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  • From: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [BL] LILO challenge
  • Date: Sun, 4 May 2008 04:29:53 +0000 (UTC)

On Sat, 3 May 2008, baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

Why don't you try formatting the first partition after 1024 or 2048 bytes
from the beginning?

I can shrink it with PQMagic but what do you think this will accomplish?

Shrinking only affects the last sectors, not the frst ones.

PQmagic will shrink either end, I think. I can tell it to leave 100MB instead of 0MB free space at the beginning. But I don't think this will help a dead track 0/MBR.

To choose between DOS and various linuxes when booting with LILO (to a normally bootable hard disk) hold down the SHIFT (or CTRL) key while booting, you will get a boot prompt and you can type DOS or BL3 or if you hit TAB it gives you a complete list.

I wanted to boot this way with lilo boot floppy disk to linux on the ECS computer where loadlin prevents the keyboard from booting, but the ECS computer suddenly stopped powering on. So linux caught some problem before DOS did. And one of two computers refused to boot from a 10GB drive and now the drive won't boot on anything (and again, linux refused to boot with loadlin after DOS booted, and now nothing boots). One of
three 8GB drives is usable, one has some serious problem (says spinrite, and PQMagic crashes on it), and one has EZ-DRIVE which did not come off when I zeroed 512 bytes - where does it live? Will a clone with dd from an identical drive remove EZ-DRIVE? dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb


What size is not capable of LBA?

The old and small ones under 512mb.
Those are fine for BL.

A very few HDs of a higher capacity are not capable of logical block
accessing.
I still have HDs of 64, 131, 165, 270 and 428mb. The most of them do not
boot anymore.
You beat us. Our smallest working one is 420MB.

Some of these are recognized by IBM 486 as being "high performance" HDs and
it's a bit hard to mix them.
Other PCs say these same are "low performance" ones.
What does that mean???

I own another one which was nominally 1.2Gb and that arrived to me with many
bad sectors, and a missing power conector. It had no tags and all the
waranty labels were removed.
I had to shrink it down to 860mb and even use some epoxi in order to have
the connector fixed.
It was capable of LBA, but if set so, it simply doesn't work.

Where do you get these from? I thought WE were crazy. Here people give us working computers that are only 7 years old along with the 486s.

Broken equipment is more educational

I agree. And the problems help us to improve.

The same with software. And you learn much more when things don't work the way you want at first and when they are not automated. I have friends who use linux and have never seen a linux console (vt).

Sindi

Teixeira




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