Date: Thu, 05 Feb 1998 10:39:20 -0500 From: "Reinhold J. Gerharz" <rgerharz@erols.com> To: "'AIC7xxx@FreeBSD.ORG'" <AIC7xxx@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Extended BIOS translation (worth disabling?) Message-ID: <1.5.4.32.19980205153920.0094f930@pop.erols.com>
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At 16:10 02/05/1998 +0100, Peter Holzer wrote: ... >Yup. For some reason Linux fdisk (like DOS fdisk) only lets you start >partitions at cylinder boundaries. I have considered dusting off Minix >fdisk several times, but these days I don't care about a few wasted >Megabytes any more, and I haven't had to rebuild strange partition >tables for some time. This is probably to make the partitions compatible with LILO as well as DOS. LILO's limitation is that it uses BIOS calls to actually load the kernel, therefore inheriting the BIOS limitations. The advantage of this is maximum and immediate compatibility with any disk drive supported by the BIOS. NT (can I say that?) can boot from non-BIOS compatible partitions as long as the BIOS can at least read the boot sector. It just requires a fully operational copy of NT installed on another disk to prepare the target disk, which can later be removed. (I have done this, and should point out that it can make it difficult to install some software. I believe some installation programs check for free space in bytes, in 32 bit integers. If this value overflows, it believes there is insufficient space. One must install a lot of other stuff before these installation packages will work.) -- Reinhold J. Gerharz http://www.erols.com/rgerharz PGP Key at http://www.erols.com/rgerharz/pgp/public-key.asc "The only good spammer is a DEAD spammer!" - Anonymous
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