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Date: Mon, 24 May 2004 21:58:53 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Jason C. Wells" <jcw@highperformance.net>
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Subject: Missing Operating System on Sandisk for miniBSD
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I am trying to install FreeBSD on a compact flash drive.  The drive manual
says the drive geometry is 250880 sectors, 8 heads, 32 sectors per track,
and 980 cylinders.  The BIOS for the computer reports drive geometry as
980/8/32 C/H/S.

I read somewhere that this problem generally indicates a drive geometry
problem.  I do believe I have my geometry correct.  I am obviously missing
something.  I followed the instructions for miniBSD for the most part.

Any other ideas on what could be causing this error?  Gorey details
below.

Later,
Jason C. Wells

My disktab entry is:

sd128:\
    :dt=ESDI:\
    :ty=winchester:\
    :ns#32:\
    :nt#8:\
    :nc#980:\
    :pa#250880:oa#0:ba#8192:fa#1024:ta=4.2BSD:\
    :pc#250880:oc#0:bc#8192:fc#1024:tc=unused

I use the commands...

disklabel -Brw vn0 sd128
newfs -T sd128 -U /dev/vn0a

...to label and newfs the disk.

fdisk /dev/vn0c reports:

******* Working on device /dev/vn0c *******
parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
cylinders=980 heads=8 sectors/track=32 (256 blks/cyl)

parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are:
cylinders=980 heads=8 sectors/track=32 (256 blks/cyl)

Media sector size is 512
Warning: BIOS sector numbering starts with sector 1
Information from DOS bootblock is:
The data for partition 1 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 2 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 3 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 4 is:
sysid 165,(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
    start 0, size 50000 (24 Meg), flag 80 (active)
        beg: cyl 0/ head 0/ sector 1;
        end: cyl 1023/ head 255/ sector 63