Installing FreeBSD on Intel 845g chipset 1

[ccnguy]

Hello,

I am having problems installing freebsd 4.2 on my intel pc with 845g chipset. It is a compaq box and they told me to check with Intel to see if chipset is compatible with this unix install. I have scsi hard drive and adaptec card and keep getting hardware errors during install(parity errors). I also tried on ide drive but no luck there either. Windows loads ok though. Does anyone know if any conflicts exist?

Thanks

 

[ag6969]

Does it ever complete the install?
Can you give some hardware specs, like model of PC, CPU, RAM (size & type), HDD, Adaptec chipset/card model. Is it a desktop or server? (Physically, not it's intended use)

You might need to try a newer version, 4.2 is relatively old (2000), so it's probably lacking the driver support you need for a newer system. If you have the bandwidth, just download a newer version. 4.7 is the newest stable release.

If you could post the error, that would help even more. In my experience, popular parity errors can be caused by RAM and SCSI (if installed). You said the parity errors are still there even without the SCSI drive, are you using a SCSI CDROM? If so, check the SCSI parity settings on both the drive(s) and the adapter.
If you have or know someone with spare RAM you can try that as well. I have seen many cases where UNIX or NetWare catches RAM problems that Windows 9x/NT is obliviuos to.

 

[ccnguy]

Hello,

Actually it is a firewall install that installs freebsd 4.2 on this compaq pc(desktop).
It installs on a EVO desktop w/2g Intel processor, 1 gig of ram, 2930u Adaptec controller and SCSI Maxtor harddrive.
The install completes but not without error messages. When installing with scsi drive in place it gives 'parity error seqaddr timeout - scsi(fx0). This lloks like a hardware problem somewhere. When installing with ide hard drive the os starts to install but then gives me hex dump. Looks like an intel chipset problem that can't handle the os to me. So I get scsi error when installing on scsi drives(tried 2 different drives) aand does not even install in ide. The cdrom is ide.
How does one check the SCSI parity settings on both the drive(s) and the adapter? Have never done this.
I can take the ram out of the other duplicate desktop that I have but both come up with this error message. Both have problems with scsi or ide drive.

Thanks

 

[ag6969]

What is the model of your drive?
Your drive should have come from the factory with the Parity jumper in place. If unsure, the best place to find out is the manufacturer's website. All drives are different, so there's no way I could say for sure.

As for the adapter, Adaptec should have an message that prompts you to press CTRL-A when detecting devices before the system boots the OS. There will be several menus, again, I can't say for sure for your adapter, since I don't have one to try at home. Just look through the menus until you see a setting that has the word PARITY in it.
Again, Parity is usually enabled on all SCSI devices by default.

I have never used a 2930u, however I know the 2940u/uw work, so that shouldn't be an issue.

As I had mentioned before, you might want to try a newer version, such as 4.7, where there would be better driver support. There have been some major updates since 4.2, which includes driver support, as well as performance enhancements.

You also mentioned that you have another identical unit. Did FreeBSD install OK on that one?