Very Computer

I solved the problem!

My computer was never getting was never getting to LILO on boot. This
was an older Dell P90 that couldn't recognize larger drives. I
downloaded a BIOS upgrade that "appeared" to let the IDE controller
recognizr the 20GB Western Digital drive. I was able to fully install
linux and warm reboot, but whenn I powered down the computer and
restarted it wouldn't find the hard drive. I could boot from a floppy.

I finally solved the problem by installing a Promise DriveMAX card
(BIOS on a card) and the drive was fully recognized and linux booted
up via LILO just fine.

I happened to see the DriveMAX on the shelf next to the other IDE
controller cards I was contemplating buying to try another solution.
It was a pure flike that I stumbled on that as the solution.
Abosultely no one else had any recommendations anything like using the
DriveMAX. A Dell tech friend of mine was even telling me to download a
debug script from Dell to erase the MBR on the drive and try again.

Years ago I used a Promise EideMAX to enable my 386 to use drives bigger
than 528 MB (386 BIOS had no large drive translation).  That card did LBA
translation, so my 540 MB and 1.2 GB drives at the time appeared to be
under 1024 cyls.  The only problem with that was warm booting, but that
should not be a problem with Pentiums that do a complete reset.

I am currently running an old P100 box.  Not sure what its native BIOS
supported for drive size, but my Evergreen Spectra400 (K6-2/400) cpu
upgrade included MR BIOS flash that has no trouble with a 27.3 GB drive
and also enables me to set any drive as the boot drive.

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