Grub

[jdow]

From: "Karl Larsen" <k5di at zianet.com>

> Marko Vojinovic wrote:
>> Back in the times when I was introducing myself to the PC technology for 
>> the first time, I stumbled upon a so called "Hardware Book" (don't have 
>> it any more, so cannot give a reference, sorry...). Looking at the 
>> contents, my attention was drawn to the question "what happens when you 
>> turn
> snip
>> he software is to be booted. While of course it may be different for Mac, 
>> Commodore, Sparc, Amiga, Atari, and other non-PC architectures.
>>
>> I hope that it is now a bit more clear as to what is going on between 
>> bios, grub, kernel and the disk, during the boot process. ;-)
>>
>> Best regards, :-)
>> Marko
>>
>> Marko Vojinovic
>> Institute of Physics
>> University of Belgrade
>> ======================
>> e-mail: vmarko at phy.bg.ac.yu
>>
>>
>>
>    Hi Marko, your English is perfect. I just did something that was 
> interesting but I do not understand why. Using Grub I put it in the MBR of 
> the Slave hard drive (hd1) and removed the Master hard drive (hd0) and 
> rebooted. The system booted with just one hard drive but it wrote this on 
> the screen:
>
> Booting F7
>
> Error 18: Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS
>
> Press any key
>
>    I have no idea why this was printed but it does indicate some maximum 
> has been exceeded in BIOS.

Your bios does not handle addressing the disk beyond some one of the
various limits that appeared over time.

The solution for this is to put the boot partition at the start of the
disk. I *ALWAYS* do this as a matter of course even though it may not
be needed with modern equipment.

But then, if your old BIOS as you mentioned elsewhere is dated 1994 then
I suspect a new machine just might surprise you with its speed compared
to your old one. And one that old MAY not be of much use even as merely
a firewall.

1994? THAT is OLD! Still has ISA slots?

{o.o}