*BSD News Article 35970


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From: jal@MCS.COM (John A. LaCour III)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: New disklabel not working?  256 heads?????
Date: 19 Sep 1994 17:10:02 -0500
Organization: /usr/lib/news/organi[sz]ation
Lines: 29
Message-ID: <35l27q$d8l@Mercury.mcs.com>
References: <GILBERT.94Sep19150356@hydra1c.cs.utk.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: mercury.mcs.com

In article <GILBERT.94Sep19150356@hydra1c.cs.utk.edu>,
Steve Gilbert <gilbert@cs.utk.edu> wrote:
>a new Connor IDE disk to daisy-chain with my other one.
>I got the disklabel and eveything done fine.  The disk
>is partitioned correctly and all the filesystems are there
>and accessible.  There's just one funny thing.  I get this
>error at boot time:
>
>wd1: can't handle 256 heads from partition table 
>(controller value 16 restored)
>
>...what could be causing this?  The disk has 16 heads, so the "controller
>value" is correct and everything works fine.  Why would it be initially
>looking for 256 heads?  No disk on the planet has 256 heads.  I've 
>checked everything I can imagine.../etc/disktab...output from "disklabel"...
>the BIOS settings...nothing ever mentions the number 256 in relation
>to anything.  Does anyone have any ideas?  Any help would be greatly
>appreciated.

Funny, I'm having the exact same problem.  I'm using a maxtor 213a drive (IDE)
however.  My problems are more sever in that when this happens init dies
and I get panics and dumps that never end.  I have to start the install
all over again.  I had FBSD 1.1.5 running fine on one IDE drive, but I can't
get it installed with two.

Any help gratefully appreciated.

John