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Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 09:38:07 -0600
From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva)
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To: jhs@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: 1 gig IDE won't install with 1993 < 500M BIOs
Newsgroups: taronga.freebsd.hackers
In-Reply-To: <199612190204.DAA16690@vector.jhs.no_domain>
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In article <199612190204.DAA16690@vector.jhs.no_domain> you write:
>Suggestions as to what to poke, & what to RTFM would be appreciated,
>I've already cruised the handbook, & FAQ, but found nothing Re.
>booting > 500M drives on old bioses with < 500M capability .

I just added a section to the FAQ about this.

      <sect1>
        <heading>What about disk managers? My BIOS doesn't support large drives!
</header> 
        <p>  
          FreeBSD recognises the Ontrack Disk Manager and makes allowances
          for it. Other disk managers are not supported.
        
          If you just want to use the disk with FreeBSD you don't need a
          disk manager. Just configure the disk for as much space as the
          BIOS can deal with (usually 504 megabytes), and FreeBSD
          should figure out how much space you really have. If you're using
          an old disk with an MFM controller, you may need to explicitly
          tell FreeBSD how many cylinders to use.

          If you want to use the disk with FreeBSD and another operating
          system, you may be able to do without a disk manager: just make sure
          the the FreeBSD boot partition and the slice for the other
          operating system are in the first 1024 cylinders.