[ale] Overlay and linux

[Mike Nelson]

If you add up the time you are going to spend working around the
non-LBA bios, you may find that a $25 LBA-aware EIDE controller card
(one that has the BIOS extensions) will be a bargain, even if you buy it
out of your own pocket. There are some sorry add-on cards out there.

There's a lot of issues to consider - see the eide FAQ. Search
for eidep1.txt or
http://blackwidow.saultc.on.ca/~malleman/pchw/eidep1.txt
It mentions brand names.

With EZ-Drive or Ontrack Disk Manager, Lilo is not an option.
Loadlin works as the newer kernels are supposedly aware of the
mangled partition tables. 

With the overlay the real problems occur later - boot sector virus
attacks, the inevitable win95 re-installs.  The lost Disk Mangler
support disk. If you boot from a vanilla Dos floppy, you won't be able
to see drives data. (The disk translator software will come with a
support floppy to allow that, if it hasn't been lost.)


The HOWTO's you want can be browsed at
http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/mini/    
see Loadlin+Win95, Largedisk, &others.

You may also consider that the older 486 will have an older serial port
chip (8250, or 16450) so external 56K modems won't be usable (or
even 33.6)



-------------Original message follows----------------------
A friend of mine wants to install linux on her machine, but its an old
486 w/o LBA, Shes installing a 1.7 gb and it will need an overlay for
the machine to recognize it, I know that linux doesnt need an overlay
or
anything because of lilo, How would I go about installing on a  machine
w/ an overlay? The drive is brand new so data loss isnt an issue, is
there a how-to or something?

let me know it isnt clear what im trying to do let me know and ill try
again

Nick
-----------------------------------------------------------

If you add up the time you are going to spend working around the
non-LBA bios, you may find that a $25 LBA-aware EIDE controller card
(one that has the BIOS extensions) will be a bargain, even if you buy it
out of your own pocket. There are some sorry add-on cards out there.

There's a lot of issues to consider - see the eide FAQ. Search
for eidep1.txt or
http://blackwidow.saultc.on.ca/~malleman/pchw/eidep1.txt
It mentions brand names.

With EZ-Drive or Ontrack Disk Manager, Lilo is not an option.
Loadlin works as the newer kernels are supposedly aware of the
mangled partition tables. 

With the overlay the real problems occur later - boot sector virus
attacks, the inevitable win95 re-installs.  The lost Disk Mangler
support disk. If you boot from a vanilla Dos floppy, you won't be able
to see drives data. (The disk translator software will come with a
support floppy to allow that, if it hasn't been lost.)


The HOWTO's you want can be browsed at
http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/mini/    
see Loadlin+Win95, Largedisk, &others.

You may also consider that the older 486 will have an older serial port
chip (8250, or 16450) so external 56K modems won't be usuable (or
even 33.6)


----------------------------------
E-Mail: Mike Nelson <mnelson at bellsouth.net>
Date: 30-Apr-98
Time: 22:51:21

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