> Alright, even though I've done this a billion times, I guess I'm simply
> an idiot.
> 
> Remember that friend's Sony Vaio laptop I was trying to get NetBSD
> installed on?  Well, I've got it on there, except the dang thing
> won't boot NetBSD.
> 
> Well, that's not quite true ... I can boot of a floppy and tell the boot
> blocks to use wd0a:netbsd, and it works just fine.  But when I set
> the NetBSD partition active, or a try to use OS-BS, I get "No operating
> system".

Have you installed the boot blocks ? (/usr/mdec/installboot biosboot.sym)
I guess this is the problem.

> Now, I blew away and re-created the partition a couple of times (don't
> ask), so I _think_ what happened is that I lost track of the original
> translated geometry, and I partitioned the disk with the wrong translated
> geometry, and the C/H/S partition labels don't point to the right
> spot (because I'm using the wrong translated geometry).

Maybe, I think this is not critical for NetBSD boot blocks.

> Now, the question(s) I have are:
> 
> - Does my analysis make sense?  (One of these days I'm going to understand
>   this whole mess completely!)
> - Is there a way to determine the "correct" translated geometry
>   associated with an IDE drive?  BTW, the BIOS on this machine
>   _SAYS_ it's using the "correct" geometry (4000+ cylinders), so
>   I'm assuming that gets translated _somewhere_ ... or am I completely
>   off-base?

"BIOS _SAYS_" ... you mean setup screen or INT 13 services (pfdisk output) ?

> - Do MBR partitions have to start on a cylinder boundry to work
>   correctly?

No, but it's recomended.

> - As I understand it, the crucial limitation is that the BIOS only
>   has enough bits for 1023 cylinders, so the other parameters have
>   to be made larger so the cylinders can be made smaller.  Is that
>   right?

Yes.

-- 
Zdenek Salvet                                              salvet@ics.muni.cz 
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           If God had meant for us to be in the Army,
         we would have been born with green, baggy skin.