Subject: Re: installing/running 1.4D, continued
To: Frank van der Linden <frank@wins.uva.nl>
From: jiho <root@mail.c-zone.net>
List: port-i386
Date: 10/13/1999 10:45:41
> Here's the fdisk output of one of them:
> 
> NetBSD disklabel disk geometry:
> cylinders: 16383 heads: 16 sectors/track: 63 (1008 sectors/cylinder)
> 
> BIOS disk geometry:
> cylinders: 1023 heads: 255 sectors/track: 63 (16065 sectors/cylinder)

My drive uses the same "physical" geometry, and that's what the BIOS geometry 
_used_ to say (it now says 'heads: 15', and some bogus sectors/cylinder).
 
> Partition table:

[ ... clip ... ]

> 3: sysid 169 (NetBSD)
>     start 19085220, size 6365772 (3108 MB), flag 0x0
>         beg: cylinder 1023, head 255, sector 63
>         end: cylinder 1023, head 255, sector 63

Now we're getting somewhere.  For my NetBSD partition -- also #3 -- the 'beg' 
CHS line is the same (as I understand it, a flag to the BIOS that it's an 
LBA-only partition), but my 'end' line says:

          end: cylinder 1023, head 6, sector 63

I'm guessing the BIOS sees that and bails out of LBA-translated geometry, 
falling back to (almost) "normal" mode (minus 1 head).

I have no idea what I did....


--Jim Howard  <jiho@mail.c-zone.net>