[NTLUG:Discuss] EZ-BIOS

[Kyle_Davenport@compusa.com]

This is the part I didn't know about.  Linux may still not recognize ez-bios.

"If the Linux kernel detects the presence of some disk manager on an IDE disk,
it will try to remap the disk in the same way this disk manager would have done,
so that Linux sees the same disk partitioning as for example DOS with OnTrack or
EZ-Drive."

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MadHat <madhat at unspecific.com> on 09/20/99 10:09:13 AM

Please respond to discuss at ntlug.org

To:   discuss at ntlug.org
cc:    (bcc: Kyle Davenport/Is/Corporate/CompUSA)
Subject:  Re: [NTLUG:Discuss] EZ-BIOS



Kyle_Davenport at compusa.com wrote:
>
> No, I think if the bios doesn't recognize the whole hard drive, installing
boot
> on the first part of it won't help (you will still see only 8 GB of it).   If
> you install EZ-Bios, linux will not see the same (virtual) addresses on the
hard
> drive.  Your best bet is a bios upgrade.

Actually,  Linux doesn't use the BIOS to determin the size of the
drive.  I know it is possible to have a larger drive than what the bios
recognises and have Linux take advantage of it.

http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Large-Disk.html

Specifically,
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Large-Disk-4.html#ss4.1

"Linux does not use the BIOS, but some other systems do. The BIOS, which
predates LBA times, offers with INT13 disk I/O routines that have
(c,h,s) as input. (More precisely: AH selects the function to perform,
CH is the low 8 bits of the cylinder number, CL has in bits 7-6 the high
two bits of the cylinder number and in bits 5-0 the sector number, DH is
the head number, and DL is the drive number (80h or 81h). This explains
part of the layout of the partition table.) "

So the suggestion of putting the boot sector in the first part of the
disk is correct (if I am reading the problem correctly).

>
> Hard drives are already a system bottleneck - it's silly to add another
> translation layer.
>
> Dale Massey <dmassey at utdallas.edu> on 09/20/99 08:22:40 AM
>

--
MadHat

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