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Old July 17th 19, 02:36 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
T. Ment
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Posts: 87
Default sil3114 sata card

On Wed, 17 Jul 2019 01:15:49 +0000, T. Ment wrote:

DOS sets heads=16, but linux fisk sets heads=255. That's what causes the
DOS copy failure. 16 heads is the limit if you want to use DOS with this
card.


Some final observations:

With the DOS partition working right (heads=16), I flashed the BIOS back
to 5.0.73. The flash worked. That's the trick to prevent updflash from
failing. You must use a DOS partition sized within the limit the sil3114
BIOS supports. To ensure that, use DOS fdisk on a wiped drive and let it
choose its maximum partition size.

Even if you don't use DOS, create a DOS partition anyway, so linux fdisk
uses the same geometry when adding other partitions. Otherwise, you will
get weird linux errors when booting.

Using the older 5.0.73 BIOS, I wiped the disk and let DOS fisk create
its maximum partition again. This time, it set heads=255 to give a 2GB
partition like linux fdisk.

The newer 5.4.0.3 and 5.5.0.0 probably support larger hard drives, and
heads=16 was a trade off required for that. I don't know what the hard
drive size limits are for any of these BIOS, but they all work with my
320GB.

If you get a card with a 5.4.0.3 BIOS and don't care about DOS partition
size, don't mess with it. Flashing with updflash is risky. It won't work
if your DOS partition head count is not compatible with the current BIOS
on the sil3114 card.