*BSD News Article 62004


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: 2.1 Boot Problem
Date: 21 Feb 1996 00:34:21 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
Lines: 39
Message-ID: <4gdpad$hb3@uriah.heep.sax.de>
References: <4fns4q$bfa@news.unicomp.net> <4gd7sq$36a@daily-planet.execpc.com>
Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch)
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jkane@earth.execpc.com (Jeff Kane) writes:

> http://www.promise.com
> 
> They have board jumper settings.  I have a DC4000.  Jumper number 5
> on JP7 needed to be removed.  What this does, is disable the onboard
> BIOS.  Of course, you can't have a EIDE drive.

Not entirely correct.

``Of course, you can't have an EIDE drive with full access through
the BIOS.''

FreeBSD doesn't use the BIOS except when booting to load the kernel,
so you can access all of a > 504 MB drive while the system is running.

What's true is however, FreeBSD doesn't take *any* advantage of the
enhanced EIDE modi (and unless you, you or ... you! are going to build
it into the driver, will certainly never do).  It simply falls back to
the plain IDE^H^H^HST-506 interface.  This is sufficient to drive

j@uriah 481% echo '16*255*65536*512/(1024*1024*1024)' | bc
127

Gigabytes in total, or

j@uriah 482% echo '16*63*65536*512/(1024*1024*1024)' | bc
31

Gigabytes for a drive where the first 1024 ficticous cylinders must be
shared with the BIOS (so you can only use a 63-sectors-per-track
emulation).

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)