Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!sco!rosso
From: rosso (Ross Oliver, x537, ionesco)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix
Subject: Resolution of >1024 cylinders question
Keywords: xenix, hard disk, cylinders, ESDI, 1024
Message-ID: <6191@viscous.sco.COM>
Date: 28 Sep 89 20:54:35 GMT
References: <13569@well.UUCP> <751@pmafire.UUCP> <5563@seac.UUCP> <251659CD.19953@ateng.com> <6ea.25180a97@ibmpcug.co.uk>
Sender: news@sco.COM
Reply-To: rosso@sco.com (Ross Oliver)
Organization: SCO Technical Support
Lines: 33


In article <6ea.25180a97@ibmpcug.co.uk> ronald@ibmpcug.co.uk (Ronald Khoo)
writes about using SCO XENIX with hard disks having more than 1024 cylinders:
>Yep, Go look at your release notes
>
>	"Some hard disks have more than 1024 cylinders.  At this time,
>	 XENIX supports a maximum of 1024 cylinders."
>
>Sigh.
>
>Oi, Rosso, whatcha gonna do about this ? :-)

Because of the increased demand for support of large disks, we are
changing this policy.  SCO XENIX (and SCO UNIX) will support hard
disks having more than 1024 cylinders provided the following three
conditions are met:

- The disk does not have an MS-DOS partition.

- The disk controller supports the required number of cylinders.

- If the disk is the boot device, the kernel, /xenix, must reside
  completely within the first 1024 cylinders.  The safest way to
  avoid this particular problem is to use the area above cylinder
  1023 as your swap area or second file system.

No software changes are necessary, this is the way SCO XENIX currently
behaves.  The release notes are being rewritten for the next release
to include this information.

Ross Oliver
Technical Support
The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.