Re: tlug: Sun disk label fdisk/SCSI question

[Rex Walters <rex@example.com>]

On Wed, Jun 10, 1998 at 03:53:42PM +0900, Scott Stone wrote:
>                                                                       The
> reason why the 64head/32cyl mapping exists is because without it, programs
                          ^^^
			  s/b sectors-per-track, not "cyl"

> that use the BIOS for disk geometry (ie, LILO, MS-DOS, Win95) can't see
> more than about 500 megs of the disk.

Malarky.  

1 MB per cylinder is purely for human simplicity.  PC BIOS's gag on
anything more than 1024 cylinders ("Gee, Joe, 10 bits should be enough
*forever*, dontcha think?" ;-).  If you need to access disks bigger than 1
GB with BIOS, you can't use 64/32 (at least, not if you need to access
all of your disk).  

1024 cylinders with 64 heads and 32 sectors-per-track (and 512 bytes per
sector, of course) works out to only 1 GB.  If you've got something
bigger, and you must use BIOS (poor soul) you need to increase "h" or
"s" accordingly.

Regards,
-- 
Rex
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