[ltp] Is the "large IDE drive geometry problem" purely a ThinkPad thing?

[linux-thinkpad@www.bm-soft.com]

Over that last several months, there have been numerous posts on this list
from users who need to work around IDE drive geometry problems for drives
that exceed a particular size. I am not referring to the new problem that
was introduced when we released a new 600E BIOS in November ("INVALID
GEOMETRY: 0 PHYSICAL HEADS?"), but rather the one in which drives over a
particular size (8gig) are not detected properly. I had been assuming that
it was simply a Linux IDE device driver problem, rather than a ThinkPad
problem. Is that a correct assumption, or is the problem really a
ThinkPad-specific, possibly due to a BIOS problem?

Last November, in the ThinkPad 600E BIOS update that was released, IBM
included an IDE geometry-related fix that supposedly corrects detection
problems on the larger drivers. This change, which also seems to be present
in the ThinkPad 600X BIOS, seems to be causing the new problem ("INVALID
GEOMETRY: 0 PHYSICAL HEADS?"). Since other OS's (Windows 95/98/NT4/2000)
don't exhibit a problem, I would have to suspect that there are multiple
techniques for determining the drive geometry, and that our change broke
the method that Linux uses but not the one the other OS's use.

I've never studied the Linux IDE driver. I guess now is the time. Is the
kernel mailing list the correct forum for discussing/debugging this
problem?

-- Keith

Keith Frechette
Linux Development Lead, Mobile Computing Options and Software Development
IBM Research Triangle Park, North Carolina
kfrechet@us.ibm.com / 919-543-3761 / TieLine:441-3761


----- The Linux ThinkPad mailing list -----
The linux-thinkpad mailing list home page is at:
http://www.bm-soft.com/~bm/tp_mailing.html