Subject sounds like a Far Side cartoon!

Anyway, today I installed a Maxtor DiamondMax 17.2Gb HD into my PC to
replace the 9Gb (well 4Gb and 5Gb) disks that were in there. Finally, 9
hours later I have a machine (okay 4 of that was building X whilst
running errands), and here are a few comments on things that bit me.

Normally things go pretty smoothly when I install a NetBSD machine (once
I get past the stupid ne2000 irq problem we have on some of the machines
around here), but I knew today was going to be a long one when I saw
this:

wd0 at wdc0 channel 0 drive 0: <Maxtor 91728D8>
wd0: drive supports 16-sector pio transfers, lba addressing
wd0: 16479MB, 16383 cyl, 16 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 33750864
sectors
wd0: 32-bits data port
wd0: drive supports PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 2

Now look at that carefully. 16.5 Gb disk, sounds fine. However
16383*16*63*512 => ~8.2Gb disk! Where has all the rest gone. Looked on
the drive case. 16383*16*63. So the drive probed correctly. Think for a
minute. Have a sudden panic attack - could they really have 1024
bytes/sec? Wander over to maxtor web site
(http://www.maxtor.com/products/products.html). The drive in question is
a 91728D8. The data sheet on this is interesting. The drive is nominally
a 33482 cylinder drive, but it has the ability to be programmed as any
geometry and will set the bytes/sec accordingly. Anyway think for a
minute, and go in and set the disklabel by hand to have the right
cylinder count.

Run sysinst. It complains bitterly about the 'disklabel geometry' being
bigger than the 'BIOS geometry'. Tell it to shut up, I know (sort of)
what Im doing.

Ive decided before this point, Im going with the 19981207 snap shot. No
X11 in it so I select "custom" and deselect all the X11 sets. Install.
Everything goes okay. (Okay I had to do sysinst twice, I screwed up the
1st time since I forgot to deselect the X11 sets :)

On to installing things I need, X11, ncurses, etc etc. ncurses 1st so I
can get on with some work. All goes well until we hit the re-run
ldconfig step.

Apparently when you install, it always add /usr/X11R6/lib to
ld.so.conf... even if you dont install X11 (so there is no /usr/X11R6).
Opps. Delete the line. Install works wonders.

Start some work in the background, install a few other bits. X11 finally
finishes building. "make install". Okay, lets try and xterm. Opps, "make
install" for xsrc, doesnt add in /usr/X11R6/lib and re-ldconfig :)

Ah well, an interesting day :) But the 17Gb drive is working fine now.

Paul