On Wed, Nov 17, 1999 at 12:47:03PM -0500, jack wallen, jr. wrote:
> hey everyone....i'm wondering:
>
> the Linux+Win95 mini howto says the following:
>
> "With a Linux/Win9x installation It is VERY IMPORTANT that your Linux
> partition start before (below) the 1024th cylinder, otherwise you will be
> unable to boot the machin. What exactly is the 1024th cylinder? That's
> where IDE ends and EIDE begins-- that's the 528M "mark" on your hard disk.
> Start your Linux partition at around 520M, so the entire kernel and other
> boot/loader files will completely reside below that cylander."
>
> has this changed with the newer releases of Red Hat or the newers kernels?
> the reason i ask is that i've done many successful Red Hat+Win9x dual
> boots where Linux resides well beyond the 528M "mark" (unless i'm
> misunderstanding this information). if i'm clueless on this 'mark' could
> someone set me straight?
I think by 'mark' they are meaning boundary. This is a BIOS
limitation. IOW it is the limit which a typical PC BIOS is capable of
reading and goes back to early DOS when no one foresaw larger disks
ever being used on PCs. This depends on disk geometry too (or how your
BIOS sees the geometry). One common way to extend this is with LBA
which tricks the BIOS into seeing the disk geometry in a more
favorable way. This typically pushes the limit up to around 8G, though
the actual limitation is whatever number of cylinders are being
reported. 'Mark' is a curious choice of words though.
The kernel does not figure into this at all. It is lilo that must rely
on what the BIOS is capable of 'seeing'. Once lilo is loaded and finds
the kernel, the limit then becomes irrelevant. Since lilo is using
the BIOS inititally, and the BIOS can only see 1023 cylinders, then we
have this limitation.
--
Hal B
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