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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!bruce.cs.monash.edu.au!merlin!mel.dit.csiro.au!its.csiro.au!dmssyd.syd.dms.CSIRO.AU!metro!news.cs.su.oz.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!yeshua.marcam.com!news.kei.com!MathWorks.Com!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!volga.EECS.Berkeley.EDU!cs9e-1et From: cs9e-1et@volga.EECS.Berkeley.EDU (Cheryl Trooskin) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: installing *bsd and hard drive woes Date: 11 Mar 1994 08:27:36 GMT Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 31 Message-ID: <2lpa1o$abq@agate.berkeley.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: volga.eecs.berkeley.edu After banging my head against the wall a couple of thousand times, I decided not to throw my computer out the window and instead ask for some help...but I'm not sure what to ask. My computer came with almost no documentation. The few utilities I have tell me a little about my hard drives...pfdisk.exe, msd.exe (microsoft diagnostics), and norton's sysinfo.exe all agree that my first hard drive is around 100 meg, has 775 cylinders, 8 heads, 512 bytes/sector, and 33 sectors/track. However, since these are all dos-based programs, if my disk geometry is translated, will these programs give me the native geometry, or the post-translated one? On top of that, I haven't the foggiest idea what hard disk controller I have...how can I find out? Despite all these unknowns, I tried to install first 386bsd and more recently Netbsd, both with no success. By sheer chance, I am using kc-aha-09.fs rather than kc-ahbbt (and haven't had any luck obtaining the other-- but that's a different story altogether) to install Netbsd. Things work fine at first; after inserting the first install disk all the devices seem to be recognized; then I get messages like: wd0: cannot find label no swap space avaliable etc/rc: can't open etc/rc fd0: hard error (st0 40<abnrml> ST120<bad_crc> ST220<bad_crc> ST37<sid_ sel> cyl 0 hd 3 sec 2) and it claims it's restarting, and loops. Sound familiar to anyone (or am I losing my mind)? cheryl