[vox-tech] booting off cd help

[Peter Jay Salzman]

begin Michael Wenk <wenk@praxis.homedns.org> 
> 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?  
 
to be honest, i never really had to try.  i can't recall ever having to
rescue the system before because i never experimented with it (until two
nights ago).   i've been using debian for so long, i can't even remember
installing it on this machine.

> 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.)  
 
yah.  sheer laziness on my part, which of course is no excuse.  the
other two computers are a nightmare to work on.  i need to take the CPU
and RAM off lucifer's motherboard to access the drive space.  and i have
SCSI cables which are entirely too long.

but i'll definitely do this soon.

> 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'm getting the sinking feeling that bios or the motherboard is ...
strange on satan.  it's done a lot of wierd things.

once upon a time, this machine used to be an overclocked dual celeron
550.  awhile ago, the machine stopped being happy with overclocking, and
at this point it just refuses to overclock outright.

now when i reboot, i get a message "CPU unworkable or changed.  please
press DEL to go into bios or press F1 to continue".   i've monkeyed with
it a lot.  i've been "trained" that F1 is a normal part of my boot up.
;)  i've googled a few times for this problem, but can't get much
information on the problem.

used to be a time where the system wouldn't reboot when you press reset
(or reboot from the operating system).  you'd actually have to
physically turn power off and then back on to reboot.  mike simons
played with the bios and somehow got it start rebooting without having
to turn power off, but i don't think he knows what he did.  he claims
all he did was "save defaults" and the problem corrected itself.  but i
certainly have done the same thing without 'fixing' the problem.  :)

all in all, i think the motherboard or bios has gone flakey.  but in all
other aspects, the system appears to be strong healthy and fast.

maybe i should start looking at a new dual athlon board.  they're cheap
enough these days.  the only thing is the time investment of bumming
around tom's hardware or anandtech looking at motherboard roundups and
trying to figure out all the new technology and acronymns that have
surfaced since the last time i researched purchasing a motherboard
(maybe about 2 years ago?)

thanks, mike!

pete

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