'386 Unix Wars

[Tim Wright]

In <94408977 at bfmny0.BFM.COM> tneff at bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) writes:

>Anyway, memory is so damn cheap these days.  My only beef is that, for a
>UNIX release packing so many additional files, SVR4/386 doesn't have better
>support for huge ESDI disks.  It chafes to have to throw away 100MB of
>my Maxtor just to keep upder 1024 cylinders.  I would like to see this
>addressed in a future rev.
Which version of SVR4 is this ?? Does it really not cope with > 1024
cylinders ? I've installed Dell SVR4 on a 640MB ESDI drive with no difficulty
at all - 1628 cylinders, 54 sectors/track, 15 heads ~= 664,000,000. SVR3.2
could do this. The code ought to try to get the geometry from the drive
anyway, but prompt to check that what it has got is correct. It doesn't
matter that the AT BIOS is braindead and has to truncate the FDISK partition
at 1023 cylinders since UNIX should ignore it.
--
Tim Wright, Dell Computer Corp. (UK) | Email address
Bracknell, Berkshire, RG12 1RW       | Domain: tim at dell.co.uk
Tel: +44-344-860456                  | Uucp: ...!ukc!delluk!tim
"What's the problem? You've got an IQ of six thousand, haven't you?"