Date: Wed, 3 May 1995 13:42:32 -0400 From: "Charles M. Hannum" <mycroft@ai.mit.edu> To: phk@ref.tfs.com Cc: dyson@Root.COM, sos@FreeBSD.org, paul@isl.cf.ac.uk, terry@cs.weber.edu, hackers@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: NetBSD supports LBA and large (EIDE) drives Message-ID: <199505031742.NAA09007@duality.gnu.ai.mit.edu> In-Reply-To: <199505031557.IAA12888@ref.tfs.com> (message from Poul-Henning Kamp on Wed, 3 May 1995 08:57:15 -0700 (PDT))
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According to Hale Landis, the guy who wrote 20-40% of the ATA std, LBA is inmature and buggy, even more so considering that it is not needed for anything. The problems that Hale has noted are entirely on the software end -- that there is little or no standardization about how the BIOS converts beetween C/H/S addresses and LBAs. This is only an issue when sharing a disk with another OS, or when booting from it, and is analagous to the standard geometry translation compatibility problems. LBA mode is not `needed' for IDE drives smaller than 8GB. However: 1) In practice, the differences between BIOS LBA implementations seem to be less annoying than the differences between BIOS C/H/S implementations. 2) There are already 9GB SCSI drives on the market, and the antiquated C/H/S addressing is not capable of supporting a drive that large. 3) LBA mode is *required* for ATAPI devices (i.e. EIDE CD-ROMs). What I really don't understand is why people are flaming at me about this.
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