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Path: sserve!euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!swidir.switch.ch!scsing.switch.ch!news.belwue.de!fu-berlin.de!news.mathworks.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!news.starnet.net!wupost!newsreader.wustl.edu!usenet From: Matt Rosenberg <mar7@cec.wustl.edu> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Adaptec 2742W and Seagate ST43401N Date: 9 Aug 1995 22:38:23 GMT Organization: Washington University School of Law Lines: 52 Message-ID: <40bdcv$pub@newsreader.wustl.edu> References: <40ajd0$ito@newsreader.wustl.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: @128.252.251.204 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 1.1N (Windows; I; 16bit) To: questions@freebsd.org,jkh@freebsd.org Matt Rosenberg <mar7@cec.wustl.edu> wrote: >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. People have been writing me all day that I have to change the disk geometry in the patitioning section of the installation. The problem is I wasn't able to get to the partioning of the disk, because the disk couldn't be accessed at all. After two days of talking with useless tech support people at Seagate who blamed the Adapter card and the Adaptec people who blamed the disk drive (and they both hinted at blaming FreeBSD), I finally fooled around with it and discovered the problem, which might not be a bad idea to archive in an FAQ. Even after I turned off the extended translation for >1GB hard drives, the adaptor was still loading its BIOS into memory. The result was that FreeBSD was correctly identifying the adaptor but when it probed its bus it claimed to find "(ahc1:0:0): "S441 00427 1N" type 0 fixed SCSI 3" and thought it was a direct-access 6528MB HD. I reconfigured the adaptor to not load its BIOS at all upon boot. This solved the entire problem. The only downfall is it means I can't boot off of this drive now. I'll need to boot from a floppy and mount the file system as the root fs after the kernel loads its own device driver for the adaptor. I thank everyone who at least tried to help. ============================================= 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/ =============================================