Hi, Kerry! I think I am going to collect your very informative messages. Are there any copyrights on them?! When I ran Western Digital Lifeguard floppy, it told me that int13H is not supported and that BIOS is not controling your device. Also, a strange thing happens here. When I switched 40-pin cable for 80-pin cable, Windows XP would not start, and only after I, in despair, reflashed BIOS, everything started to work normally. Don't know what to think about all of this. Victor ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kerry Hoath" <kerry@xxxxxxxxx> To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca> Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 1:08 PM Subject: Re: Strange things with my hard drive > Some boards don > 't like talking to drives over 28gb or so. but I doubt this is > your problem. > The reality is that you can only get at 8.4gb of disk in chs mode > i.e. standard int13. It works like this: > int 13 function call 2 read sector. > registers: > ah=2 al=number of sectors. > es:bx points at area of memory to receive data. > dh=head 1-255 > dl=drive letter: 0 for a: 1 for b: 80 for hard disk 1 81 for hard disk 2. > cl=cylinder 0-255 > ch=sector to start reading from 0-63 top 2 bits of ch are top 2 bits of cylinder. > This gives us a sector range of 1-63 and > a cylinder range of 0-1023. > 1024 cylinders 255 heads and 63 sectors per track gives you a maximum legacy > capacity of 8.4gb or so. > To read beyond that you need to use LBA (Linear block addressing) > and to use that in bios you must use the phoenix int13 extentions. > Dos can't use int 13 extentions or at least > versions up to 6.22 can't. > Dos also can't boot beyond 2gb on a disk due to a calculation bug in the default dos boot sector. > Newer lilo versions i.e. 20 and up can use int13 extentions. > Older versions can not. If your bios has int13 extentions most things after 1994 do you can place your linux partitions wherever assuming ide. > Scsi it all depends on the onboard scsi bios. > Lilo 20 and up can boot just about anything on a new machine. lilo <20 or > a bad bios and you'll need to keep linux /boot partition below the first 8.4gb so > the bios can load the kernel or stick a floppy in the drive. > Yes I have no life but perhapse this may clear up some of the > incomplete/missinformation on this topic floating around. > Once the kernel is booted linux's ide driver uses lba when available and can access > up to 4 terabytes since kernel 1.1.51 or so. > Getting the kernel loaded still requires co-operation from the bios and your boot loader of choice > lilo grub silo nt boot loader system commander etc. > > Regards, Kerry. > On Tue, Feb 26, 2002 at 12:14:56AM +0100, Victor Tsaran wrote: > > Well, I don't know what the biggest size the motherboard supports, but I've > > been running my 20GB hard disk with no probs before on this same > > motherboard. > > Vic > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Speakup mailing list > > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > > > > -- > Kerry Hoath: kerry at gotss.net kerry at gotss.eu.org or kerry at gotss.spice.net.au > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > > >
