*BSD News Article 48180


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From: Matt Rosenberg <mar7@cec.wustl.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Adaptec 2742W and Seagate ST43401N
Date: 9 Aug 1995 15:14:40 GMT
Organization: Washington University in St. Louis, MO USA
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To: questions@freebsd.org,jkh@freebsd.org

I have never had any trouble with FreeBSD on IDE drives, but have 
hit a snag trying to install it on a system with only a floppy and 
a 3GB SCSI.  It has an Adaptec 2742W and a Seagate ST43401N.  
During the installation disk boot, the Adaptec is correctly probed, 
but the drive is recognized as something with the wrong geometry.

I get the following debugging message on ttyv1:
"sd0: error reading primary partition table reading fsbn 0 (sd0 
bn0; cn0 tn0 sn0)"

The disk works perfectly under DOS and has passed a whole battery 
of diagnostic tests there with flying colors.  I was told to change 
the labelling on the disk, but under the installation menu I'm told 
I can't label it until I partition it, and the installation program 
won't let me partition it because it claims I don't have a hard 
drive.  So how can I exit the installation menu to enter a labeling 
command without forcing a reboot?  And will that even solve my 
problem?  One note:  DOS reads the logical geometry of the disk as 
354 cylinders 255 sides and 63 S/T.  The physical geometry is 
actually 2738 cylinders and 21 sides.  As far as I know only the 
system BIOS is converting the geometry to LBA.
=============================================
Matt Rosenberg
Washington University School of Law
St. Louis, MO, USA

mar7@cec.wustl.edu ; rosenbem@wulaw.wustl.edu
http://www.cec.wustl.edu/~mar7/
=============================================