RE: [TCLUG:1638] old bios, new hard disk

["Eric Hillman" <ehillman@cccu.com>]

> >Pentium systems. The first one I put together is a P-90. I put in 64 MB
> >RAM, ethernet, ATI video card, and a new 4.3 GB hard disk. I entered the
> >BIOS and put the number of cylinders, sectors, etc. and it
> seemed like the
> >BIOS was OK--it reported that the disk was the correct size.

> What is sounds like to me is a BIOS translation problem.  Check your BIOS
> and see if there is a translations setting and make sure to set that to
> 'LBA' if it isn't set to LBA Windows/DOS cannot access anything
> above 528MB.

	That's what it sounds like to me, too.  Actually, the limit is 1024
*cylinders*, but it amounts to the same thing, generally.
	I'm curious where you got the drive geometry info from -- if the number of
cylinders/sectors/etc is incorrect (but the drive size comes out looking
correct), Linux fdisk (and, I assume, Disk Druid) *will* appear to work.  It
will set up partitions, the install will proceed more or less normally, but,
once you try to restart the computer, Linux will be unbootable and your file
system will be a snarled, unrecoverable mess.
	I'd suggest trying to force your BIOS to autodetect the drive and enable
LBA translation.  If your BIOS doesn't support either of the above, I'd
suggest replacing it if you possibly can.