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From: razzle dazzle root beer <marko@foo.notwork.net>
Message-Id: <199705011835.OAA04473@foo.notwork.net>
Subject: boot with old bios, new drive
To: questions@freebsd.org
Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 14:35:27 -0400 (EDT)
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Hi,

I've got a Dell 320LT luggable computer, 386SX20 w/387. I installed a 520 meg quantum fireball harddrive(ide) but the bios does not have any user configurable 
geometry settings, nor any preset ones above 262 megabytes. Freebsd 2.2.1 detects the drive fine, installs with no problem except that it cannot boot.
The freebsd boot manager actually runs, except it cannot bootstrap the OS. It just sits there "F?"... I was wondering if there was a boot manager that does not check the bios parameters when attempting to boot an os. Freebsd is using the entire drive. I tried putting a small DOS partition at the beginning of the drive, and playing around with the geometry settings in the label editor but that didnt work either. I even tried system commander 3.0, a commercial product which unfortunately requires to exist on a dos partition.

Can anyone think of what I might be able to do to bootstrap the OS?

I wouldnt mind booting from floppy.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Marko