Well, Goldie, I don't understand one thing..... Your OS is supposed to communicate with BIOS for any device queries. So if your BIOS itself is not reporting beyond 8GB, how can any OS detect more than that?? ( Correct me if I'm wrong........ )
Yep... you are wrong. The BIOS used to play a major role during the 16-bit real mode days. DOS used the bios for I/O as did Win3.x and (I think) Win95.
Modern OSes talk directly to the disk controller, so after the kernel is loaded the BIOS has no role to play. Thus it is important for the Kernel to be located somewhere the BIOS can access it, but after that it doesn't matter.
For Linux this means LILO uses the BIOS but the Kernel doesn't.
Maybe, the best solution could be to upgrade the BIOS or change the motherboard / BIOS chip. By this, you'll get rid of any more problems to come. The new BIOS chips cost about 500 - 800 bucks, I'm not sure just check it out with a h/w vendor.
Its not that simple... BIOSes are very hardware dependent
[snip]
The 1024 Cyl. problem is easy to solve. Just use LBA32 extensions of new LILO.
If you BIOS doesn't detect large drives it is quite likely that it doesn't support LBA32 either.
LBA32 is a BIOS funda, not LILO.