SS4200-E Successful Boot From CF!

Based on the success I had installing OpenMediaVault to the PATA drive and booting after modifying some ATA modules, I knew that I was getting closer.  I saw that there have been problems getting Windows Home Server to boot from the PATA port on the SS4200-E, and I was looking for device.hints that would let NAS4Free (FreeBSD) recognize the PATA port.

This post has the answer, at least for a full install where you can edit the config files. 

I was able to install to the CF card using ATA/IDE Compatible mode in the BIOS instead of Enhanced.  I was also able to write the embedded NAS4Free image directly to the CF card.  You have to gunzip the .img file first because it is compressed.  I do this by adding the .gz extension, then using 7zip to extract.  The resulting .img file can be written using Win32DiskImager.

After writing the embedded image and changing BIOS back to ATA/IDE Enhanced, I booted.  At the first menu, I hit "5" to get to a prompt.  There, I entered these five commands:

OK set hint.ata.0.at="isa"
OK set hint.ata.0.port="0x1F0"
OK set hint.ata.0.irq="14"
OK set console="comconsole,vidconsole"
OK boot

This finally worked, and I finished booting NAS4Free from the CF card.  I wrote a new message of the day and rebooted to see if it would stick.  I added the two SATA disks and formatted them because GRUB had got on by accident at some point.

After the reboot, I interrupted the process to drop to the prompt and typed in the hints again.  I booted, and saw the new MOTD.  The config stuck!

The post suggested updating /boot/loader.conf and /boot/device.hints.  The loader.conf changes really seemed to be to set up the serial console, which was done through the webgui.  The hints were the important ones, so I made a new /boot/device.hints file, edited it through the web page, and rebooted.  I only added the three ata hints.  I rebooted, but it did not work.

I booted again and added the hints manually.  I checked the file manager, and the /boot/device.hints file was gone.  I saw in this post that the file should actually be /cf/boot/device.hints, but it would disappear after each upgrade.

I added the three hints to the existing device.hints to /cf/boot and rebooted.  This is what it looked like before editing:

# $FreeBSD: release/9.1.0/sys/amd64/conf/GENERIC.hints 235926 2012-05-24 19:24:31Z bz $
hint.fdc.0.at="isa"
hint.fdc.0.port="0x3F0"
hint.fdc.0.irq="6"
hint.fdc.0.drq="2"
hint.fd.0.at="fdc0"
hint.fd.0.drive="0"
hint.fd.1.at="fdc0"
hint.fd.1.drive="1"
hint.atkbdc.0.at="isa"
hint.atkbdc.0.port="0x060"
hint.atkbd.0.at="atkbdc"
hint.atkbd.0.irq="1"
hint.psm.0.at="atkbdc"
hint.psm.0.irq="12"
hint.sc.0.at="isa"
hint.sc.0.flags="0x100"
hint.uart.0.at="isa"
hint.uart.0.port="0x3F8"
hint.uart.0.flags="0x10"
hint.uart.0.irq="4"
hint.uart.1.at="isa"
hint.uart.1.port="0x2F8"
hint.uart.1.irq="3"
hint.ppc.0.at="isa"
hint.ppc.0.irq="7"
hint.atrtc.0.at="isa"
hint.atrtc.0.port="0x70"
hint.atrtc.0.irq="8"
hint.attimer.0.at="isa"
hint.attimer.0.port="0x40"
hint.attimer.0.irq="0"
hint.wbwd.0.at="isa"

I added:
hint.ata.0.at="ias"
hint.ata.0.port="0x1F0"
hint.ata.0.irq="14"

SUCCESS!!!!!  I can finally close this thing up and start experimenting.  After all that, I am leaning toward using OpenMediaVault anyway.  I installed it to a VM and added Plex easily.  The only downside is that it does not have an embedded version.