Re: [9fans] Dell E4300?

[erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>]

> Anyone here had a chance to try a Dell E4300?  It's a nice, compact system, but it really refuses to boot Plan 9:
>
> It has on-board SATA hd, SATA cd-rom, etc.  I tried quanstro's 9atom.iso, and with the SATA controller in AHCI mode, it'll start booting, but hangs at:
>
> 45555 => 818807+1020832+474972=2314611
> entry: f0100020
>
> Plan 9
>
> In modes other than AHCI, neither the "stock" or quanstro's cd's will recognize any devices other than fd0, and even then won't boot from it.

i think there's a good chance things can work.
clearly we're relatively close to booting, because
we've gotten this far.

my semi-educated guess here is that either
we've done something antisocial in 9load that
has corrupted some SMM mode memory.  the
leading potential culprit here is ahci.  or that
some SMM-driven device, like a usb mouse that
is presented to the os as a ps/2 mouse is messing
up.

the easiest debugging step is to turn off usb
completely.

also, make sure to check for bios updates.

do you have a cpu server?  is your laptop
PXE bootable?  even a useable network card
would work.  if so, it will be much easier to
narrow down the problem quickly.

>
> The "stock" cd will hang here in AHCI mode:
>
> PBS1...
> Plan 9 from Bell Labs
> ELCR: 0C08
> pcirouting: South bridge 8086, 2917 not found

i'll add this southbridge to my cd.  this will definately
not hurt.  could you send me pci output?  if you use
lspci from linux make sure to use -vn so the vid/did
appear.  the descriptive strings are fairly useless.

- erik