Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 14:59:24 +0100 (BST) From: Tim Borgeaud <Tim.Borgeaud@bristol.ac.uk> To: junkmale@xtra.co.nz Cc: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: large drives, old BIOS, IDE Controllers Message-ID: <199808171359.OAA15420@zeus.bris.ac.uk> In-Reply-To: <199808150108.NAA27823@cyclops.xtra.co.nz> from "Dan Langille" at Aug 15, 98 01:08:48 pm
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I don't know too much about actual hardware details but I have tried to fit a large drive to a non-translating bios. You may have some major problems with the bios. You can get hold of a variety of controller cards that take the place of the second IDE controller (IRQ 15). Some will become the primary controller if you disable the on-board controller. It may be possible to use two IO/controller cards if you cannot find a card with two connectors. Otherwise you may have to do without the smaller disk drive. There may some ISA sound cards that have ATAPI connectors for cdroms (although these connectors may not work with all cdroms), some of these will work with FreeBSD. You may be able to run your cdrom from a sound card, but you won't be able to boot from it. However for a large hard drive >500MB you will need either a bios on the controller card or a hard disk that can pretend to be smaller. Both the Fujitsu disks that I own have jumpers on them to perform this function. FreeBSD can be told the correct parameters so that it uses the whole of the disk. I have tried using a planet EIDEMAX controller which claims to have a bios that runs code that precedes the normal bios code and allows large drives to work. But I found this not to be the case. The mother board bios completely refused to allow the on board IDE controller to work at all unless it could recognise the disks correctly. The bios on my pentium board can be told that there are no other devices apart from one disk on the primary controller. When FreeBSD boots it can find the other controller and devices (ATAPI STATIC in the kernel seems to allow this. I use these settings with a removable hard drive bay so that I can add and remove a hard drive with no complaints from the bios). Sorry to sound so pessimistic, but PC hardware is just like that. Best of luck Tim. > > I've been talking to my computer store (which doesn't know much about > Unix) and searching the mail archives. I think I've found my solution. > > The "problem" is my machine is a 486/dx2 something. I'm installed a 5G > drive. The shop figured I might not be able to use this drive as the BIOS > won't handle more than the first 512M of the drive. Yet, what I've just > read in the mail archives is that FreeBSD doesn't use the BIOS. If so, my > job is easy. > > At present, the machine has a CD-ROM and a 330M drive. Both are IDE and > are running off the I/O board. I'm about to add a 5G drive. Problem: > there's only 1 IDE connecter on my i/o board and none on the mother board. > And I can't buy an i/board with two IDE connecters. None are available > to be had. > > Any suggestions? I was planning to do this install this weekend. > > -- > Dan Langille > DVL Software Limited > http://www.dvl-software.com/freebsd : my [mis]adventures > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message
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