Need help installing - can't find hdd

["freefood" <freefood@gateway.net>]

I cannot figure out how to get the debian boot program to recognize my
hdd. I have a 13.5GB hdd, so I know there are issues with drives larger than
8GB, but I don't know how to resolve them. This is what I've done:

hard boot using rescue floppy.
F4 info screen says that I need to specify params for hd and floppy
hit <enter> at boot prompt to try default/auto-detect.
choose color monitor
it then says No hard disk drives could be found and wants me to specify
 network params since it thinks I'm diskless. I notice a console message
 that is obscured by the install windows. Some of the things I can read
 are ":hdd:I", "-floppy", "ide-flop".

I retried this procedure using "linux hd=16383,16,63" - which I think is the
upper limit that IDE drives can report. If I'm supposed to put the "real"
values, then
I don't know where to find them. Can't find them in the BIOS setup or on my
drive label itself or at the manufacturer website. All I can determine from
the specs is 16383 cyl, 16 logical heads, 6 physical heads, and 26,520,480
total sectors.

I also tried this param "hda=16383,16,63".
This time the boot procedure hung for a while and I could see these relevant
messages:
hda: no response {status = 0xff}
hda: non-IDE drive, CHS=16383,16,63
hda: drive not ready for command
ide0: reset timed-out, status = 0xff

Then the config stuff hangs for a long time in between steps with the
message "Please wait. The installation system is determining the current
state of your system...". I assume it keeps trying to probe the drive. I
went to the Partition a hard drive step and selected /dev/hda (only option)
and I got "Fatal Error: Cannot read disk drive".

Any help is much appreciated. Here's the relevant info for my system.

Gateway Performance 500
Western Digital AC313500 13.5GB, EIDE
Promise Ultra ATA/66 drive controller
128M ram
win98

I partioned my disk using fips and left 2GB at the end for linux, which is
fat32 formatted.


thanks mucho!
jeff