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Date:      Wed, 22 Nov 1995 11:51:30 -0800 (PST)
From:      Howard Lew <hlew@genome.Stanford.EDU>
To:        Julian Elischer <julian@ref.tfs.com>
Cc:        questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: 2.1.0-RELEASE problems...
Message-ID:  <Pine.SUN.3.91.951122114009.1533A-100000@vegemite.Stanford.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <199511220049.QAA07480@ref.tfs.com>

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On Tue, 21 Nov 1995, Julian Elischer wrote:

> actually you should still be able to install FreeBSD with the
> drives disabled from the BIOS, as we don't USE the Bios..
> 
> note the geometry assigned to the disks when you DO have them for the BIOS
> so you can inform the install code of this geometry when you are doing
> the SLICING menu (option 'G' I believe)...
> you should be able to install as per usual..
> booting is another question....
> but it's worth a try..

Okay.... But do I use the physical geometry (i.e. #47 from the table) or 
the EDPT geometry that the controller card gives me if LBA was on?

		Cyl	Heads	WPcomm	LZ	Sec	Size
Physical	3148	16	65535	3148	63	1549
EDPT		787	64	-	-	63	-

When FreeBSD boots up it shows the Physical numbers, but when I go to 
install FreeBSD, the installation thinks it is the EDPT numbers.  Is this 
okay?  And should I use the EDPT numbers?

Thanks.

> 
> make sure that you install the win95 first..
> it overwrites other system's bootmanagers (gee thanks usoft..)
> 
> if it doesn't work, it'd be worth booting and using the 'fixit' option to
> get a shell and examining the output of fdisk and disklabel
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > 
> > 
> > I'd like to say good work guys!  I really enjoy this continuing work on a 
> > great OS.
> > 
> > Okay... I'm not sure if this is a FreeBSD-specific problem or a hardware 
> > incompatibility problem.... but here goes...
> > 
> > Using boot.flp on a 3.5 inch disk in Drive A seems to work quite well on 
> > most systems.  But I've run into 1 major problem for the installation on 
> > a machine at work.
> > 
> > I just upgraded an older 486 System to use an EIDE hard disk (Western
> > Digital 1.6Gig to be specific) with a DTC 2278EB (with enhanced rom bios
> > to do LBA because the computer does not support LBA).  I intended to
> > use the 1.6 Gig Western Digital Drive for both Win95 and FreeBSD. 
> > 
> > Okay, so the problem is that the computer can not boot the FreeBSD boot
> > disk.  It doesn't even get to the part about prompting for the hard drive
> > or floppy.  It just hangs after trying to boot the boot.flp disk. 
> > 
> > Drive C is the 1.6Gig WD with controller LBA on and Drive D is a 340MB WD
> > with controller LBA off.
> > 
> > But an interesting observation is if I disable both hard drives from the
> > CMOS, I can boot FreeBSD... (but of course, then I wouldn't be able to
> > install FreeBSD).  Another other combination does not seem to work. 
> > 
> > Is there any hope of installing FreeBSD on this system?  Or is the DTC 
> > 2278 EB controller just incompatible?
> > 
> > 
> > Thanks in advance for any help.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 



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