Laptop and live cd

[Matthew Dillon]

:The BIOS do not allow any changes to the cd drive.  I tried a FreeBSD 
:4.6 and 5.1 cd, only ones I have, and neither one will boot.  4.6 get to 
:will get to the hit enter to boot and the 5.1 will get to the menu, but 
:no options will get you further. Again you hear the cd drive wind down 
:and the computer shuts off.
:
:Bryan

    Ouch.  If 4.6 doesn't boot then it isn't an El Torito emulation
    issue.  It sounds like the loader is overwriting memory that the 
    BIOS is using.

    I can only think of one thing.

    ESC out of the boot sequence before boot2 is able to load
    /boot/loader.  There is a very short interval of time after you hit
    e.g. F1 from boot0 where boot0 loads boot1 and boot2 and then boot2
    tries to load /boot/loader.  If you hit ESC a few times immediately
    after hitting F1 from boot0 you should be able to break into the
    boot2 prompt.

    From the boot2 prompt you could try booting the /kernel directly
    rather then /boot/loader.  

    If that works then the problem is likely related to BTX emulation,
    but its virtually undebuggable so finding the cause might be 
    impossible.  If that doesn't work then the problem is likely due
    to the BIOS needing memory that the boot loader is overwriting.  There
    is no real fix for that sort of thing without knowing exactly what
    the problem is.

					-Matt
					Matthew Dillon 
					<dillon at xxxxxxxxxxxxx>