Rob Blomquist wrote: > Yesterday, I went out and innocently bought an 80Gb drive for a little server > I was planning on rebuilding.
What brand and model? > So I swapped the components from the P-166 into the AMD-K6/2-450 box (FIC > VIA-503+ mobo), connected up the drives, and booted into problems. > Finally, I was able to have the BIOS detect it as a 8.4Gb disk, but no bigger. > The 3rd drive in this box is a 15Gb that is detected and runs great. You've accounted for two drives. What is the 3rd? > I have been reading "Mark Minasi's 2003 PC Upgrade and Maintenence Guide" and > he talks about the addressing problems in the IDE/ATA BIOS space. Then he > goes on to talking about how autotranslation works to circumvent the BIOS and > allow bigger drives to run by the OS detecting the drive itself, and handling > the addressing without BIOS support . MInasi says that autotranslation is > part of some UNIXes. > Basically, I am wondering if Linux supports autotranslation, as when I was > able to run this disk as 8.4 Gb, the kernel was able to report the disk model > number back during boot. I am now wondering if Linux supports > autotranslation, so that if I set up the BIOS correctly, the drive could be > detected and run? All that BIOS translation gibberish is irrelevant if you DO NOT need to boot from the device. If this is the case, simply set the BIOS to NONE for the device. Then Linux will pick it up correctly, unassisted by any deficiencies that may be present in the BIOS. If you DO need to boot from the device, then both the BIOS must be capable of accessing a drive of the desired size, and the BIOS must be correctly set to access the device. The FIC-503+ has an Award BIOS. For an 80GB device, you CANNOT use the BIOS Autodetection fuction that is a separate main menu option with most Socket 7 Award BIOS motherboards. The correct way to configure is to set the options in the first menu screen to AUTO and AUTO for the device. If your BIOS is too old it may not be capable of recognizing a drive larger than 32GB without a BIOS upgrade. BIOS upgrades for the 503+ are available at http://www.fic.com.tw/support/motherboard/bios.aspx?model_id=19. A third option is to use the device's size limitation jumper to limit its logical size to 32GB. Some drives can have this limit set via a drive maker's utility software instead of a jumper. My experience with 32GB drive limits is that usually when set, the limit is absolute. In limited cases, I've seen the device driver ignore the limitation setting and be able to access the full drive size. In either case, the translation is the same and of no concern. -- "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom...." Proverbs 9:10 NIV Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/partitioningindex.html
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