Steve Williams wrote:
...
> Sorry to follow up on such an old post, but it really caught my
> attention now that I am facing the same problem. I have inherited a
> cpu0: Intel Pentium II ("GenuineIntel" 686-class, 512KB L2 cache) 349 MHz
> with an old
> wd0: 16-sector PIO, LBA, 4028MB, 8249472 sectors
>
> I want to put a new HD in and install OpenBSD. It's an old "True Blue"
> IBP PC350 & there are no bios updates available for a drive > 14 gig.
>
> If I do as suggested, configure the BIOS so it sees the new (80G) drive
> as a 14 Gig, and just pretend that everything is OK, it will work?
>
> I usually make my / partition only 256M, so keeping it low should not be
> a problem. What about drive geometry? Is there going to be conflicts?
The good news is, once you pass about 1G (or 504M), all IDE drive
geometry starts to look pretty much the same: 16 or 255 heads, 63
sectors per track, just the number of cylinders vary (usually. Compaq
often set their BIOSs for 240 heads *sigh*).
I don't think I've ever encountered a 14G limit. I have stuck 40G
drives in some old Celeron 433 and PII-400 IBM machines, but I don't
recall having stuck one in a 350MHz vintage machine (just a bit older).
The IBM BIOSs are a lot "smarter" than the Dell BIOS that was the topic
of this thread -- they tend to not take a lot of input from you about
the drive's specs; it knows it can ask the drive and get a more accurate
answer then it would asking you. :) (The Dell BIOS of the vintage being
discussed was basically a slightly-extended, very old 486 ISA BIOS,
warped and twisted to support PCI and Pentium processors).
See if you can persuade your system that your 4G drive is really 2G. If
so, then you will (probably) have no problems with the 80G (assuming the
>32G drive doesn't cause some "unimaginable math" error). However, I
don't think you can do this with the IBM BIOS of that vintage.
Remember, IBM was one of the only PC makers that had a purely in-house
written BIOS at the time. What you have seen elsewhere may not apply.
I think those things knew they had IDE drives, probed them, and reported
what they found.
HOWEVER, I'm not convinced you will need to. Worst case, you buy a
cheap PCI IDE interface card with its own BIOS, and you are back in
business. The PCI IDE cards will run a lot faster than the on-board IDE
interface, anyway...if that's a consideration for you.
> I ask, because once I buy the drive & open it, I can't return it, and
> that would be an expensive experiment!
heh. I used to install 10M HDs for $2000US/ea as fast as we could get
the parts in... 20M HDs were $3000US. Those were expensive
experiments. (I was earning $3.65/hr at the time, about 12 hours a week.
I'm kinda glad I never sat down and figured out how many hours..or
weeks!.. it would take me to work one off had I dropped it... :)
Nick.
