From owner-freebsd-current  Sat Nov 23 08:56:56 1996
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From: "Rodney W. Grimes" <rgrimes@GndRsh.aac.dev.com>
Message-Id: <199611231656.IAA17156@GndRsh.aac.dev.com>
Subject: Re: 2.2-ALPHA install failure
In-Reply-To: <199611231117.VAA22545@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> from Michael Smith at "Nov 23, 96 09:47:15 pm"
To: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au (Michael Smith)
Date: Sat, 23 Nov 1996 08:56:01 -0800 (PST)
Cc: fenner@parc.xerox.com, freebsd-current@freebsd.org, jkh@freebsd.org,
        phk@freebsd.org
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> Bill Fenner stands accused of saying:
> >   decided to install 2.2-ALPHA on it.  Although the new install went
> > reasonably well, it won't reboot the new disk.  I used the "dangerously
> > dedicated" mode, so that I wouldn't have to deal with partition tables
> > and weird track values and stuff.  Woo, was I wrong.  The very first
> 
> You are using an NCR controller, or some other SCSI controller that
> reads the partition table out of the MBR.  The 'dangerously dedicated'
> mode won't work with these controllers, as they become _very_ confused
> by it.

Hummm... that goes contrary to what I have been doing on systems for
the last 4 years using NCR controllers.  You can use the dangerously
dedicated mode on the NCR just fine, and I usually set the drives
up this way with a 64/32 translation so that the drive can easily
be moved between any of the NCR/Buslogic/Adaptec controllers since
they all understand 64/32.

The changed behavior in the install programs to do 1/1 translation is
what is brain damaged, that causes more grief than I have ever seen,
so Rod's Rule when doing a ``dangerously dedicated'' install is to
always override the bios geometry with X/64/32, and turn off extended
(DOS >1G) translation on adaptec and buslogic cards, the NCR deals
with the translation automagically, and in conformance with the SCSI
BIOS PnP Spec.

-- 
Rod Grimes                                      rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com
Accurate Automation, Inc.                   Reliable computers for FreeBSD