Only 8.715 GB detected in new 9.0 GB SCSI drive

[jeana]

Hello,

I have been setting up my super new system:
Abit BX-6 v2.02
Celeron 300A in slocket (instantly overclockable to 450! although it hangs in the Win98 splash screen at 504)
Tekram dc-390u2w adapter
IBM 9es Ultrastar DDRS-34560 9.13GB hard drive

plus pc100 DRAM and assorted peripherals currently disconnected

The first odd thing is that the SCSI Configuration Utility only sees 8715 MB, as do fdisk(DOS) and fdisk(Linux). They see 8715 cylinders, 64 heads, and 32 sectors.
A freeware utility I've been using with IDE drives in other computers (Partition Manager? I forget the exact name) sees only 1024 cylinders, or 1024 MB, although I know it is perfectly capable of seeing a 9.1 GB drive.

Furthermore, I was originally planning to make partitions with Linux utilities, preparatory to a dual boot scenario. I've done this before successfully with two non-SCSI computers. However, when I had installed Linux and Win98, Win98 was unable to see the Windows logical drive I had put in the extended drive!

In the adapter utility I have tried toggling the INT13 and the >1GB support, also with no good results.

I'm guessing this is a problem with the utility, or the BIOS.
Or is there something wrong with my drive? I've verified it and redone the low-level formatting with the SCSI configure utility to no avail. Somebody reviewing my vendor (Bason Computer) in resellerratings.com seemed to have had the same problem--
I will call Bason tomorrow.

I will also visit the Tekram site, (duh, just thought of that) to see if there is any advise there.
[after edit: just checked, it doesn't look like any of their flash BIOS or driver updates address this problem. I probably have the latest versions already]

Thanks everyone for helping me through this process... I'm learning a lot!


[This message has been edited by jeana (edited 07-04-99).]

[LJE2]

After you have done the low level formating with you SCSI utility, with you drive connected properly to your SCSI adapter (termination and SCSI ID set) boot to a boot disk and type "fdisk/mbr" when it done reseting the master boot record type "fdisk" and set the partitions that you want, then format this drive from the floppy with system files on the Windows partition unless you plan to install a full version of Win 98, the Bios for you motherboard will not see the hard drive, this is for IDE drives only, the Bios on you SCSI adapter will see it but you do not set it up the same as an IDE drive(setting Cyls, Lz, ect.). By the way the reason that there is a descrepency between what size IBM says your drive is and what everything else says your drive is, is because IBM and every other hard drive Manufacturer calls a kilobyte 1000 bytes, your computer recognizes a kilobyte as 1024 bytes, this is where the difference is.

[jeana]

Thanks,
That (plus the space taken by the formatting) explains why I seemed to be shortchanged by IBM.

As for setting up the dual boot, I finally found a configuration that works... I had to make a Windows extended partition and put a Windows logical drive there first, before making my Linux partitions (except for the root partition). So, I now have:
Win98 partition C:
Windows extended:
Win98 logical partition D:
Linux logical partitions
Linux root partition, booting with loadlin.exe

The previous strategy I'd used with IDE drives
Windows C partition
linux root partition
linux swap partition
Extended:
windows logical partitions
linux logical partitions

... didn't work at all!

After this, I still had trouble doing the dual boot, until I realized for a SCSI boot under Linux I had to include the expression "init=c:\[my path]\initrd.img" in the loadlin.exe line of my Config.sys file.

Wow! my computer now lives and it's only driver and virus problems from now on!