Unix, drive-types & Rom

[Jay "you ignorant splut!" Maynard]

In article <222 at wa3wbu.UUCP> john at wa3wbu.UUCP (John Gayman) writes:
>    How does Unix such as Microport handle hard disks that aren't listed
>  in the Rom disk table ?  Is it possible to utilize a drive for which
>  you have no Rom listing assuming you know all its parameters ?

Neither of my disk drives (a Maxtor 1120 and a Seagate ST251) are listed
exactly in my ROM table.
What I did was to setup a disk type number that had the same number of
heads and fewer cylinders, then use Microport's fdisk to tell it the
real parameters. Microport's fdisk writes the real drive parameters in
an unused area of the partition table, and refers to them exclusively.
THe only reason to have the drive type in ROM is so that the power-on
self test will work as expected, and it doesn't care if it can get to
all the disk or not.
If you want a DOS partition on the same drive, use Microport's fdisk to
set it up, and make it the first partition on the drive (starting at
cylinder 1).

-- 
Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL   | Never ascribe to malice that which can
uucp:        uunet!nuchat!   (eieio)| adequately be explained by stupidity.
    hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!splut!jay +----------------------------------------
{killer,bellcore}!texbell!          | "Sexism is ugly." - Cheryl Stewart