Adaptec 1540CF/1542CF & 2GB drive
Richard F. Strasser
Seagate scsi drive with both DOS and Linux partitions. (I am not using
LILO.) I haven't been able to find a solution to my problem in the Linux
FAQ's, so I was wondering if a member of the list could help me.
I have the following hardware/software configuration:
Gateway p5-90
Adaptec 1540CF/1542CF scsi adapter card (BIOS 2.01)
1 x 1GB hard disk drive (C: drive)
1 x 2GB hard disk drive (Seagate ST32550N)
OS: MS-DOS 6.22; Linux Slackware 3.0 (Walnut Creek CD-ROM)
I installed the 2GB disk a couple of days ago. I created DOS partitions in
1.75GB of the disk, leaving 250MB for the Linux partitions. I also altered
my Adaptec software configuration to enable support of SCSI disks >1GB. At
this point, I booted up DOS and Windows for Workgroups and everything was
working fine.
I then created the Linux partitions and installed the Linux software on the
remaining 250MB of my new hard disk. I booted up using the newly created
boot disk (on a floppy). I received the following message:
"A drive larger than 1GB has been detected with 64 head/32 sector
partitioning. This drive is not compatible with the 255 head/63 sector
translation which has been enabled. Data could be corrupted. Please check
your system set-up."
I received the same error message when I booted up using DOS.
I called Adaptec. Adaptec said that my card would not support both DOS and
Linux on my 2GB drive -- if I wanted to use DOS, I would need to activate
the portion of the Adaptec configuration that supports SCSI disks >1GB
(which I did). In this case, I would not be able to use Linux. On the
other hand, if I de-activated this configuration option, I would be able to
use Linux but not DOS.
Can anyone suggestion a solution to this problem? Offhand, I can think of
three possible approaches:
1. Does a software patch (either in Linux or from Adaptec) exist?
2. I have an extra Adaptec 2940 card. If I replaced my 1540CF/1542CF card
with the 2940 card (and associated software), would this solve my problem?
3. What about installing the 2940 card as a second SCSI controller?
Obviously, I would prefer a solution that did not require use of the 2940 card.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Richard F. Strasser <r...@panix.com>
Andrew B. Cramer
Switching controler cards will not make any difference. The DOS
translate interfers with any other op-system except DOS. One thing to try is
set translate off and set the dos partition <=1Gig. The second is to feed
the Linux Driver native mode parameters of the Harddisk, as it may then
ignore the translate parameters given from the bios, just a thought. If you
add a second card it may help, but I'm not sure which board will be
recognized first, probibly the 1540CF ( it has a lower bios address), so you
may have to disable it before installing. - Andy
+------------- cra...@ripco.com -------------+
| Andrew B. Cramer |
| (312)-283-0234 |
+--------------------------------------------+
Christian Fughe
Hi Richard,
I had had a similar problem with 64 head/32 sector patitioning on an
aha1542cp and a Quantum Fireball 4GB disk. After installing DOS 6.22 (300
MB partition) and Linux everything went well but after I made the first
writes to the DOS partition from Linux the DOS partition became corrupted.
Then I examined the the disk with Norton Disk Tools and found out that the
partition table and the DOS boot table were completely messed up.
The solution in my case was:
I used the linux version of Fdisk to partition the whole disk even for the
DOS partitions. Then I installed DOS and Linux and everything is going
fine since months.
Hope it helps, Christian
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