Subject: Re: problem booting from hard drive after install
To: None <david@mono.org>
From: Tony Linthicum <linth@stumpjumper.mti.sgi.com>
List: netbsd-help
Date: 03/29/1996 10:05:36
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   Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1996 09:25:56 +0100 (BST)
   From: David Brownlee <david@mono.org>
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   cc: dwatkins@glenayre.com, netbsd-help@NetBSD.ORG
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   On Thu, 28 Mar 1996, Tony Linthicum wrote:

   > the problem almost certainly has something to do with my disk drive
   > and controller setup.  here are the details:
   >
   > 	o 1gb EIDE drive.
   >
   > 	o in-board primary IDE controller.  this controller itself
   > 	  cannot handle seek commands to cylinders greater than 1024.
   > 	  it also cannot be disabled or made a secondary controller.
   >
   > 	o secondary EIDE controller with on-board BIOS.  while there
   > 	  are no drives attached to this controller, its BIOS supercedes
   > 	  the system BIOS.  at boot time, it is remapped into upper memory
   >           at D000-DBFF and it translates the geometry of the drive to
   > 	  527,64,63 from 2114,16,63.  the BIOS controls both controllers,
   > 	  and translates all requests from L-CHS to LBA.  apparently,
   > 	  the secondary controller actually issues the LBA format commands
   > 	  to the drive.
   >
	   I may be missing something here, but have you tried plugging the
	   drive into the second controller, or pulling the second controller
	   out of the machine altogther?

		      David/abs             (david@mono.org)

   +44 181 888 8949 System Manager, Southern Studios Ltd, Box 59, London N22 1AR
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i've tried making the secondary controller the primary controller, but
since i can't disable the in-board primary, this doesn't work.  i have
not tried having nothing plugged into the primary controller, and the
drive plugged into the secondary.  i'll give it a shot.

i'm not sure how it would work without the secondary controller in place.
i have been told that my in-board primary controller cannot handle seeks
to the higher cylinders (i assume above 1024).  i got the following message
when booting from floppy:

  wd0: using 16-sector 16-bit pio transfers, lba addressing

will the device drivers issue commands to the controller in logical CHS format
or LBA?  if i were to try to run with the primary controller, what settings
should i have in the system BIOS at startup?  the drive's default geometry
is 2114,16,63.

thanks.

tony