>I just tried to install 1.3 on a Pentium with an ahc1 and disk with 1980c,
>15t, 80s last night, and I had serious troubles getting geometry that
>NetBSD and the BIOS agreed on, and that the BIOS could actually use to
>boot NetBSD.  I'm just wondering if these problems have been addressed, or
>if I should file a big PR about sysinst, or if I should ask for some help.

You should not get ONE geometry that is used by both the BIOS and
NetBSD.  You need to use the BIOS geometry for the MBR (Master Boot
Record).  sysinst tries to guess what your BIOS are using.  With big
disks, it is almost guaranteed not to be the real geometry of the
disk.  Unfortunately, many newer bios report only the real geometry
and not the fake geometry used for the MBR.

Sysinst NEEDS to have the same geometry for the "BIOS geometry" as the BIOS
are using.  Often, sysinst can tell the BIOS geometry by inspecting the MBR.
Once that geometry is correct then sysinst can partition your disk properly.

Next, sysinst and NetBSD use the REAL disk geometry for building NetBSD
file systems.  The idea of having 2 geometries is not a problem for
NetBSD.

If you need more help, just ask.

-- 
Phil Nelson                    NetBSD: http://www.netbsd.org
e-mail: phil@cs.wwu.edu        !gifs: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html
http://www.cs.wwu.edu/~phil