very slow R5 boot

[beosmrx]

This strange problem appears. The color changing pixel square in the top left of the BeOS R5 boot screen is taking 5 minutes to change colors, previously was very fast flashing. After that the icons all light up quickly and beos boots up. I ran a chkbfs -f .

[Deej]

I once seen similar symptoms on a SCSI hard disk system.  Using SCSI by chance?

[beosmrx]

No it is an IDE drive. BeOS worked fine on it since I got the drive. I can do a fitness test on it to see if it is is not failing.

[beosmrx]

Ugh... One of those problems I get. Usually what happens (If I have beos beos booting problems when everythng was fine before) is that BeOS Boots and hangs on the last boot icon. My home brew solution is simple and works everytime. I unplug the power to all IDE devices except the BeOS hdd. So for me I removed the cd, and two hdds. Except, this time that solution even worked with the slow blinking light. All I have to do is shutdown, plug in the rest of the devices, reboot and everything works again!

[beosmrx]

Actually I narrowed it down even more,  a single hdd causing the booting issue problem. It is secondary slave, 60GB. The Drve Fitness test comes back no problem for this drive so I am wordering why still. I have some more options: to swap M/S positions or try a new IDE cable, or swap it from the sec. channel to the pri. channel. If these dont work than either the drive itself is defective (but it is not!) or BeOS is having an issue with itself.

[beosmrx]

okay I upgraded to 88pin cable all works well now. Must have been a kink or something in the old cable.

[Deej]

Glad you were able to solve it, and thanks for posting the solution too!  Might help others down the road.