On Tue, Jan 06, 1998 at 10:28:15AM -0600, Brian Stark wrote:
> The C/H/S info for the disk I am installing on is 6136/16/63. The BIOS 
> geometery that sysinst detects is 768/128/63. The pfdisk utility reports 
> the geometery as 767/128/63.
> 
> Has anyone else noticed this discrepancy in the number of cylinders 
> reported? 

Historically, the upper cylinder was reserved (by IBM machines) as being
the "diagnostic cylinder" that the BIOS uses. Most BIOSs will
therefore report one cylinder less than actually present. There is also
the possibility that pfdisk subtracts one itself (unlikely), or
that is misinterprets the "highest cylinder number" as returned by
the BIOS as "the number of cylinders".

I wouldn't worry about it. sysinst gives you the option to skip the
last cylinder, if you think that your BIOS may be using it. But
this should not be the case anymore nowadays. Especially with
translated geometries the notion of "the highest cylinder" isn't
quite right.

- Frank