Urban Boquist wrote:
> 
> >>>>> Heiko W Rupp writes:
> 
> Heiko> While this compatibility thing with other OS etc. is nice if
> Heiko> you want to use more than one OS on disk, it is crap when using
> Heiko> the entire disk for NetBSD.
> 
> No, that is not true. At least not if you are talking about the need
> to create a small DOS partition even on a NetBSD only disk. This saved
> me just the other day. (Does sysinst do this by default nowadays?)
> 
> The problem is that some "modern" BIOSes refuse to boot a disk without
> an "approved" partition table.
> 
> In my case I added a NetBSD-only IDE disk to an otherwise SCSI
> system. The disk worked fine (from NetBSD) until I told the BIOS that
> there were an IDE disk present, and rebooted. Then it hung during the
> IDE disk probing! I can't see this as any kind of geometry problem,
> because it happened long before it was even trying to boot from a disk
> (which would have been one of the SCSI disks, not the IDE disk).
> 
> As soon as I repartitioned the IDE disk and added a small DOS
> partition everything worked fine.
> 
> Just my 0.02 SKR,
> 
> 	-- Urban
> 

"Me too" in that with a new disk disklabeled with an offset of 0 a
particular (new) pc froze totally, yet when this disk was plugged into
an old 66MHz pentium, the latter booted fine. Re-disklabeling with an
offset of 63 allowed the new pc to boot, which I believe is what
sysinst does by default. The really bad thing was that the new pc
refused even to boot off floppy, so it was impossible to fix without
another computer. That was the BIOS' fault, not NetBSD's.

Cheers,

Patrick