freebsd stable - Apr 2003 - Hard Drive size not correctly being Detected on Dell 8100

Hello,

I didn't recieve a response on freebsd-mobile, so I'm trying here.

I'm trying to install FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE or 5.0-RELEASE onto my Dell
Inspirion 8100. I'mjust doing a Standard installation and when FDisk loads I
get:

Disk name: ad0
DISK Geometry: 88 cyls/255 heads/63 sectors = 1413720 sectors (690MB)

So I go and manually change the drive geometry with the G option and it
shows the windows 2000 NTFS partition as 692Mb instead of 9.76Gb that it
really is.

I found the HD model number with Google on someone elses dmesg and got the
correct CHS:
ad0: 28615MB <IC25N030ATDA04-0> [58140/16/63]

This is what is shown before sysinstall launches, with the stuff in
parentheses as ASCII characters:
ad0: dma limited to UDMA33, non-ATA66 cable or device
ad0: 692MB <(smiley face black)C 5(smiley face white)0(heart)0(smiley face
black)T@A 4!0> [1407/16/63] at ata0-master UDMA33

Thanks,
Brad Davis

Nope, works just fine... this is a laptop btw.

Brad
> I've had the funny faces with broken drives/cables. Does it work OK in
> Win2k? Ever make any funny clicking noises?
>
> Lawrence Farr
> EPC Direct Limited
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: owner-freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
>> [mailto:owner-freebsd-stable@freebsd.org] On Behalf Of so14k@so14k.com
>> Sent: 05 April 2003 05:12
>> To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
>> Subject: Hard Drive size not correctly being Detected on Dell 8100
>>
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I didn't recieve a response on freebsd-mobile, so I'm trying
here.
>>
>> I'm trying to install FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE or 5.0-RELEASE onto my
Dell
>> Inspirion 8100. I'mjust doing a Standard installation and
>> when FDisk loads I
>> get:
>>
>> Disk name: ad0
>> DISK Geometry: 88 cyls/255 heads/63 sectors = 1413720 sectors (690MB)
>>
>> So I go and manually change the drive geometry with the G
>> option and it
>> shows the windows 2000 NTFS partition as 692Mb instead of
>> 9.76Gb that it
>> really is.
>>
>> I found the HD model number with Google on someone elses
>> dmesg and got the
>> correct CHS:
>> ad0: 28615MB <IC25N030ATDA04-0> [58140/16/63]
>>
>> This is what is shown before sysinstall launches, with the stuff in
>> parentheses as ASCII characters:
>> ad0: dma limited to UDMA33, non-ATA66 cable or device
>> ad0: 692MB <(smiley face black)C 5(smiley face
>> white)0(heart)0(smiley face
>> black)T@A 4!0> [1407/16/63] at ata0-master UDMA33
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Brad Davis
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list
>> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable
>> To unsubscribe, send any mail to
>> "freebsd-stable-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"
>>

On 2003-Apr-04 21:12:22 -0700, so14k@so14k.com wrote:
>This is what is shown before sysinstall launches, with the stuff in
>parentheses as ASCII characters:
>ad0: dma limited to UDMA33, non-ATA66 cable or device
>ad0: 692MB <(smiley face black)C 5(smiley face white)0(heart)0(smiley
face
>black)T@A 4!0> [1407/16/63] at ata0-master UDMA33
I have exactly the same behaviour on a Compaq Armada 1592.  It seems
that the ATA disk probe will return total garbage if either the disk
or CD-ROM are accessed by the BIOS prior to starting FreeBSD.  (In my
case, I usually get ridiculuously high sizes - 43403MB on one recent
reboot).

I have posted about this problem several times over the past few years
without any result.  I've tried a couple of different 1592's with
exactly the same results so I don't believe it is faulty hardware.
There doesn't appear to be any problem other than the corrupt probe so
I just ignore it.

FWIW, the controller in the 1592 is:
atapci0@pci0:20:0:      class=0x010180 card=0x0e1103f4 chip=0xd5681045 rev=0x30
hdr=0x00
    vendor   = 'OPTi Inc.'
    device   = '82C825 FireBridge II PCI EIDE Controller'
    class    = mass storage
    subclass = ATA

Peter