Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 11:15:54 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: wsantee@wsantee.oz.net (Wes Santee) Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Setting for Promise 2300+ controller? Message-ID: <199601151815.LAA27876@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <199601142034.MAA01438@wsantee.oz.net> from "Wes Santee" at Jan 14, 96 12:34:17 pm
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> I asked awhile back on the -stable mailing list what I needed to > know about installing a Promise 2300+ EIDE controller in my FreeBSD > 2.1-stable box considering the LINT kernel config file says EIDE > drives aren't supported. The only responses I got were people > asking me to pass along the information if I figured it out. > > I've seen people asking questions here about Promise 2300+ > controllers and ATAPI CD-ROM drives. To those in the know, what > were the settings you set your card at, and what options did you > have to compile your kernel with to get the sytem to boot correctly? > I don't have an ATAPI CD-ROM drive, just the said controller. > > I have standard IDE drives formatted using CHS so I've turned off > LBA mode on the card (is LBA mode even supported considering the > comments from the LINT config file?). With those setting, my DOS > partition boots fine, but the FreeBSD partition stops after about 2 > rotations of the spinner. > > If anybody has any info on this, it sounds like more than just > myself is looking for the answers. Any help appreciated. OK. First off, "LBA mode" is irrelevant. All LBA refers to is linear sector addressing. LBA mode on the controller means that the controller supplies the extended interface. No DOS software uses this extended interface. Instead, there must be an INT 13 redirector, either in the BIOS or in OnTrack DiskManger or similar software that cause: 1) Geometry translation. 2) Translated C/H/S values at the INT 13 interface to be computed into LBA values based on the translation and the LBA interface used to actually do the disk access. This means that, like SCSI, there is no way to exceed the bit limitation on the disk size after translation (8G @ 512b sectors) in the DOS INT 21/INT 13 framework. Now the BSD second stage boot (loaded by the MBR or MBR replacement, like OS-BS) uses the DOS INT 13 interface (and thus can use LBA) to load the kernel. The problem occurs when the kernel itself comes up and the geometry is different than INT 13->LBA translator says the geometry is. You can fix this by hacking the sector offsets in the disklabel to agree with the values you get using the translated geometry. You have to do this right after install before the reboot on the Alt-F2 screen (the setup program *might* let you do this inside of it; I don't know). Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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