Using ATA133 Hard Disks w/RAQ4 hardware and RAQ550 OS
From CobaltFAQs
You can use ATA133 hard disks with the RAQ4 (with the RAQ550 os installed). Please note this requires downloading, editing, compiling and installing a new kernel so do this at your own risk! You should use the 2.9.36 rom only. It will allow you to boot from the rom if the kernel fails. Newer roms will not allow you to boot from rom so be careful. Also, this process will not allow you to use more than 127 GB of the disk regardless of how large it is. This is a limitation of using LBA48 disks with a LBA24 controller.
Download the source for the kernel from ftp://ftp-eng.cobalt.com/pub/users/duncan/kernel/2.4.19C13/
The code is in the ide-disk.c:
static int probe_lba_addressing (ide_drive_t *drive, int arg)
{
drive->addressing = 0;
if (!(drive->id->cfs_enable_2 & 0x0400))
return -EIO;
/* drive->addressing = arg; */
drive->addressing = 0; /* forced to LBA24 */
return 0;
}
I just forced the value to return 0 regardless. This will prevent LBA48 hard drives from being detected as LBA48. In this case this is exactly what we want. They will be used as LBA24 drives even though they are LBA48 capable.
Then I followed the following steps to compile the kernel. This can take over an hour so be patient!
cd /usr/src/linux/ make dep make clean make boot make modules make modules_install cp vmlinux /boot/vmlinux-2.4.19C13_III gzip /boot/vmlinux-2.4.19C13_III cp vmlinux /boot/vmlinux-2.4.19C13_III bzip2 /boot/vmlinux-2.4.19C13_III cp System.map /boot/System-2.4.19C13_III.map rm /boot/vmlinux.gz rm /boot/vmlinux.bz2 ln -s /boot/vmlinux-2.4.19C13_III.gz /boot/vmlinux.gz ln -s /boot/vmlinux-2.4.19C13_III.bz2 /boot/vmlinux.bz2 rm /boot/System.map ln -s /boot/System-2.4.19C13_III.map /boot/System.map chmod 755 /boot/System.map
Note: The Cobalt RaQs cannot boot a BzImage kernel. However they can boot a GZip or BZip2 kernel. Also, replace 2.4.19C13_III with the correct revision for your kernel.
I created RPMs with these changes. You can download them from http://www.deherrera.net/cobalt/ These files are provided without warranty or support.
--ChrisD 18:57, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
