Problem booting OS on IDE PCI adaptor card with Grub in MBR of hda

[Mikkel L. Ellertson]

Nigel Henry wrote:
> 
> Hi Mikkel. Thanks for explaining how the floppy boot works. From FC2 I 
> ran /sbin/grub-install /dev/hda, which was successfull and displayed my 
> edited drive map. Rebooted, but still no go, and a "no such disk" when trying 
> to boot FC1. Next I booted up Win ME on the basis that at least I can see 
> what it says about the card, as I'd used the supplied boot floppy to install 
> the drivers on that. According to the device manager there are no problems 
> with the card, the only difference from the cards handbook was that the 
> handbook said that I would find the card in harddrive controllers, but it was 
> actually listed in scsi controllers. Not much help there.
> 
> Next I venture into the BIOS. In the boot section the dvdrom (hdg) is listed 
> last on the list. Also, all 3 harddrives are showing in the BIOS. 
> 
> Running out of ideas here, but thought I'd try to boot from the dvdrom drive, 
> and moved it up to before the harddrive. Then tried Knoppix 5.0, but it gave 
> me a boot failed. Not being sure if dvdrom drives can boot cdroms I found my 
> only dvdrom for mdk 10.1, and tried that. The output from that try was:
> 
Every DVD drive I have used will boot from a bootable CD as well.
But you may run into a problem with your setup where what you are
booting does not find the DVD drive.

> Isolinux 1.76 Mandrake Isolinux:
> Disk error 01,  AX = 423B, Drive 00
> Boot failed: press a key to retry...
> Zilch!. Had to hard reset.
> 
> I somehow think that this is going to end up going nowhere. I will either have 
> to put up with using the floppy for FC1, which Fedora legacy are dropping in 
> the next few days, but that's my choice if I want to continue using it. Or I 
> can move FC1 to either hda or hdb, which I don't know how to do, and just use 
> hde, which is on the IDE PCI adaptor card for backups , and data, as it works 
> ok once the system is booted up.
> 
> Unless you have any further ideas, I suppose it's a case of "you can't win em 
> all" Nigel.

Well, with the BIOS showing all 3 hard drives, I wonder if the error
message you are getting is actually from the Grub install on hde
after you chain to it. Were you using a different drive
configuration when Grub was installed? If so, you may have to
re-install Grub after booting FC1. But make sure you are installing
it to the MBR on hde, and not overwriting your working Grub install.
Then make sure you are chainloading to the right place.

Mikkel
-- 

  Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!