🚀 go-pugleaf

Dave Campana (103207.3640@CompuServe.COM) wrote:
: Please take pity on me!......
: I am failing in my attempts to get linux running.  I have a 
: DX4-100 with a Future domain 1680 (ver 3.5). I have tried 
: Yggdrasil and A newly purchased WGS pro (the easiest to install?).

: My problem is no scsi host detected.  I have tried downloading a 
: boot image from 1.2.13 (which lists up to version 3.5) but no joy. 

Short answer:  

You probably need to recompile your kernel, after patching fdomain.c
to add the "BIOS signature string" of your 1680 card.

Details:

I had this same problem.  I'm still a newbie, but eventually puzzled
out what to do.  To succeed, you must have enough of Linux installed
and working to rebuild your kernel; hope that's not Catch-22.  
  
The following steps worked for me, but I'm not implying
any warranty!  Use at your own risk!  

This refers to kernel version 1.2.13.  In the kernel sources, 
look at fdomain.c around line 370.  You'll find there a list of 
BIOS signature strings recognized by the code.  Immediately above, 
there is a declaration of what some of the other data fields mean 
(sig_offset, sig_length, BIOS major and minor numbers, etc.).

If the signature on your card doesn't match one of these, it won't
work.  Boot DOS and use debug.exe (carefully!) to find and inspect
the area of high memory where the SCSI card's BIOS code is.  Mine
was at CA00, so what I did from bare DOS was:

           C:\> debug
           -d ca00:0000
                   (look at the first several bytes and write them down
                    carefully)
           -q
           C:\>
  
If your Future Domain card doesn't identify itself at CA00, try looking at
other addresses. 

Edit future domain.c to add the string to the list, and fill in the other
fields for offset, length, etc.  The line I added was

  { "FUTURE DOMAIN CORP.  V3.6008/18/93",                  5, 34,  3,  6, 0 },

but this won't work for you unless it matches your card exactly.  Put in
whatever is appropriate.  Rebuild your kernel, run lilo, etc. and it may
work.  Actually, fdomain.c contains numerous warnings that patching it 
this way may not suffice, but it worked for me.  I sent my patch to the
author, but haven't looked at whether it has been incorporated anywhere.

Hope this helps, and happy Linux-ing.

Duff McRoberts
rdm@csn.net