Syslinux - Aug 2005 - Survey: SYSLINUX: 2.13 works, 3.0x don't (H. Peter Anvin)

> From: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa at zytor.com>
> To: SYSLINUX at zytor.com
> Date: Fri, 05 Aug 2005 10:12:18 -0700
> Subject: [syslinux] Survey: SYSLINUX: 2.13 works, 3.0x don't
> Okay, this applies particularly to SYSLINUX, not ISO/PXE/EXTLINUX.
> 
> If you have a system on which 2.13 boots and 3.0x don't, I would like
to
> get as much information as possible about it.  In particular, I would
> like to know:
> 
>     - What device are you booting from (floppy, USB, IDE harddrive...)
>     - Motherboard manufacturer/model
>     - CPU manufacturer/model (a dump of /proc/cpuinfo would be ideal)
>     - BIOS revision
>     - SCSI card manufacturer, if applicable
>     - Does 2.20-pre1 also break on this system
>     - Did you send me hardware (I have at least one motherboard sent to
>       me which I failed to record exactly what it was for.)
> 
> Please send this even if you have sent it before; the last year has been
> tumultuous enough that my memory is pretty short.
> 
>         -hpa
Sorry, I've already been working with you on this, but I forgot to
give any kind of details on my hardware info that might be more useful
than chipset and mb I think.  I've told you the most important stuff
about it, but, one thing I forgot to mention is that I'm using an old
bios (R2.2) for this board because I can't upgrade to the latest (the
latest breaks tv-out on my video card for no appparent reason and I
have no monitor for that system right now) and can't find any in
between to try.  Sorry I forgot to mention this, I imagine an early
bios revision is rather an important detail!  Specifically, the bios
seems to be an AMIBIOS, though I had the impression Supermicro must
have played around with things a bit (just looking at the setup
utility alone makes me wonder.)  The MB, if you forgot, is the
Supermicro (their logo is the word Super with a big red dot, but, the
company seems to be in existance today under the name Supermicro)
P6DGE, which is based on the Intel 440GX chipset, and which utilizes
SMP (currently being taken advantage of.)  I have no SCSI cards or
anything like that, my primary harddrive is a much newer Maxtor 60GB
UDMA 133, but, it seems to work in normal mode (had to use a
compatibility thing that lowered it to 30GB on my old P2-233 system.) 
The CPUs are standard Pentium 3 Katmai cores at stock 500MHz with
512KB cache.  In case you need the extra stuff from /proc/cpuinfo,
here they are:
cpu family 6, model 7, stepping 3, fdiv_bug no, hlt_bug no, f00f_bug
no, coma_bug, no, fpu yes, fpu_exception yes, cpuid level 2, wp yes,
flags fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov
pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse.

Nazo wrote:
> 
> Specifically, the bios
> seems to be an AMIBIOS, though I had the impression Supermicro must
> have played around with things a bit (just looking at the setup
> utility alone makes me wonder.)  The MB, if you forgot, is the
> Supermicro (their logo is the word Super with a big red dot, but, the
> company seems to be in existance today under the name Supermicro)
> P6DGE, which is based on the Intel 440GX chipset, and which utilizes
> SMP (currently being taken advantage of.)
 >

"440GX" and "AMIBIOS" are reminds me of one particular flash
from the
past... is there any mention of Intel in the startup screens at all?

Intel-branded 440GX AMIBIOSes were the platform which ended up having me 
track down an in-circuit emulator so I could figure out how they'd 
bungled the boot...

	-hpa