Re: [TCLUG:12386] Lilo troubles.

[Philip C Mendelsohn <mend0070@tc.umn.edu>]

On Fri, 14 Jan 2000, Scott wrote:

> On Fri, 14 Jan 2000, Adam Maloney wrote:
> 
> > Does the bios in the 486 support the size drive you're using?
> > Some older BIOS' don't like drives bigger than xxx 
> 
>      I'm willing to bet that's the problem.  My p60 doesn't
> like my 8.4 or 5.4 gig, but 1.2 works fine.  If that 486 is
> old enough it might even suffer from the 540mb barrier.
> Sometimes you can trick the bios by adjusting the heads &
> sectors.

I've been succesful on a couple of machines the following way, which
assumes that you can get into the CMOS setup window:

1:	set the drive to the largest one available, even if the number of
cylinders doesn't match.

2:	low-level format the drive using fdisk, MS-DOS version as a, say 500MB
drive, or whatever you can manage.

3:	Use linux fdisk and reset the partitions to what ever you want, but be
sure to keep /dev/hda1 the same as what you set the BIOS to.  fdisk will
see the rest of the drive, and allow you to use it.

My $0.02 worth.

Phil M.

-- 
Life is complex:
It has real and imaginary components.
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