*BSD News Article 15873


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From: terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C)
Subject: Re: NetBSD doesn't like DOS?
Message-ID: <1993May10.175619.19445@fcom.cc.utah.edu>
Sender: news@fcom.cc.utah.edu
Organization: Weber State University  (Ogden, UT)
References: <C6ssI1.HxJ@rex.uokhsc.edu>
Date: Mon, 10 May 93 17:56:19 GMT
Lines: 40

In article <C6ssI1.HxJ@rex.uokhsc.edu> benjamin-goldsteen@uokhsc.edu writes:
>      I would really like to get a UNIX going on my PC.  I am partial to
>BSD UNIX.  However, I have had some difficulties installing NetBSD to
>coexist with DOS.  A previous release wouldn't do what was necessary to
>boot when it coexisted with DOS (I am not quite sure what that is, but I
>would imagine it would involve installing a boot loader and marking the
>partition active).
>
>     This version created a partition table that didn't have my DOS
>partition (deleted the info), and created an entry (in the fourth slot)
>that spanned from like the the beginning of the disk to something weird
>like the 1023 cylinder/63 head/255th track (according to On-track Disk
>Manager).  Having lost my DOS partition (I didn't have backups of
>everything, but that was my fault...) to trying to install this the day
>before, I knew all the parameters and was able to restore the partition
>table with On-track Disk Manager.  The DOS partition chkdsk's fine and
>the NetBSD partition fsck's fine, too.  Now I just have to install the
>remaining disks...  

There are problems with translated drive parameters; in particular, in
many cases it is not possible to turn off translation for DOS or to
turn on translation of anything not using the BIOS.

I would like to suggest that anyone running an IDE drive run a copy of
ide_conf.exe under DOS to get both the translated and untranslated
drive parameters.  POST THESE WHEN YOU ASK A QUESTION REGARDING DISK
CONFIGURATION.

If you have a non-WD drive (like a SCSI drive), a copy of the program
pfdisk.exe should be run to get the translated parameters, and the
untranslated parameters will be reported by the SCSI driver when you boot
386BSD/NetBSD.  POST THESE WHEN YOU ASK A QUESTION REGARDING DISK
CONFIGURATION.


					Terry Lambert
					terry@icarus.weber.edu
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.