allbery@ncoast.UUCP (04/10/87)
I tried to bring up MINIX on my hard disk (/usr partition to HD) last
night on my ITT XTRA + WD1002 HD controller + ST225 HD. It (needless to
say) did not work; in fact it wiped the MS-DOS partition. (Someone should
clarify what /dev/hd* stand for. Some systems use /dev/hd0 as the whole
disk and /dev/hd1 etc. as partitions.)
However, the experience was enlightening.
A "dd" of /dev/hd0 (MS-DOS partition; saw the boot block copyright message)
worked fine. Ditto /dev/hd1, which was random data. The interesting thing
is that /dev/hd1 DID NOT EXIST. I told fdisk I had a 10MB MS-DOS partition
and NO OTHERS, leaving a 10MB hole to be filled eventually with three MINIX
filesystems. (I have a PD partition editor I can upload if anyone wants it,
BTW. It supports up to 4 partitions even under DOS 2.)
When I used the partition editor to create ``official'' partitions, MINIX
couldn't access the new partitions and stomped on /dev/hd0 when I tried to
mkfs /dev/hd1.
I conclude that MINIX is somehow misreading the FDISK information. I will
be delving into the WINCHESTER code tonight to see what it's up to; alas, I
have no idea what the partition table written by fdisk is supposed to look
like, so I won't be able to do much with it. However, hopefully this message
will help someone out there with the requisite knowledge get the HD driver
working correctly.
++Brando
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.--, .-----------, Brandon S. Allbery cbatt!cwruecmp!ncoast!allbery
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