I was wondering if anyone is using a 1GB SCSI drive

[mdulcey at pryder.pn.com (Mark J. Dulcey)]

> I am planning to add a 1GB SCSI drive onto my Adaptec 1542 controller, and I 
> was wondering if anyone on the mailing list has had any experiences with the 
> large drives. 

One thing to watch out for: in the setup menu for the 1542 (the one 
you get to by typing Control-A during boot), there is an option to 
"enable DOS translation for >1GB drives".  You must make sure that 
this option is OFF when using a drive with Linux.  Linux can use 
larger drives without this translation.  Some other operating systems 
(notably Novell NetWare) are also broken by translation mode; the 
NetWare driver will actually refuse to load if translation is turned 
on.

The default capacity-to-cylinders translation for the 1542 is 1MB per 
cylinder.  With the translation on, this is changed to 8MB/cylinder.

As somebody else noted, the Linux boot partition should be entirely 
in the first 1024 cylinders.  Additional Linux partitions can occupy 
the rest of the disk.  DOS partitions are also limited to the first 
1024 cylinders.  Don't forget that the standard partition table can 
only contain 4 partitions, though; if you have a DOS FAT partition, 
two Linux partitions (one below 1GB and one to use up the rest of the 
disk), and a swap partition, that will account for all of them.

Of course, if your drive is really only 1GB, none of this will 
matter.  But if it is slightly larger (say, 1.2GB), it will. 

--
Mark J. Dulcey
mdulcey at pryder.pn.com