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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msuinfo!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!news.umbc.edu!haven.umd.edu!cville-srv.wam.umd.edu!cradle From: cradle@wam.umd.edu (David Eisner) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: FreeBSD and intelligent IDE controllers Date: 21 Sep 1994 19:59:47 GMT Organization: University of Maryland, College Park Lines: 40 Message-ID: <35q3bj$ie2@cville-srv.wam.umd.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: rac1.wam.umd.edu I would be very grateful if someone can help me out with this problem. I've just purchased a Western Digital 730Mb Caviar drive. My AMI Bios is from 1990 (SN#: 30-0000-ZZ1594-00101111-070791-SISD-0) and doesn't seem to work properly with large drives. I am able to choose type 47 in the setup and select the proper parameters, but when I use FDISK, the CMOS seems to be telling DOS that the drive is only 504 Megs. I'm using DOS 6.22. So I need to use an intelligent IDE controller with its own disk bios. I'm using a GSI Model 21 Intelligent IDEa Accelerator Board. It worked great until I tried installing FreeBSD 1.1 on the disk. In order to get things working (this took MUCH trial and error) I had to partition my disk with the GSI controller card (set to TYPE 1), install DOS, then replace the GSI card with my old IDE controller card, and install FreeBSD and os-bs. Now, everything seems to be ok. I have both OS's working, and DOS thinks my DOS partition is 500 Megs and that my BSD partition is 230 Megs, though in FDISK it still believes the entire drive is only 504 Megs. (So the sum of the percentages of disk space for the partitions sums to > 100%). When I stick the GSI card back in, though, it will only boot off DOS. It refuses to boot off the FreeBSD partition. * * * My question, then, is this: has anyone had any luck with intelligent IDE controller cards and FreeBSD? Also, my drive has more than 1024 cylinders, so this may also be a contributing factor. If I hurry, I can still send the GSI card back to Insight and get a replacement for free. Thanks very much in advance. David Eisner cradle@wam.umd.edu University of Maryland at College Park