From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Mon, 4 Sep 1995 07:33:37 -0400 From: sharris sharris@fox.nstn.ca Subject: fixes in the works Topicbox-Message-UUID: 1ffb0924-eac8-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 Message-ID: <19950904113337.3iIRG781Hg9TPRHdahrspHUrrRwoFRnYvK4Cexf0ko4@z> jmk@plan9.ATt.COM wrote: > > From: staffanu@tcs07.nada.kth.SE (Staffan Ulfberg) > > Subject: Re: Installation problems:-( > > ... > > When b.com is started, it prints info about the hard drives it can > > find on the screen; in my case: > > > > >hd0: 1669260 sectors 854661120 bytes > > >hd1: 128 sectors 280559616 bytes (This is wrong! The drive is 560MB.) > > (Exactly half of "real capacity"?) DOS or the BIOS has a limitation where it can't handle anything > 1023 cylinders, so there's often something in the boot sector fiddles the numbers. e.g. with a 1200 cylinder 8 head drive, the BIOS pretends it's 600 and 16 to get around that limitation. Linux on large drives needs to have this nonsense overridden or it gets very confused. Sounds to me like Plan 9 & the DOS number-fiddling software don't like each other & Plan 9 is only seeing half the cylinders. -- Sandy Harris sharris@fox.nstn.ca