"Press Esc for Alternate OS..????????????????"

QNX Newsgroups (Archives) qdn.public.qnx4
1

Hello All,

Don’t know what continuous “?” after “Press Esc for Alternate OS”
indicates… Could someone please fill me in?

TIA,
Wendy

2

I believe that the ‘?’ question mark indicates a disk IO error trying to
read the boot image. Sometimes you’ll see a question mark and a re-try will
work and the boot will occur. (Even then I would check the disk.)

Bill Caroselli


Try booting via some other means (i.e. floppy) and try running dcheck on
that drive/partition.
“wendy” <wwoods@nospam.arcomcontrols.com> wrote in message
news:9ntq72$cuj$1@inn.qnx.com…

Hello All,

Don’t know what continuous “?” after “Press Esc for Alternate OS”
indicates… Could someone please fill me in?

TIA,
Wendy

3

I had a machine with a SCSI drive that did that periodically. A
power cycle would often clear the problem. I replaced the drive,
which didn’t help. I finally replaced the cable which fixed the
problem. My advice is to try a new drive cable before going to
the trouble of swapping drives.

Previously, Bill Caroselli (Q-TPS) wrote in qdn.public.qnx4:

I believe that the ‘?’ question mark indicates a disk IO error trying to
read the boot image. Sometimes you’ll see a question mark and a re-try will
work and the boot will occur. (Even then I would check the disk.)

Bill Caroselli


[…]

4

“Ken Schumm” <kwschumm@qsolv.com> wrote in message
news:Voyager.010916103848.305C@dilbert…

I had a machine with a SCSI drive that did that periodically. A
power cycle would often clear the problem. I replaced the drive,
which didn’t help. I finally replaced the cable which fixed the
problem. My advice is to try a new drive cable before going to
the trouble of swapping drives.

IDE cable should NOT be longer then 18". I’ve seen
store selling 24" cable ;-( Unless the spec as changed last
time I looked

Previously, Bill Caroselli (Q-TPS) wrote in qdn.public.qnx4:
I believe that the ‘?’ question mark indicates a disk IO error trying to
read the boot image. Sometimes you’ll see a question mark and a re-try
will
work and the boot will occur. (Even then I would check the disk.)

Bill Caroselli


[…]

5

Thank you Mario. I did not know that one.

“Mario Charest” <mcharest@nowayzinformatic.com> wrote in message
news:9o34bj$f9g$1@inn.qnx.com…

IDE cable should NOT be longer then 18". I’ve seen
store selling 24" cable ;-( Unless the spec as changed last
time I looked