Frank van der Linden <frank@wins.uva.nl> wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 07, 1998 at 01:04:05AM +0100, Olaf Seibert wrote:
> > I just installed 1.3 on a test pc with a SCSI disk connected to an
> > Adaptec 1542 controller. 
> > 
> > NetBSD detects 2756 cyl, 8 head, 94 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 2074880 sectors.
> > 
> > Sysinst objected to this (more than 64 sectors) and REQUIRED me to
> > enter some other geometry. However, the geometry as reported by the
> > BIOS (according to sysinst) was identical. So sysinst would not accept
> > the values it suggested I should use. Irritation #1.
>
> The BIOS values can not always be determined correctly by sysinst. In
> this case, it noticed that it had it wrong, because > 64 sec/track
> is an impossible BIOS geometry.
>
> You should find out what the BIOS really uses, by, for example, 
> running the pfdisk program from DOS and see what it reports (from DOS
> it's easy to get the BIOS geometry; from NetBSD it's harder because
> there might not be a way to match something like "sd1" to "BIOS disk
> #N"). It is unfortunate that sysinst can't always get it right, but..
> It's also documented in the INSTALL doc.

I've been told the Adaptec bios uses 64 heads x 32 sectors. I'll try that.

What puzzles me is that I installed older NetBSD versions on this same
machine, and I never had any problems with geometry. I still think it
is strange that suddenly sd0a is offset a track from the beginning, while
it was at offset 0 in the past (which worked).

Unfortunately I can't check what the geometry used to be - it's been
overwritten a dozen times by now.

> - Frank
-Olaf.
--
___ Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert      D787B44DFC896063 4CBB95A5BD1DAA96 
\X/ It's not easy having a good time    rhialto@polder.ubc.kun.nl