First, thanks very much to all who answered my question.
Ray Olszewski wrote [in part]:
>
> At 12:11 PM 11/14/99 +0200, Cristian Carnutu wrote [in part]:
>
> >Then I was asked to put the supp floppy in drive a: and so I did.
> >Then I was asked what I want to use,Diskdruid or fdisk. I answered
> >Diskdruid and the message was:
> >
> > " No drives found
> >
> >An error has ocured-no valid devices were found
> >on which to create newfilesystems.Please check
> >your hardware for the cause of this problem."
>
> The message you now quote probably does NOT mean that the RH installer
> cannot find a hard disk -- it means that it cannot find a hard disk with
> usused space on it. This is not surprising, as you tell us that you used the
> Debian installer to create partitions that filled your hard disk ... so it
> really doesn't have any free space.
I don't agree with such an interpretation of the English language which
is known as being very clear. "No drive" is just no drive.
The installer is not looking for free space at the beggining. Fdisk is
looking for free space if you want to make new partitions and. If you
have partitions you skip this step. As a result of checking partitions
with fdisk, the istaller gives messages.
If there is no free space there is another message (I don't remember it
well) suggesting using fips to make room.
I installed many times Linux on full HDD (on my Pentium, because I tried
many distributions) and installer found the existing ext2 and swap
partitions and installed Linux on it.
And what explanation is for the fact that the installer see the slave
HDD which is also full with a DOS partition?
I don't have anymore the Debian floppies to repeat the experiment but I
remember what Slackware 3.5 did: it was no message, it locked the system
and erased the MBR (I think) because after rebooting the computer it was
nothing on my HDD, it was behaving like an not-formated HDD. It is
written in the How-To that Slack's fdisk is modified and I don't want to
try it again.
In the Debian docs it is written that they are using cfdisk. It is
possible that cfdisk is so different of usual fdisk?
I have no options in the BIOS setup like LBA or "large HDD".
I think the problem is a partial incompatibility between an old BIOS and
a new type of HDD.
I think the cheapest way to solve the problem is to replace the Main
Board with a second hand 486. But I have a video card for VLB (there is
a VLB slot on the MB and many ISA). Is such a thing working with Linux?
Regards
Cristian
