bcolbert@aac.accurate-automation.com (Brad Colbert) wrote:

>   I don't know the actual workings of disklabel so was in the dark on how
>   it wrote the NetBSD partition information.  I had assumed it would only
>   write the label in the NetBSD partition but it looked like it was writing
>   it on the disk partition section in the first sectors of the disk?  Ideas?

Does your NetBSD partition have a partition ID of 0xA5?  Does NetBSD's
idea of your disk's geometry agree with that stored in your system's
NVRAM?

>   Ohhhh!!  On top of that, I also found out that DOS 5.0 can only handle
>   partitions of ~523 Megs? How lame!  (1024 Cylinders)  My disk has 2448 Cyl.

This is not a limitation of DOS, but a limitation of your IDE hardware
and/or system BIOS.  Newer systems have hardware and BIOS support for
extended IDE (EIDE), which allows the use of drives with more than
1024 cylinders.  If your BIOS' setup program has an option to use LBA
addressing, enable it.

>   OS      Type Start(Cyl) Length(Cyl)  Start(Sec)    Length (Sec)
>   ---------------------------------------------------------------
>   DOS        6     0        1022          63        1031121
>   NetBSD   165  1023        2446     1032192        1435392  (or something)

You may not be able to boot NetBSD off of this disk unless you ensure
that your entire a: partition (within your NetBSD partition) is within
the first 1024 cylinders.
-- 
Mike Long <mike.long@analog.com>           http://www.shore.net/~mikel
VLSI Design Engineer         finger mikel@shore.net for PGP public key
Analog Devices, CPD Division          CCBF225E7D3F7ECB2C8F7ABB15D9BE7B
Norwood, MA 02062 USA                assert(*this!=opinionof(Analog));