How to boot a 3b2 on a non-AT&T supplied hard drive

[Philip A. Gross]

Has anyone been able to get a hard disk other than the models that are
supplied by AT&T to boot as the root drive on an AT&T 3B2/400?

Here is the problem:

We have a Priam V190 that we have used for over a year in the 3B2/400 
for our /usr filesystem.  We recently upgraded it to a SCSI Maxtor and 
would like to now make the Priam the drive which the 3B2 boots from.

This is what I have tried thus far:

I. TAKE ONE

I successfully performed a low-level format of the Priam.  Then made
the Priam drive 1 and a perfectly good 32Mb CDC the root drive.  The
CDC already has a bootable UNIX 3.2.2 on it.  While booted on the CDC,
I partition the Priam and made the root and /usr filesystems.  I then
mount the Priam's root filesystem to the CDC and copied the CDC's root
filesystem to the Priam and likewise with the /usr filesystem.

Then using the newboot(1M) command, I have written the boot programs
to the boot partition of the Priam.  Then, I shut the system down to
firmware mode and boot /etc/system on the Priam.  The system will
successfully boot on the Priam and sure enough when I check, the root
filesystem is /dev/dsk/c1d1s0.

I then shut the system down and remove the CDC and replace it with the 
Priam as drive 1 (and yes, I do install the resistor pack and readdress 
the Priam as drive 0).  I now try to boot the system on the Priam alone
and the system gives me the Firmware Error 1-06 BOOT FAILURE.  ARGH!!!
Note here, that if I reinstall the CDC, it will boot just fine, as will
the Priam if I boot off of the Priam when it is drive 1.

Well figuring that there is more than one way to skin a cat, I proceed
to take two.

II. TAKE TWO

Making the Priam as drive 0, I then attempt to use the Essential Utilites
diskette #1 to partition the disk and make it bootable.  Alas, when the
Essential Utilities Diskette #1 reports that it is finished partitioning
the disk and installing part of the UNIX core, it then "attempts" to
reboot the system off of the Priam so that the remainder of the UNIX core
installation may proceed with diskettes 2-6.  At this time I get the same
error as before, 1-06 BOOT FAILURE.

I have retried both procedures over several times, just in the event that
maybe the planets and stars were not in their correct orbits.  But...to
no avail.  Over the several years that I have been working with 3B2's,
I have been able to do many unnatural things to them, including getting
it to boot off of an external SCSI disk, but this one seems to have me
licked.

If anyone has any suggestions as to what I may do next, please e-mail
me or post a followup article to this group (comp.sys.att).

===============================================================================
Philip A. Gross       The Computer Solution Co., Inc.       Voice: 804-794-3491
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