Date: Fri, 17 Mar 95 11:43:13 MST From: terry@cs.weber.edu (Terry Lambert) To: bde@zeta.org.au (Bruce Evans) Cc: bugs@FreeBSD.org, gineoh@engin.umich.edu Subject: Re: Can't install 2.0-RELEASE on EIDE HD Message-ID: <9503171843.AA29432@cs.weber.edu> In-Reply-To: <199503171554.BAA22809@godzilla.zeta.org.au> from "Bruce Evans" at Mar 18, 95 01:54:21 am
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> >drive. Here's the default CMOS geometry: > > > cylndrs heads sectors size > > 525 64 63 1083 megabytes > > >problem is FreeBSD says it can't handle 64 heads and reverts to 16 in > >which case it will then not boot from the hard disk. I have tried > > Yes, it can't handle 64 heads, and it makes matters worse by reverting > to 16 heads without correspondingly adjusting the number of sectors and > cylinders. 64 heads used to be a configuration error. > > This configuration might work iff the BSD partition starts on the first > head on the first cylinder, i.e., on a sectore < 63. Actully, it should have intermittent areas of 16 sectors throughout the disk where this would work. Making this work this way is frobbing, and there is no way to put a pretty face on it to allow this to be an acceptable general user configuration. No matter how you slice it, manual intervention by a user to do frobbing of values will be required. This is not acceptable for a "supported configuration". Party line should be that this is not a supported configuration until there is EIDE support integrated in to kill off the need to frob. > >setting the cmos to 16 heads and 2100 cylinders which seems to work for > >BSD and allows me use of the entire disk, but then the DOS partition > >doesn't work. I have tried writing my own partition table with different > > This confguration might work if all bootable partitions are keep below > cylinder 1024. On a drive with an assumed translated geometry of no more than 16 heads. This works out to a 512M limitation on the end of the 'a' slice, and since that can't be determined without yet-more-frobbing, basically a 512M limit on disk size unless you are a well-seasoned BSD installer with a good working knowledge of the boot process. In which case, the machine probably wouldn't be an EIDE box unless the intent of the programmer was to run it as a second box while developing EIDE support on their first non-EIDE box. The poor user is going to find themselves dragged through hell to get this working. 8-(. Terry Lambert terry@cs.weber.edu --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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