On Thu, Feb 07, 2008 at 07:20:00AM -0500, Nick Holland wrote: > Douglas A. Tutty wrote: > > On Wed, Feb 06, 2008 at 10:56:41PM -0500, bofh wrote: > >> On Feb 6, 2008 10:45 AM, Douglas A. Tutty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: [snip] > > Well, for example, I have two boxes where I'm using IDE (the third box > > is my Athlon with SATA drives). One won't boot (pass POST) if the drive > > is over 1.1 GB, the other won't boot (pass POST) if the drive is over 9 > > GB. > > I've seen a lot of machines like this, and there are almost always > solutions. > > Typical: Set BIOS config to "manual", do 1024 cyl, 63 sectors, 16 > heads (504M). The hang is usually in the auto-detect part, if you > skip that, the machine boots, and OpenBSD (and most other post Win98 > OSs) will be able to see the entire disk, though you have to keep > your boot (root) partition no bigger than the size you defined in > the BIOS. > > If there is no custom manual setting, use any of the predefined > settings, preferably the 120MB (1024/17/16) for a little breathing > room for your root partition. >
Well, the IBM 486 doesn't have any settings. It just lists the IDE spots (1 through 4) and tells me what it found. There's nothing to adjust. It either says, eg. 171 MB drive, 540 MB drive, once a 8096 MB drive (WD). However, last time I put an identical WD 8 GB drive in it, it just said "Invalid Drive, Drive Error". That disk was fine in my P-II. The 8 GB drive that was fine in the 486 would cause a "drive error" POST message in the P-II. > Or, if you are using a PCI machine, skip the on-board BIOS, and > use an (old) PCI IDE interface board with a boot ROM. Get an old > one to keep the speed down.> Yeah, that's one way, if I can find one with boot ROM. My 486 is ISA and VLB but the P-II is both unreliable and PCI/ISA. > Yes, I've put 40G disks on 486 and P90s (and the P90s choked on > anything bigger than 3G, as I recall), and many other machines. Thanks, Doug.
