Largest IDE hard drive supported by internal connector

[Balint Cristian]

On Thursday 16 September 2004 08:55, Ted Goodridge, Jr. wrote:


> That makes absolutely no sense.  The kernel and ide driver get the disk  
> geometry from the bios.  The only way around it is a bios-extender which I  
> don't think exists for linux let alone alpha.  The bios tells the OS how  
> to access the disk.  What you are describing is a lilo issue, which  
> requires the boot part be on the first X# of the disk.

 On alpha the linux kernel and on other arches geometry is not taken out of bios !!! 

There remain two posibility:

1) It will recognise right geom of any HDD once linux kernel start in memory, thats sure.
  So it is possible that SRM see wrongly only 2G or other wrong value [dont know exact limitation], 
  but if it is capable [by miracle wich happen with me for eg] to take from first sectors the aboot
and then aboot to take the kernel, kernel starts and see corect geom, than there is no bother about SRM/bioses and its limitation.
 You can try put instead aboot directly the kernel but I never tryed this way, supposing aboot is stupid and wont load the kernel because it read SRM params.

2) If not, you leave on main IDE bus an old small HDD wich take tha kernel and when kernel start
jump the root to the big HDD, but this way one more HDD is implied, or boot kernel from network or from floppy [never tested]

> 
> Ted
> 
> 
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