vmware bochs osr5 under linux

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From: Bela Lubkin <belal@caldera.com>
Subject: Re: INT13 function FAh during boot?
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 10:20:45 GMT
References: <c12f3009.0204221242.29c063c4@posting.google.com> <20020422173448.A9014@mammoth.ca.caldera.com> <c12f3009.0204230653.6be8199b@posting.google.com> <20020423181933.C9014@mammoth.ca.caldera.com> <c12f3009.0204240421.10673f97@posting.google.com> 

Carl Sopchak wrote:

> I found the letter descriptions in the handbook.  I ran across another
> one of your posts (from quite a while back) that suggtested the
> disable=, which I used (although I used disable=fdi, not disable=fdi_)
> and seemed to work.  Now, however, OSR5 doesn't find a hard disk.  I
> have a post on the bochs discussion forums (and added a bug to their
> tracking list) about this, trying to find out what controller they
> emulate.  It appears that it's a single-channel IDE controller,
> though...  (Limits you to one HD + one CD, or two HDs.)

Well, that's pretty much the same area that trips up VMWare.  The OSR5
IDE driver ("wd") has rather peculiar code to detect IDE controllers and
drives.  The driver dates back to the WD1010 (full-length 16-bit ISA
ST506 controller), and possibly earlier than that.  It "knows" about a
lot of ancient controller quirks and takes steps to avoid them.  These
steps apparently still work with the latest in "real" IDE hardware, but
not with most emulation environments.

> Just had a thought...  Are there any limits to the geometry of a drive
> that OSR5 can use?  bochs uses "drive images" (files) to emulate a
> hard disk, and you tell bochs what the geometry is.  Maybe that's
> where the problem is?  The image I'm using has a geometry of
> C/H/S=1015/16/63 (512Mb).  (I tried using biosgeom [from another of
> your long-ago posts], to no avail...)

Those numbers are certainly well within any limits.  I think 5.0.5 balks
at IDE drives larger than 8GB, and 5.0.6 has a higher limit, but I'm not
really sure.  But a 512MB image with the above geometry should be fine.
Might be a bit cramped for an install, but you're a long way from having
to worry about that yet.

>Bela<
 

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