[vox-tech] booting off cd help

[Michael Wenk]

On Saturday 03 May 2003 06:11 pm, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> begin Jeff Newmiller <jdnewmil@dcn.davis.ca.us>
>
> > On Sat, 3 May 2003, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> > > today i had to recover a linux system with filesystem damage.
> > >
> > > it made a bad situation worse when i found that even when BIOS is set
> > > to boot off of cd first (any CD), it doesn't work.  the system ignores
> > > the CD in the drive and boots off of the hard disk instead.
> > >
> > > i verified that the CD were bootable on another machine.  this machine
> > > simply does not boot off of a CD despite the boot order in BIOS.
> > >
> > > what could cause such a thing?  the CD drive is kind of old, but i
> > > don't think that would make a difference.  perhaps there are some other
> > > BIOS options i'm not familiar.
> > >
> > > any guesses to help me out?
> >
> > *ding*
> >
> > You have a SCSI CD-ROM drive, don't you?
>
> yeah, two scsi cdroms, but they're both on my other computer, lucifer.
>
> :-)
>
> satan (who is the sick one) is completely IDE.

Ok, Has satan ever been able to successfully boot of of CD before?  

IF yes, then you are extremely likely to have a hardware issue, possibly with 
the CD, or possibly with the MB.  How is the CD configured?  If I were you, I 
would strip a CD drive(preferably IDE) off another system and test it on 
satan.  Or, take the CD drive off of satan and test booting on another 
system.  IF the drive works on another system then you are likely to have a 
MB problem and should act accordingly.  If not, and if another CD drive boots 
a disc while in satan, then you're CD drive has failed.  IF the CD drive in 
satan doesn't work in another system, and a known good CD drive doesn't work 
in Satan, then both the CD and the MB are toast.  In every IDE setup Ive 
seen, Ive never had to play much with BIOS(other than to tell it to boot the 
CD drive.)  

If no, then you have a different kettle of fish, but the same steps are going 
to be needed.  You need to isolate the problem(from the way you describe, I'm 
betting its hardware.)  I would start with a known good IDE cdrom and try 
booting satan off of.  

Mike
-- 
wenk@praxis.homedns.org
Mike Wenk