Syslinux - Nov 2002 - Problems booting with SCSI CD

Theodore Kilgore wrote:
> 
> I have burned several Slackware 8.1 bootable CDs which work nicely on
> any IDE CD-ROM setup, provided the machine's BIOS is new enough to
> support booting from CD. But on these Gateway machines the following:
> 
> 1. BIOS sees the SCSI devices -- one SCSI hard drive and one SCSI
> CD-ROM.
> 2. BIOS reports that the CD is bootable.
> 3. The message comes up about "winging it" and then the next line
says
> there is a failure to "access" the CD-ROM device (Strange,because
these
> error messages were read from the CD, right?).
> 
> Thus, I cannot even get so far as a "Boot:" prompt, which would
let me
> choose the correct boot kernel for using that particular SCSI card (for
> Slackware 8.1 that is the adaptec.s kernel).
> 
This means that the BIOS read the initial bootstrap off the CD, but that 
then it cannot get the BIOS to read anything else.  Please specify the 
*exact* output messages displayed -- the exact details are important in 
trying to figure out what is happening on your machine without actually 
having access to it.

The one thing you can do is burn a CD with isolinux/isolinux.bin 
replaced with isolinux/isolinux-debug.bin; see 
http://syslinux.zytor.com/iso.php for details on how you would have to 
use mkisofs.

	-hpa

Greetings from beautiful Alabama.

You have requested for people to let you know if they are having any
problem:

I am a professor in the Department of Mathematics, Auburn University.
Among other activities, I do a lot of Linux installations on older
computers, many of which are old Gateway Pentium Pro boxes which came
with Adaptec 2940 SCSI cards and SCSI CD.

I have burned several Slackware 8.1 bootable CDs which work nicely on
any IDE CD-ROM setup, provided the machine's BIOS is new enough to
support booting from CD. But on these Gateway machines the following:

1. BIOS sees the SCSI devices -- one SCSI hard drive and one SCSI
CD-ROM.
2. BIOS reports that the CD is bootable.
3. The message comes up about "winging it" and then the next line says
there is a failure to "access" the CD-ROM device (Strange,because
these
error messages were read from the CD, right?).

Thus, I cannot even get so far as a "Boot:" prompt, which would let me
choose the correct boot kernel for using that particular SCSI card (for
Slackware 8.1 that is the adaptec.s kernel).

Advice would be appreciated. If you need more exact information about
the machine's BIOS, make and model of CD, or anything else like that,
please let me know. I will be glad to oblige, but right now I am at home
and the machines are at work, and I could only guess about what you
might actually need.

Another line of approach which would partially solve my problem would be
to be able to start up with a boot floppy (using the right kernel,
naturally) and be able to pass a parameter at "Boot:" which says to
mount the SCSI CD (or for that matter other CD, on a machine which does
not support booting from CD).  And then it would be possible at least
not to use the sequence of 5 installation rootdisks. I wonder if it is
possible to do that?

I hope that you can be of assistance to me, and also I am glad, if
possible, to be of assistance to you, by honoring your request to learn
about any problems that people may be having.

Theodore Kilgore