From owner-freebsd-hardware Fri May 10 22:04:42 1996 Return-Path: owner-hardware Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id WAA16761 for hardware-outgoing; Fri, 10 May 1996 22:04:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: from who.cdrom.com (who.cdrom.com [204.216.27.3]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id WAA16742 Fri, 10 May 1996 22:04:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: from palmer.demon.co.uk (palmer.demon.co.uk [158.152.50.150]) by who.cdrom.com (8.6.12/8.6.11) with ESMTP id WAA03580 ; Fri, 10 May 1996 22:04:25 -0700 Received: from palmer.demon.co.uk (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by palmer.demon.co.uk (sendmail/PALMER-1) with ESMTP id FAA04887 ; Sat, 11 May 1996 05:59:51 +0100 (BST) To: John-David Childs cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG, hardware@FreeBSD.ORG From: "Gary Palmer" Subject: Re: disktab for Micropolis 4221-09/2112-15???? In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 10 May 1996 22:57:38 MDT." Date: Sat, 11 May 1996 05:59:50 +0100 Message-ID: <4885.831790790@palmer.demon.co.uk> Sender: owner-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk John-David Childs wrote in message ID : > Yes, I've been searching for these since 6pm. Found an HPUX disktab for > the 4221 (from the Micropolis web site), but FreeBSD 2.1.0-RELEASE boot > disks (I'm doing a new install) chokes on the number of cyl/head/sec > I entered. > Micropolis docs are garbage (faxback), and the various hard disk reference > guides (including "TheRef" don't give enough info). Any help appreciated > greatly. The correct answer is to make a small DOS partition on the hard drive so that FreeBSD can pick up the geometry presented to the computer by the SCSI card. Most SCSI cards present a fake geometry to the PC to get round limitations designed into the PC from the early days whem people thought that 500Mb's would never ever be exceeded (ha!). Without access to the BIOS from the kernel, FreeBSD doesn't have any real way of finding this out, and a small DOS partition (which can be deleted once the kernel is running and has read the MBR to get the geometry) is the best way. So the right answer is: it's not what geometry the drive has (which for SCSI drives is often wrong anyhow as they have variable number of sectors per track depending on the cylinder), but what geometry the controller has for the drive ... The installer will choke on what you tried as for multi-OS installations, you can't use the ``raw'' geometry but the one the BIOS sees. Gary -- Gary Palmer FreeBSD Core Team Member FreeBSD - Turning PC's into workstations. See http://www.FreeBSD.ORG/ for info.