*BSD News Article 23054


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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!comp.vuw.ac.nz!newshost.wcc.govt.nz!PECNZ.pec.co.nz!alf.pec.co.nz!paula
From: paula@alf.pec.co.nz (Paul Andrew)
Subject: Re: FreeBSD boot loader > 1024 cyls ?
Organization: Production Engineering (NZ) Ltd.
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1993 23:24:02 GMT
Message-ID: <1993Oct28.232402.6515@alf.pec.co.nz>
References: <2a6adu$gin@notwerk.mcs.com> <2a6fi4$5f7@pdq.coe.montana.edu>
Sender: Paul Andrew <paula@pec.co.nz>
Lines: 53

In article <2a6fi4$5f7@pdq.coe.montana.edu> nate@bsd.coe.montana.edu (Nate Williams) writes:
>In article <2a6adu$gin@notwerk.mcs.com>,
>Thomas Uban <uban@Notwerk.mcs.com> wrote:
>
>>My disk is a Toshiba MK2224FC. Its native geometry is C: 770 H: 16 S: 38,
>>but due to my braindead NEC Ultrlite's fixed geometry BIOS, if I want to
>>share the disk with DOS, I have to run with C: 990 (2446) H: 10 S: 16.
>>The original disk was 80MB (990 cyls) the Toshiba works out to 2446 cyls
>>in the "logical" geometry. Yes, I know this is a performance hit, but I
>>have no choice -- "they" make me run DOS...
>
>You CAN'T have 2446 cyls and run DOS.  You have to keep your # of cylinders
>to under 1024 to run dos.
>
>>The partitioning looks something like this (pfdisk):
>>
>>	Part	ID	First	Last	Name
>>	----	---	-----	----	--------
>>	0	6	1	989	DOSbi
>>	1	165	990	2445	FreeBSD
>
>No offense to whoever told you to use 2446, but the only reason DOS works
>on your machine is because it's located in the lower 1024 cyls.  You mentioned
>above that you have C: 990.  Why do you say 2446 then?  Head and sectors are
>independent of cylinders...   

There is a way around this.  My disk has 1053 cylinders, 16 heads and
63 sectors.  But my cmos setup is set to the maximum for DOS 1024, 16,
63.  This also means that My 386BSD boot partition must reside totally
within the valid DOS "view" of the disk.

Does this mean that I lose the 15Mb or so outside the DOS view of the
disk?

NO.  I can edit my disklabel manually after 386BSD (or FreeBSD) is
installed with disklabel -e -r.  All I had to do was change the
disklabel to see 1053 cylinders and another "disklabel" partition that
started at cylinder 1024 and finished at 1053.  Then all I had to do
was type newfs /dev/wd0g and mount /local /dev/wd0g.

You may have other problems if your FreeBSD partition below 1024 is
not big enough to boot unix from.

Do the key message is that you cannot boot from a partition that
extends over the 1024 cylinder boundary.  There is nothing to stop you
using the extra space after you have booted 386BSD.

Paul


-- 
Paul Andrew           PaulA@pec.co.nz       Production Engineering (NZ) Ltd.
Ph. +64 6 3278189 (UNIXWARE & 386BSD user)  P.O. Box 308, Marton, New Zealand