I guess that we are all right and all wrong.
The eras described below are very approximate and experience would vary depending on whether you bought PC junk or not.
Early 386 and prior: Cylinder Head and Sectors needed to be entered manually most of the time. Automatic CHS identification was emerging.
Early 486 and prior: Cylinder Head and Sectors needed to be entered manually some of the time. The BIOS could not always work them out for you. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylinder-head-sector
Later 486 (VL-Bus times) and early Pentium 1: The BIOS would make an even better stab at determining CHS values. If you installed a big disk, say 500MB+, manual assistance was required.
1996 onwards, so presumably later Pentium 1: LBA addressing was invented. Automatic identification started to work properly.
The eras described below are very approximate and experience would vary depending on whether you bought PC junk or not.
Early 386 and prior: Cylinder Head and Sectors needed to be entered manually most of the time. Automatic CHS identification was emerging.
Early 486 and prior: Cylinder Head and Sectors needed to be entered manually some of the time. The BIOS could not always work them out for you. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylinder-head-sector
Later 486 (VL-Bus times) and early Pentium 1: The BIOS would make an even better stab at determining CHS values. If you installed a big disk, say 500MB+, manual assistance was required.
1996 onwards, so presumably later Pentium 1: LBA addressing was invented. Automatic identification started to work properly.