SCO UNIX 3.2v4 on Diamond Motherboard with 1Gb or larger drives

There is a potential problem when installing SCO UNIX 3.2v4.x on this motherboard with an IDE drive containing more than 2048 cylinders. The problem detailed here has been seen with the IBM DPEA-31080 (1Gb) IDE drive. The installation will complete satisfactorily, but will report stage 1 boot failure on re-boot.

The solution is to change the IDE translation in the system BIOS set-up from Extended CHS to Standard CHS. This should ideally be done prior to installation, but in practice has been found to work after installation as well.

This problem does not appear to be an issue with drives of a lower capacity than 1Gb, and does not affect installations of SCO OpenServer 5.0.

The problem will probably occur with other large drives - the problem being with drives larger than 2048 cylinders which is the maximum size that can be addressed by SCO Unix 3.2v4.

We advise that where drive cylinders are reported as being greater than 2048 during the installation routine, that this is set back to 2048 to avoid problems. These parameters can be viewed/changed at installation time by choosing the view current disk parameters option during a fully configurable installation of SCO 3.2v4. (Viewing and changing these options in 3.2v4 has been previously referred to in IPB 3189 and IPB 3181).

This action will not be necessary for installations of SCO OpenServer 5.0, as it does not have the same cylinder and filesystem size limitations of 3.2v4. (For details of how to use the fully configurable options in SCO OpenServer 5.0, refer to IPB 3198).

----------oOo----------