linux on old system

[Steve Holmes]

That's another neat thing about Linux.  Once we get past boot sequence,
Main line Linux can read these larger drives reguardless of the BIOS.
Can't say the same for DOS/windows systems; they require special drive
geometry kludges to accomplish this.

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001, Gregory Nowak wrote:

> Thanks Steve.
> I don't have a spair old drive on hand now.
> However, I ended up reinstalling the system,
> and mounting the second partition on /extra.
> Then, I got the idea to move anything I didn't need for system
> startup to /extra/dirname, and create a soft link to it
> wherever it should be found in the main tree.
> It works like a charm.
> I've moved /usr/local, /usr/src, and /home to it.
> Can I move anything else that the system won't need for boot up?
>
> Also, about your 2 gb hard disk ...
> I don't think that a 486 bios will support anything higher then 1 gb,
> thus your lilo problem.
> I know for a fact that pentium based systems
> (i mean the very first pentium systems)
> won't recognize anything higher then 2.1 gb.
> Greg
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 23, 2001 at 06:38:41AM -0700, Holmes, Steve wrote:
> > I have an old 486 with a 2 gig hard drive in it and Lilo won't boot the
> > thing at all.  What I ended up doing is install an old 40 meg hard disk and
> > set my boot stuff there and mount the 2 gig as an entire single linux
> > partition.  Once running, linux will see the entire drive as one partition
> > if you want.  It got a bit complicated the way I'm doing it but it is
> > working good right now.  I first discovered this when I upgraded the disk
> > drive in this thing from a 420 meg to this 2 gig and then the machine
> > wouldn't boot anymore.  I could always boot from a floppy and then mount the
> > 2 gig as a new partition or I could have the boot disk actually call up the
> > other drive so I just kind of moved the floppy based boot system to this
> > little 40 meg drive as I mentioned above.  Amazing but it works.
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Gregory Nowak [mailto:romualt at megsinet.net]
> > Sent: Sunday, July 22, 2001 2:55 AM
> > To: speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> > Subject: linux on old system
> >
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I'm preparing to reinstall Linux on my pentium 3.
> > I also tried to compile a c++ program
> > on an old 486 I've got, and got the same errors.
> > Whatever I screwed up, I was sure consistent about it.
> > Guess I'll have to compile code step by step
> > of the install and upgrade to kernel 2.4.6 so that I can figure out what
> > goes wrong where on the way.
> > Anyway, my question is this.
> > The bios of the 486 doesn't support 32-bit lba.
> > Consequently, the bios only sees 504 mb of the drive.
> > However, in this machine's past, someone had replaced
> > it's original drive with a 814 mb one.
> > Since lilo had trouble booting the entire drive,
> > I made the boot partition on the first 504 mb,
> > used 128 mb for swap, and mounted the rest under /usr/src
> > since source code takes up the most space (or so I thought).
> > Appearently, my / partion is currently 100% full,
> > and /usr/src/ is 93% full.
> > When I do the reinstall, what is the best place to mount
> > the second partion at?
> > Or, what is the best way to setup the drive so that Ican still
> > boot it and get the most out of its capcity?
> > Thanks for any help in advance.
> > Greg
> >
> >
> >
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