problem with 4.4 installboot

[Michael]

Josh Grosse wrote:
> For Michael, and those on the Newbies-list following his installboot problem:
>
> He sent me his bsd.rd, and I examined the biosboot and second stage boot
> loader, and ran a test install with it, too.  No trouble was found.  AFAICT,
> there is no problem with his CD image.
>
> Because biosboot was installed and executing properly ("ERR M" won't be 
> produced without that), and the second stage boot loader not only had the
> proper magic number in it's first sector (0x7F "ELF"), and worked properly in
> my test install, I now suspect a BIOS limitation reaching the disk sectors
> containing the second stage boot loader (/boot).  Prior to OpenBSD 3.5, there
> was a software limitation requiring /boot be located within the first 8.4GB of
> the hard drive.  However, BIOS limitations (such as 504MB, 2GB, 4GB, 8.4GB,
> 32GB, 64GB, etc.) are the most likely reason for the problem.
>
> It is my guess -- it's just a guess -- that each time a ramdisk kernel copies
> /usr/mdec/boot to the hard drive's /boot, it's just luck where the LBAs end up
> residing; sometimes below the BIOS limit, sometimes, unluckily above.
>
> I've asked Michael to share the starting and ending LBAs of his "a" partition;
> it may cross one of these boundaries of his hard drive.
>
>   
I think I have all this right from fdisk and disklabel:
40 gig hd with 78125000 sectors
A6 starts 12546765 size 13350015 for 25896780
"a" partition starts 12546765 and ends 13366080

bios reads my 120 gig hd just fine, so I may try installing 4.4 on it
today to see what happens. I also have an older IBM 350mhz machine I may
try also (if time allows today).

Thanks Josh for your help. Much appreciated :)