fixes in the works

[Staffan Ulfberg staffanu@tcs07.nada.kth.se]

In article <67661.sharris@fox.nstn.ca> sharris@fox.nstn.CA (sharris) writes:

   jmk@plan9.ATt.COM  <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.

I also thought it might have to do with this, but not anymore... I
have deleted all partitions on the second drive, fiddled with the CMOS
setup options,... nothing helps.  (Also, I don't have a DOS driver to
use the >1024 cylinders - I use OS/2 :-)  Also, I have succesfully
installed Plan 9 on my first drive now, which is 850 MB.  I just think
my drive is incompatible.  Anyone else using a Samsung 560 MB?

Staffan

P.S.  I found some very informative documents describing how
partitoining, booting, 1024 cylinder boundaries, etc. work on a PC:

ftp://ftp.rahul.net/pub/lps/hard-disk/How_It_Works...

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