[H-GEN] Accessing large disks using an old BIOS

[Frank Brand]

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>I will have a fiddle with the cables again and if that doesn't work I my
>have to resort to doing the disk manager thing.



mmmm....doesn't really sound like a cable thing but try it anyway


>With respect to the BIOS, I am able to configure that disk with the
>correct number of cylinders, heads and sectors and the BIOS then says
>it's 2.1G, so it looks like it really should be able to handle it
>anyway.  Something is a little screwy.



I have had occasions where I can enter the parameters manually  but that
does not necessarily mean that the BIOS will actually support those
parameters. Just because you can get the numbers in doesn't mean that size
disk is supported. Have you tried looking for a BIOS upgrade? IIRC I have
had occasions when , even using the HDD autodetect function, that the
auto-detection gives the right size drive even tho that size drive is not
suported. Then, when you go back to reboot the BIOS shows a different size
disk

My understanding was that the Linux kernel reads parameters off the drive so
that, so long as the drive is recognised by the BIOS (ie. it knows it has a
hard drive of some size) then the HDD should be set up correctly by the
kernel.


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