Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 23:54:38 -0600 (MDT) From: Wes Peters <softweyr@xmission.com> To: "Aaron D. Gifford" <agifford@infowest.com> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: How can I boot from partition #3 on a 4Gig HD Message-ID: <199705240554.XAA26472@obie.softweyr.ml.org> In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970523165634.00842590@infowest.com> References: <3.0.1.32.19970523165634.00842590@infowest.com>
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Aaron D. Gifford writes:
> Is there any way to boot FreeBSD when it is installed on the third of 4 1
> Gig partitions on my SCSI HD? Is there any solution yet? I've Win95 and
> WinNT on the first 2, FreeBSD 2.2.1 on the 3rd (but can't boot), and Linux
> on the 4th. I installed BootEasy, but it is useless. I have to do a
> floppy boot for Linux. Will I be reduced to the same for FreeBSD?
>
> Someone once explained the technical reasons why it was difficult or
> impossible (at that time) to boot from such a partition, but I still
> haven't been able to find it in the archives. The search tool either
> returns too many matches to be of any use or not enough. (I wish it a
> "phrase search" feature, as well as "before" and "after" versions of the
> AND boolean.)
Apparently in their infinite lack of foresight, the latest rounds of
BIOS stupidity in the PC world require that the entire operating system
image be located within the first 1,024 cylinders on your disk.
Something about the BIOS boot code not being smart enough to travel
beyond cylinder address 1024 while loading the OS image. Doh!
Modern BIOS do not seem to have this small-minded limitation. You may
want to investigate upgrading your BIOS. You might speak with the
vendor of your system or motherboard, or with one of the businesses that
specialize in BIOS upgrades.
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
http://www.xmission.com/~softweyr softweyr@xmission.com
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