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Date:      Mon, 02 Aug 1999 10:59:10 +0200
From:      Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.freebsd.dk>
To:        Robert Nordier <rnordier@nordier.com>
Cc:        mike@smith.net.au (Mike Smith), bde@zeta.org.au (Bruce Evans), current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: junior-hacker task: "prepdisk" 
Message-ID:  <23588.933584350@critter.freebsd.dk>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 02 Aug 1999 10:55:44 %2B0200." <199908020855.KAA20495@m2-4-dbn.dial-up.net> 

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In message <199908020855.KAA20495@m2-4-dbn.dial-up.net>, Robert Nordier writes:
>> >What fails?  Can you be more specific?  How recent are your boot1/boot2 
>> >blocks?  I would be inclined to dd at least 8k over the front of the 
>> >disk myself, but I don't think that's relevant in your case.
>> 
>> Disk error #1 while trying to load boot/loader.  I think the bios
>> in this case trust the 50000 in the length field of the mbr.
>
>Any better luck after enabling "LBA access" in boot1 as a build
>option (added back a few weeks ago), or does the BIOS not support
>this?
>
>BTW: Is this a genuine hard drive, or some form of disk-on-a-chip?
>I seem to recall the BIOS geometry in some cases uses a small number
>of sectors per track, which may push part of the 'a' partition
>beyond the 1023 CHS limit.

I've seen this on both flash disks and real disks.  The flash disks
have geometries which put them firmly inside 1023 cyls:

	fla0 maddr 0xd0000 msize 8192 on isa
	fla0: <M-Systems DiskOnChip 40MB>
	fla0: 39.1MB (80144 sectors), 1001 cyls, 16 heads, 5 S/T, 512 B/S
	fla1 maddr 0xd2000 msize 8192 on isa
	fla1: <M-Systems DiskOnChip 72MB>
	fla1: 70.5MB (144320 sectors), 1002 cyls, 16 heads, 9 S/T, 512 B/S
	fla2 maddr 0xd4000 msize 8192 on isa
	fla2: <M-Systems DiskOnChip 40MB>
	fla2: 39.1MB (80144 sectors), 1001 cyls, 16 heads, 5 S/T, 512 B/S
	fla3 maddr 0xd6000 msize 8192 on isa
	fla3: <M-Systems DiskOnChip 144MB>
	fla3: 141.0MB (288832 sectors), 1002 cyls, 16 heads, 18 S/T, 512 B/S
	fla4 maddr 0xd8000 msize 8192 on isa
	fla4: <M-Systems DiskOnChip 8MB>
	fla4: 7.8MB (15920 sectors), 995 cyls, 16 heads, 1 S/T, 512 B/S

So cyl 1024 should not even enter in the equation...

My real beef here is not with the boot failure but with the fact that our
command line tools stink when I bring in a new blank disk...

--
Poul-Henning Kamp             FreeBSD coreteam member
phk@FreeBSD.ORG               "Real hackers run -current on their laptop."
FreeBSD -- It will take a long time before progress goes too far!


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