openfirmware in particular.

I have had some stability problems and therefore I decided to reinstall my system (for the first time ever).

I inserted the CD and tried to boot from the CD from the ok promt in Openfirmware using the commands explained in ThePegasosBook.

Theese commands dos'nt work for me !?!

When I try to type ls /pci/ide/cd I get an error saying the the location dos'nt work.

Then I tried to boot /pci/ide/cd boot.img (and boot.img;1) I get the same error.

When I just type ls. The only thing I get that says something with pci is pci@80000000 og pci@C0000000 in the bottom of a list.

My HD is on the ide1 channel and the cd on ide2.

Eventually I got the system to boot from CD using the "boot" command (nothing more). There I thought things where ok and formatted the Systems partition (stupid me). I tried to reinstall but 1: did'nt make an partition for my boot.img file and 2: got an error saying my RAM is was broken (it is'nt).

A reboot after I now have a system that I can't get to boot from CD!

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hi!

First of all, please, specify if you own a Pegasos1 or a Pegasos2, as OF commands are a little different.

I can't give you a good answer now, but you can check the Pegasos Book (http://thepegasosbook.wikipeg.org/). You could perhaps find some useful information there.

I have a - brand new - Pegasos 2, 512MB RAM, Radeon 9250.

It came preinstalled with MorphOS 1.45 and Debian.

I have checked the boot instructions in ThePegasosBook but - so far - to no succes.

Just some ideas:

-Have you tried to reset the system once before booting? Some HD's spin up so slowly, so they won't make it in time.

-Are you using 80pin cables? If not, you should.

-Your Pegasos 2 might be able to boot from a SFS partition. Just copy the boot image to system partition root and give it a try.

Thanks for the suggestions

My problem at present are primeraly that I can't get the OF to boot from CD. I try the commands from ThePegasos Book but with no succes so far.

I can't get any further than that at the present time (se my first post).

I am using the cable I got from Vesali to connect to my HD and a standard HD cable to connect the CD.

My HD is on ide1 and the CD on ide2. Is that a problem? I can easyli put them on the same channel.


[ Edited by JohnFante on 2006/10/25 10:03 ]

Quote:

No, that's fine (provided you have set the cdrom as master (don't trust cable select))... However with that kind of setup you should be able to forget about the /pci nonsense and just boot with "boot cd boot.img".


- CISC

Sometimes the CD will not spin up fast enough to be recognised. Try typing
ls cd

if nothing shows up, try again, and again. When you see your files, use
boot cd boot.img
as CISC suggested. Of course it shouldn't take more than half a minute or so, at most.

Thanks for all the help!

I used the command and succesfully booted on the CD

I then made a new bootimg partition and a DH0 partiion in the beginning of the HD. Bootimg cycle 2-18 and DH0 cycle 19 to 1700 and something.

I have presered my old work partition and the linux partitions at the end of the disk.

I installed MorphOS and rebooted thinking that the bootimg is on partition 0 (it is the first on the disk).

But no. now it seems like bootimg is on partition 3 on the disk.

And when I try to boot from it it says that the partition is in an unsupported file format. I have used the correct FFS system.

I am a bit confused here. How can the bi0 partition in the beginning of the disk suddenly be partition number 3 and how can I change it back?

I would be sad to have to make a lowlewel format.....

I had a similar problem some time ago. It seems to be a SCSIConfig issue, that appeared in my case when I deleted some partitions that were not physically at the beginning of the hard disk, and redefined them. These new partitions then came first in the SCSIConfig list of partitions, even if they were not the first in terms of physical position on the hard disk.

You may solve the problem in the following way.

1) Run SCSIConfig and take note of the start and end cylinders of all your partitions (as well as filesystem, masks, etc.). Actually all these data should be already present in the file: "SYS:Tools/SCSIConfig.RDBStorage".

2) Delete all the partitions. (Argh!)

3) Recreate all the partitions exactly as they were, according to the data you took note of. However, this time ensure that you recreate the partitions in their physical order (i.e. increasing start cylinder number).

4) You will find again all your data and the partition number problem will disappear.

This worked for me, and I lost no data at all. Anyway please note that if you follow this procedure, you do it entirely at your own risk! Make backups before you start!

Quote:

That is peculiar, but could be related to the next item:

Quote:

The problem is most likely that your hd has an MBR, in which case you need to erase it, try the following from shell after booting from cd:

hdwrite ide.device 0 MOSSYS:C/Reboot 0

..that should overwrite the MBR with the Reboot file, effectively zapping it (Reboot because it's >512 and <1024 bytes). ;)

Quote:

Well, lowlevel format is basically a no-op these days (and would destroy your hd in the old days), so... ;)

Anyway, in the worst-case scenario all that should be necessary to do is simply repartition your bootimage partition (but this doesn't seem likely as you said it started on cylinder 2, which is correct)...


- CISC

Hi CISC,


>hdwrite ide.device 0 MOSSYS:C/Reboot 0

Why do you recommend "hdwrite"?
Are there any advantages/disadvantages compared to HDMBRClear (that is normally on the MorphOS Boot CD)?



Bye HAK

Quote:

Well, at some point there were several complaints about HDMBRClear not working, and since then this trick with HDWrite has been recommended (and I honestly can't remember if the issue was ever fixed or not)...


- CISC

hdwrite ide.device (unitnumber_whitout_quotes) MOSSYS:C/Reboot 0

That did the trick for me. I think there is still a little buggy funtion on hdmbrclear ( at least the one which comes with MOS 1.4.X )

Dr. Morbius solution solved my problems

Thanks for all the help!!

Just a last question. I bought the system from Vesalia with Debian installed.

Swap is on partition 3 and LNX on 4.

Anybody got any experience with that kind of setup. Eg. how I boot Debain again?

I have a suspision that I have to have a LNX boot image on dh0: but I am unsure how to get / create it since I don't have a floppy installed, and the only instructions I have found with google is for a floppy setup.

Last question. Is the RAM checker in the MorphOS install script reliable? I get an error with my RAM from Vesalia when I use the script, but the system works flawlesly if I just copy the files over manually!

Thanks in advance!

[ Edited by JohnFante on 2006/10/28 15:21 ]

[ Edited by JohnFante on 2006/10/30 8:56 ]