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Subjecthelp: PS/2 hard drive not found
This place has been infested by IBM.

I'm trying to install Linux on a PS/2 (Model 56 486SLC2). Actually
I've been able to get my hands on two of them, both apparently
identical except for the amount of RAM (one has 12MB, the other just
under 16MB).

I've compiled[0] kernel 2.2.0-pre8[1], with MCA support, with and without
ESDI hard drive support, with and without "use old disk-only driver",
and a few other changes. I've grafted this kernel onto a Debian rescue
(installation) disk. I can boot the machine with this kernel, and it
doesn't even complain.

But it does not find the hard drive.

Each of these PS/2 systems has a 200MB hard drive. IBM DOS 5.00 can
see it just fine, and so can MS-DOS 6.22 on a floppy. I was even able
to split one of them with FIPS.

I've been doing lots of web searching. It seems that there's a Linux
MCA home page, or two or three, but none of them are working for me
today. I get name lookup errors, or nonresponsive servers, or invalid
URLs. Thus, I can't try any of the 2.0.x patches which are alleged to
exist, or even find any real documentation (other than
Documentation/mca.txt).

I found something called QBMCA and ran that on one of the machines. It
reports 8 MCA slots (which doesn't sound right -- this is an awfully
small case), with a token ring card in slot 2. The Linux kernel sees
this token ring card just fine. (But these PS/2s are way too small to
be usable diskless Xstations. I'm not even sure X will work on these
boxes yet....)

I found a site somewhere in ibm.com which has "reference disks". But
not one for the PS/2 Model 56. I'm not even sure what a reference disk
is, so I'm rather reluctant to try to use the wrong one.

I don't know what an ESDI is, or how to tell whether I've got one. I
don't think this is a SCSI system, but again, I don't know how to tell --
DOS doesn't seem to have any tools for hardware reporting. I've tried
"fdisk /dev/hda" and "fdisk /dev/eda", after booting from the rescue
disk, but both of them give a generic "unable to open" error (same as
when I use a nonexistent device name). "cat /proc/devices" shows an
"ed" driver at block device major 36. "dmesg" shows nothing hard
disk-related (it finds the floppy controller, and the token ring card,
but never an hda or sda or eda; of course, I don't have SCSI support in
this kernel, since I wouldn't know which SCSI adapter to use, and I
doubt there's any SCSI in these PS/2s anyway).

I'm probably ignorant of something which is terribly obvious to those
who actually understand these PS/2 boxes. Are there any MCA gurus here
who recognize this type of problem?

[0]I've got Linux installed on my non-PS/2 PC, but it doesn't support
the Madge ISA token ring card[2][3][5]. So, I can download kernel source
under Windoze, then reboot and mount the DOS FAT partition under Linux,
compile the kernel, copy it to a floppy, and walk the floppy over to
one of the PS/2s.

[1]I got the same results yesterday with 2.1.131, though I didn't try
as many combinations of options.

[2]Madge tech support says they have no Linux driver for the ISA TR
cards -- just the PCI ones. I'd prefer to use Linux on this PC, rather
than the PS/2s which are less powerful systems, but without working
network device support it's useless to me. I found an old IBM ISA
token ring card around here, and was able to get it to respond
partially, but the ifconfig command hangs before completing (the IP
address gets set, but not the netmask or broadcast). I also tried the
IBM card under Novell (downloaded the newest DOS/Win3.1 client), and
the IBM card doesn't work there, either, so I suspect it's shot. But
maybe I just don't know Novell well enough. But I got the new Novell
client to see the Madge card. But then I had to go back to the old
client anyway, because I couldn't figure out how to login with the new
one.[7]

[3]If I can't get the PS/2 to work, I may end up buying a token ring
card out of my own pocket, but I'm not forking over $125.93 USD[4] for
an IBM one! I can't call Olicom from here (can't dial long distance),
and haven't called SysKonnect/ComStor yet. Naturally the only TR card
on the shelves at the "local" CompUSA is an IBM one.

[4]Suggested retail value. Where'd they come up with .93, anyway?

[5]Token ring sucks.[6]

[6]Yeah, we've got SNA here, too. That sucks even more.[7]

[7]Novell sucks, too. More than token ring[5], but less than SNA[6].

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