This aptiva will live again!!!

[TheRealSully]

With your help that is.... Hello, and thanks in advance.

I am trying to install a new hard drive on an old aptiva.
Here are the vitals:

• HD: 250GB WD2500JB
  BIOS: 6M2EN5M
  BIOS DATE: 6/30/99

Some other info that you might find helpful is that the computer is an IBM Aptiva (Model # 2171-545).

The Environment
The drive bay only has space for two drive (i.e. two hard drives or a hard drive and a floppy drive). I was planning on replacing the old drive and installing debian on the new 250GB drive. I was able to install debain despite the bios improperly recognizing the drive size.

The problem
With the os installed I booted the computer and get the message

Grub loading, please wait ...
Error 18

I found that, Error 18 is returned when the selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS. Upgrade the BIOS, right? Hmmm. Sounds so easy.
IBM doesn't support many of its older products anymore. I have had trouble locating a flash utility for my box let alone a newer BIOS to upgrade to.

I have googled and tried more things than I could list here.... and now my relentless searching has brought me to you. So what do you think. Give it to me straight, Doc.

[ajzchips]

I have a feeling a board that old will never support an HDD over 120GB...

[NickS]

I assume that the Debian installer prepared the disk itself, so it wasn't limited by the BIOS? Can the installer partition the drive to make the bootable partition within the reach of the BIOS?

[TheRealSully]

Sorry I didn't see your post until now. I have been vey busy.

Yes, I let the installer partion the disk. I don't understand your question though. If you post a suggestion I'll try it.

Let's see... the boot partition. As far as I know that should be the very first thing on the disk. If I am right that means the boot partition should be at relatively low addresses compared to what is available. I could be wrong, and if I am please explain the reality to me.

Thanks.

[rjenkins]

As far as I can remember, the Grub boot restriction is:

Either-
The whole of the / (root) partition must be within the first 1024 Cylinders of the drive,

or-
You must create a /boot partition as the first partition on the drive. The size needed could be anything from 32 - 128MB depending on the distro etc., 128 should be OK for most systems.

You still need the / (root) of course, but as long as this is after /boot the size should only be limited by the hardware.