Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix Subject: Re: Resolution of >1024 cylinders question Summary: Why the MS-DOS restriction? Keywords: xenix, hard disk, cylinders, ESDI, 1024 Message-ID: <638@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> Date: 29 Sep 89 15:20:35 GMT References: <13569@well.UUCP> <751@pmafire.UUCP> <5563@seac.UUCP> <6191@viscous.sco.COM> Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) Organization: GE Corp R&D Center Lines: 37 In article <6191@viscous.sco.COM>, rosso (Ross Oliver, x537, ionesco) writes: | 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. I thought I'd done this... the DOS partition was the lowest, on tracks 1-49 or so for something the "boot: dos" could handle, and the xenix partition was above that up to 1224 (I don't have the disk anymore, I'm best guessing). There were three f/s in the Xenix partition, /, /u, and /usr/spool). Am I misremembering that I did this, or are there cases in which you can have DOS, too? Remember, you said the >1024 wouldn't work, either. | | - 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. I definitiely did that. | | 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. Will this be listed as an enhancement when SCO offers a chance to upgrade? ;-) -- bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen) "The world is filled with fools. They blindly follow their so-called 'reason' in the face of the church and common sense. Any fool can see that the world is flat!" - anon