muta...@gmail.com  wrote:   
   > I vaguely recall (from circa 1990) configuring my BIOS   
   > to say what cylinders/heads/sectors I wanted my hard   
   > disk to be.   
   >   
   > Why was the end user involved in doing that?   
      
   Early discs did not have command to read needed info from   
   the drive.  Testing was problematic as on 1990 drives   
   cylinders/heads/sectors was really fake and on some drives   
   first access determined translation used by drive.   
   I do not know when exactly, IIRC around 1995 reading   
   parameters from drives was reasonably reliable (but   
   purely manual setting was an option for old drives).   
      
      
   --   
                                 Waldek Hebisch   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)