Large HD, old BIOS

[Dan Jenkins]

Cole Tuininga wrote:

>  On Sun, 2004-05-02 at 22:37, Dan Jenkins wrote:
>
> > The distro is reading the drive specs directly from the drive. It
> > doesn't need the BIOS. The BIOS can't interpret the drive size
> > properly. Since you have the newest BIOS, there's not much you can
> > do about the BIOS. However, the boot loader may be able to work
> > around the problem. Which boot loader are you using: LILO, GRUB,
> > other?
>
>
>  I've tried both. I've attempted to install Debian woody (using the
>  bf24 install set, but doesn't actually see the entire drive) and
>  Mandrake 10.0 community edition, both of which seem to want to use
>  lilo.
>
>  Figuring that I needed the boot loader (and probably kernel) in a
>  lower region of the hard drive, I made sure to create a /boot
>  partition at the beginning. Didn't seem to help....

Was the /boot partition small (say 32 MB) and located first on the drive 
(best as a primary partition)?
Have you tried creating a boot floppy and seeing if that works?

-- 
Dan Jenkins (dan at rastech.com)
Rastech Inc., Bedford, NH, USA --- 1-603-624-7272
*** Technical Support for over a Quarter Century