*BSD News Article 48417


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From: Matt Rosenberg <mar7@cec.wustl.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Adaptec 2742W and Seagate ST43401N
Date: 9 Aug 1995 22:36:38 GMT
Organization: Washington University School of Law
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To: questions@freebsd.org,jkh@freebsd.org

Matt Rosenberg <mar7@cec.wustl.edu> wrote:
>I have never had any trouble with FreeBSD on IDE drives, but have 
>hit a snag trying to install it on a system with only a floppy and 
>a 3GB SCSI.  It has an Adaptec 2742W and a Seagate ST43401N.  
>During the installation disk boot, the Adaptec is correctly probed, 
>but the drive is recognized as something with the wrong geometry.
>
>I get the following debugging message on ttyv1:
>"sd0: error reading primary partition table reading fsbn 0 (sd0 
>bn0; cn0 tn0 sn0)"
>
>The disk works perfectly under DOS and has passed a whole battery 
>of diagnostic tests there with flying colors.  I was told to change 
>the labelling on the disk, but under the installation menu I'm told 
>I can't label it until I partition it, and the installation program 
>won't let me partition it because it claims I don't have a hard 
>drive.  So how can I exit the installation menu to enter a labeling 
>command without forcing a reboot?  And will that even solve my 
>problem?  One note:  DOS reads the logical geometry of the disk as 
>354 cylinders 255 sides and 63 S/T.  The physical geometry is 
>actually 2738 cylinders and 21 sides.  As far as I know only the 
>system BIOS is converting the geometry to LBA.

People have been writing me all day that I have to change the disk 
geometry in the patitioning section of the installation.  The 
problem is I wasn't able to get to the partioning of the disk, 
because the disk couldn't be accessed at all.  After two days of 
talking with useless tech support people at Seagate who blamed the 
Adapter card and the Adaptec people who blamed the disk drive (and 
they both hinted at blaming FreeBSD), I finally fooled around with 
it and discovered the problem, which might not be a bad idea to 
archive in an FAQ.  Even after I turned off the extended 
translation for >1GB hard drives, the adaptor was still loading 
its BIOS into memory.  The result was that FreeBSD was correctly 
identifying the adaptor but when it probed its bus it claimed to 
find "(ahc1:0:0): "S441 00427 1N" type 0 fixed SCSI 3" and thought
it was a direct-access 6528MB HD.  I reconfigured the adaptor to 
not load its BIOS at all upon boot.  This solved the entire 
problem.  The only downfall is it means I can't boot off of this 
drive now.  I'll need to boot from a floppy and mount the file 
system as the root fs after the kernel loads its own device driver 
for the adaptor.  I thank everyone who at least tried to help.
=============================================
Matt Rosenberg
Washington University School of Law
St. Louis, MO, USA

mar7@cec.wustl.edu ; rosenbem@wulaw.wustl.edu
http://www.cec.wustl.edu/~mar7/
=============================================