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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!yarrina.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!Germany.EU.net!zib-berlin.de!news.tu-chemnitz.de!irz401!uriah.heep!news From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Install FreeBSD on EIDE Date: 30 Nov 1995 08:48:55 GMT Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden Lines: 29 Message-ID: <49jr5n$ili@uriah.heep.sax.de> References: <49a6up$3db@masala.cc.uh.edu> Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.heep.sax.de Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.3 tcsuh16@Bayou.UH.EDU (Y. Wang) writes: > I'd like install FreeBSD on my PC. Before installation I'd like to > know some information here: Can FeeBSD be installed on EIDE hard disk? > I have 1.2G hard disk and a very old BIOS which doesn't support EIDE hard > disk, so I have to load EIDE disk manager first. However, this method > didn't work under Linux, how about the FreeBSD. Does it also require > a new BIOS? Thanks for advance. It doesn't have any precautions for EIDE, and it could (or could not) stumple across your disk manager. However, since FreeBSD isn't as limited as the BIOS wrt. the IDE interface, you don't need the disk manager when your only intention is running FreeBSD on it. The BIOS does then ``see'' a smaller portion of the disk than FreeBSD, the only requirement is that this portion must be large enough to hold the BSD root partition, where the file /kernel is booted from. After this, the kernel is able to speak to the entire disk, since it doesn't use the brain^H^H^H^Hlimited BIOS. (FreeBSD could handle up to 16 heads, 255 sectors, 64K cylinders. For a bootable disk, it's 16 heads, 63 sectors, 64K cylinders, since it must remain accessible for the BIOS. You can also say 31.5 GB.) -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)