Sounds like you hve old BIOS that doesn't have an EDPT (Extended Disk
Partition Table) built in.  That means that the bios fakes the hard drive
cylinders/heads/and sectors to get win/dos to work.  If you install netbsd
or redhat, the FDISK that comes with those should work fine.


>I have this Gateway FPOS that is frustrating me to no end.  I can't get it
>to properly interact with the disk I bought for NetBSD.  Here's what I have:
>
>Gateway 486DX/33 with Phoenix 486 ROM BIOS Vers 0.10 G21-2
>Seagate ST32122A/U 2.1GB (Ultra DMA [EIDE])
>
>I had set this disk up (only HD on the system) with Seagate's DiscWizard
>Disk Manager program.  Everything went swimmingly until the usr partition
>got to ~500MB used, then it started acting like it was having problems
>reading the disk (couple of head seeks, sit for 10 secs, repeat forever).
>So I thought I'd try a surface scan to verify the disk, and maybe some
>different BIOS geometries.  This is what I tried...
>
>Boot DOS from floppy
>Escape to BIOS to set geometry.  I've tried:
>  User mode, 1023 cyl, 64 head, 63 sec
>  Auto mode, 2046 cyl, 32 head, 63 sec
>  User mode, 4092 cyl, 16 head, 63 sec
>Exit, reboot to DOS from floppy
>fdisk /mbr
>fdisk, delete exisiting partition, create new one
>Reboot to DOS from floppy
>format /s c:
>copy pkunzip.exe and a zipped file to c:
>change to c: drive and try to unzip the file
>
>In all cases, I'd get read errors upon trying to execute pkunzip or when
>pkunzip was trying to read the file.  In no case was I able to boot from
>the HD, all I got was read errors.
>
>Am I doing something wrong, or is it that I have a FPOS box which needs
>a motherboard transplant?
>
>Thanks,
>~Steve
>
>--
>Steve Allen - wormey@eskimo.com   http://www.eskimo.com/~wormey/   ICQ 6709819
>
>Faith is the quality that enables you to eat blackberry jam on a picnic
>without looking to see whether the seeds move.
>
>Contrary to popular belief, Unix is user friendly.
>It just happens to be selective about who it makes friends with.
>	-Kyle Hearn  <kyle@intex.net>
>
>How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you're
>on.