Date: Fri, 22 Mar 1996 11:06:56 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: bde@zeta.org.au (Bruce Evans) Cc: bde@zeta.org.au, terry@lambert.org, andreas@knobel.gun.de, dave@kachina.jetcafe.org, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Adding a damn 2nd disk Message-ID: <199603221806.LAA02936@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <199603221426.BAA09417@godzilla.zeta.org.au> from "Bruce Evans" at Mar 23, 96 01:26:16 am
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> >The driver for old MFM drives should read the CMOS drive table. > > This fails for > - old BIOSes (e.g. 1987 Award) that don't have a CMOS drive table > - old BIOSes (e.g. 1987 Award) that don't have a suitable CMOS drive index > (I used the index for a 979(?)-cylinder disk for my 988- and 1314- > cylinder disks and had no problems using the cylinders beyond the > end under systems that didn't believe the BIOS). > - more than the number of old MFM drives supported by the BIOS. > > Anyway, the driver for old MFM drives should use the geometry reported > by the BIOS, and FreeBSD's wd driver does so, modulo bugs. I think the complaint on that was that there are "wasted cylinders". I know this is true for ESDI drives, which are WD interfaced the same as MFM or RLL. That's why I suggested the cylinder range search in those cases. > >> >The disktab should go. > >> > >> I see that you have sold your stock of ESDI drives :-). > > >No, but I see that the slice code forces a translated world view > >(fake cylinder boundries) on me pretty much anyway, unless I go > >to an extrordinary amount of effort. > > You shouldn't have sold your stock of optical attachments 8-). > The slice only advises about the geometry. The translated world > view is encouraged by sysinstall's default partitioning scheme > and the requirement to boot using the BIOS. I still can't install on a WD1007 with sector sparing enabled, and it's because of the translation assumptions. 8-(. I would prefer that, at the very least, the "preferred geometry" comes back on a per controller basis because of this. At the most, the geometry information should be completely abstracted (like I've been suggesting). I'm going to take a shot at a non-functional "tool" prototype some time in the next week or two to see if I can resolve the GUI/tool communication issues. If I can, expect me to lobby harder for the abstration and the death of the disktab. 8-). Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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