Firebox x550e

Icarusfixius

I believe I have this box properly flashed to the B8 bios but I still cannot get it to boot from a 4gb CF card. I am getting a disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter. From what I understood the B8 bios should basically just work. Is there some reading you could direct me to or tips you could give me?

stephenw10

How did you flash the BIOS? Did you reset the CMOS?
Your CF card may just be odd (what is it?) you could try setting heads to 2 like you had to with older bios versions.

How did you write the CF card? Did it write successfully. The 'insert systrem disk' message seems to imply it's tried to boot from the CF and failed. In earlier bios versions it won't even try you just see nothing.

Steve

Icarusfixius

I flashed the bios with MSdos and the awdflash command.

I have not reset the cmos.

I tried setting the heads to 2 as I was unsure if that still applied in this bios.

I wrote the cfcard with win32 disk imager, which I am not really trusting my image to be correct. Though it did seem to work correctly.

stephenw10

If your awdflash command included the /cc switch then that cleared the cmos.

Did you extract the img file from the gzip file?
Win32 disk imager does not do the extraction for you unlike physdiskwrite.

Steve

Icarusfixius

I removed the gz, extension that may have been a bad idea but the flash seemed to work fine.

stephenw10

You have to actually extract it from the gzip file. ;) 7zip can do it.
http://www.7-zip.org/
After extraction the image will be the full size of the Nano partition, so 4GB if you're using that.

Steve

Icarusfixius

after doing that I dont get the disk error anymore, now i just get the pci device listing scree with a flashing cursor at the bottom.

Icarusfixius

woops quick update, I let it sit like that for a bit and now it says BTX loader 1.00 BTX version is 1.02 and the cursor is just flashing at the bottom.

stephenw10

The baud rate for pfSense is, by default, 9600 whereas the bios is at 115200. Did you change you serial terminal?

Steve

Icarusfixius

yes i changed the serial terminal, but i am currently watching it on my vga dongle

stephenw10

Ah, Ok. How have you attached the VGA, via the board header?
It could be because the Nano images switch to using only the serial console after the bootloader so you won't see anything via vga.

Steve

Icarusfixius

Yeah i have both vga and serial hooked up right now, i see the same thing on both

stephenw10

What are you using for a serial terminal?
I have noticed that some terminal emulators don't handle the baud rate change well. For instance you have the terminal set to 9600 and boot the box. Initially you get garbage because the POST output is at 115200 but then when the output changes to 9600 you just see the cursor moving but no actual text. At that poing if you close the terminal program and re-open it at 9600 you should start to see the correct output.

Steve