On Friday 22 November 2002 11.24, Tom Emerson wrote:
[begin history lesson] older "boot" code only accessed the system via the BIOS, and BIOS level disk-read calls are limited to 1024 tracks -- modern boot loaders (like linux itself) do not rely entirely on the BIOS, so they can "read" the entire disk. [end history lesson]
Both lilo and grub use BIOS calls to read hard drives. This is from the grub FAQ <quote> @item Can GRUB boot my operating system from over 8GB hard disks? That depends on your BIOS and your operating system. You must make sure that your drive is accessible in LBA mode. Generally, that is configurable in BIOS setting utility. Read the manual for your BIOS for more information. Furthermore, some operating systems (i.e. DOS) cannot access any large disk, so the problem is not solved by any kind of boot loader. GNU/Hurd and GNU/Linux can surely boot from such a large disk. @item Can I put Stage2 into a partition which is over 1024 cylinders? Yes, if your BIOS supports the LBA mode. </quote> The problem has been with lilo not supporting LBA until relatively recently, as well as buggy BIOSes not implementing it very well, from what I read. Also, I suspect that in order to avoid using the BIOS, lilo/grub would need to have their own ide/scsi drivers embedded.