Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 09:22:03 +0930 (CST) From: Mr_X <jbbrazel@teaching.cs.adelaide.edu.au> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: 64-heads on Western IDE Message-ID: <199508222352.JAA09873@brian.teaching.cs.adelaide.edu.au>
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Last nite, I decided the time had come to finally get freebsd on my PC. Sunted dos all over the place, repartitioned/reformatted etc etc etc, and then booted off a floppy to be installing. My basic setup is a Western IDE 1.2Gig HDD running on a brand X (I forget which) IDE controller (note, there is only the one drive hooked up to the controller). The CMOS defaults are set to: 621 cyl, 64 heads, 63 sectors (BIOS is auto-sensing the drive) which basically leaves me with a 1.22 Gig HDD for use. When I rebooted, FreeBSD began spewing about 64 heads being incompatible with the 'partition table', and that the 'controller default of 16' (heads) was being restored. >From then on, lots of wonderful problems ensued. Install had trouble creating the rd0g disk partition (timing out), but after a bit of screwing around, (setting the CMOS settings to 2484c,16h,63s - these were the settings that install seemed to want - it kept writing them to the screen) rd0g formatted correctly (this occurred around 3am in the morning). But then DOS had it's little spew (didn't like the new MBR, did it? And yup, unfortunately, I need to keep DOS for work) So I reset the CMOS, rebooted teh install disk, rewrote the MBR etc etc, and install decided it would play ball until I had to reboot FreeBSD from the harddisk (just before I used cpio.flp, I guess). It rebooted fine until it got to forking init, couldn't find it, paniced, died :P So: - Why is 64 heads such a bad number (just _what_ partition table is the install disk referring to when it barfs)? - Is this the reason for FreeBSD's stubborn refusal to install smoothly? - Does anyone have any suggestions? cheers, John Brazel +-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+ jbbrazel@cs.adelaide.edu.au "Yea, though I walk alone through eris@student.adelaide.edu.au the valley of darkness, I fear no I.R.L: John Brazel evil, for I am the evilest son of Adelaide University, Aus. a bitch this valley has ever seen" HTTP://smug.student.adelaide.edu.au/~eris +-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
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