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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!darwin.sura.net!paladin.american.edu!news.univie.ac.at!hp4at!mcsun!Germany.EU.net!rrz.uni-koeln.de!unidui!flyer!flatlin!bad From: bad@flatlin.ka.sub.org (Christoph Badura) Subject: Re: Finding untranslated params for IDE drives (w/ pgm) Organization: Guru Systems/Funware Department Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1992 23:41:56 GMT Message-ID: <Bwr5tx.76y@flatlin.ka.sub.org> References: <1992Oct18.153007.28120@crash> <1992Oct19.053131.11296@tfs.com> <BwLopC.82n@flatlin.ka.sub.org> <1992Oct25.112332.25964@fcom.cc.utah.edu> Lines: 34 In <1992Oct25.112332.25964@fcom.cc.utah.edu> terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C) writes: >In article <BwLopC.82n@flatlin.ka.sub.org>, bad@flatlin.ka.sub.org (Christoph Badura) writes: >|> Terry feels wrong. IDE translation is done "on the drive", because you >|> can hook up translated IDE drives to machines that know zilch about >|> IDE, because IDE didn't exist when their BIOS was programmed. OK, so I probably should have put half a smiley behind the "feels". >Terry feels this from disassembling the BIOS *on board* an IDE controller; >one wonders how AMI BIOS drive type 47 works when the drive hardware only has >access to the CMOS settings through it's controller firmware? Sorry, drive type 47 works without support from any BIOS on the IDE controller. If you use the controller BIOS, you set the CMOS drive type to 0. At least on all controllers that I have seen, that do their own translation (e.g. WD1006, WD1007, AHA232x, AHA154x, AHA152x, AHA174x, DTC etc.). >Terry also feels that, were the translation 100% transparent, no one trying to >load both DOS and 386BSD on an IDE drive would ever have problems related to >translation. Terry wonders *why* the software is sensitive to the "transparent" >translation of cylinder boundries if Christoph is right? The problems with translation come from BSD trying to run the disks in untranslated mode. None of the other PC unixen try to do this and they have no problems with DOS partitions. -- Christoph Badura --- bad@flatlin.ka.sub.org AIX is a better... is a better... is a better... OpenSystem. IBM Rep at GUUG Symposium '92