[bit.listserv.novell] ESDI Problem

fellows@UCS.ORST.EDU (Mark Fellows - UCS) (02/14/90)

OK, I give up.  What's the trick for getting Netgen to accept a
partition size of greater than 1024 cylinders?

I have a Micropolis 1568 ESDI drive with 15 heads, 1632 cylinders, and
54 sectors per track.
I format the drive using the controller card's BIOS routine which works
fine.  (Controller cards tried: WD1007VSE2 and NCL5356)
Then I run compsurf to verify the disk only.  Compsurf recognizes the
entire drive as defined by the BIOS format.
The problem arises in the netware install program.  When defining a
Netware Bootable partition, the information entry window comes up
OS Type:  Netware
Status:   Bootable
Start Cylinder (Max = 1630):     0
End Cylinder (Max = 1630):       0

But when I enter 1630 for the end cylinder, It puts the info into the
partition table with start=0, end=606, Megs=235.  Any cylinder number
over 1023 gets wrapped back around to (# - 1024).  If I leave the
table like this and define volumes, it allows me to define volumes
totaling 645Meg, which is correct.  So I thought "Hey.  Maybe it will
work anyway."   WRONG!   After continuing the installation procedure
the server came up just fine.  VOLINFO and DIR reported correct volume
sizes so it looked OK.  Information restored from tape backups just
fine.  However when I took the server down and brought it back up,
the cold boot loader lines appeared and then part of a data file was
dumped to the console screen.  (Happens every time.)  So I suspect
Netware is putting data destined for the last 606 cylinders in the
wrong place, corrupting the boot track in the process.

NOS: Netware SFT v2.15C
Server: Acer 1100/20 w/ Award 3.03A3 BIOS

"You're limited by your server's BIOS."  Novell tech support.
"The controller card handles addressing for larger drives."  Acer support.
"You need to find a patch for Netware's Netgen."  Western Digital support.

Any solutions, suggestions, sympathy would be greatly appreciated.

MarkF

Internet: fellows@ucs.orst.edu
ccMail:   Mark Fellows at ccMail