Bill Studenmund wrote:
> 
> Doh! Make that the 512 MB barier. So shrink the first WinNT to 480 MB,
> then stick the beginings of the NetBSD partition just above. Make sure
the
> "a" partition (and any altroot partition) fully fits in the first 1024
> cylinders, and you're golden. Assuming WinNT can access the whole
disk.

I know this is grossly off topic (sorry!), but it is relevant to the
question at hand.

Windows NT works just like NetBSD, it has no problems accessing the
entire disk no matter what the BIOS thinks of it, provided the boot
partition is below cylinder 1024. The problem with NT is that the
install program is DOS based so with older BIOSen it will partition and
format the disk to a max of 512 MB, using some strange fictitious
geometry. The solution is to either use a disk overlay util (a horrible
kludge IMHO) or use a smarter partitioning program than DOS fdisk to
create an NT boot partition below cylinder 1024 using "real" geometry.
After NT boots you can then use Disk Administrator to create partitions
and format the rest of the disk. Disk Administrator will happily let you
create multi-gigabyte partitions on the disk which it displays as "Disk
0, 504 MB, n GB free".

So yes, the more-or-less proper solution is to create both NT and NetBSD
boot partitions below cylinder 1024, and then use the operating systems
themselves to partition and use the rest of the disk.

Gunnar

--
Gunnar Helliesen   | Bergen IT Consult AS  | NetBSD/VAX on a uVAX II
Systems Consultant | Bergen, Norway        | '86 Jaguar Sovereign 4.2
gunnar@bitcon.no   | http://www.bitcon.no/ | '73 Mercedes 280 (240D)