Old box, new install, Grub fails error 18

[harryc]

From the 'Warty' install notes. Hoary should be similar - 

"== Older computers with large hard disks (GRUB Error '18') ==

Some older computers have a BIOS that can only access the first part of
a large hard disk.  These computers may not work with the default disk
setup from the Warty installer.

The GRUB bootloader, once it is completely started up, does not use the
BIOS and can access the entire hard disk.  But if some of the GRUB files
happen to be in the part of the hard disk that the BIOS cannot access,
then GRUB will not be able to completely start up.  When this problem
happens, GRUB will print the message "Error 18" and the computer will
not boot up.

To sucessfully install Warty on a computer with this problem, you must
manually partition the hard disk, and create a special partition where
GRUB and the boot kernel images will go.  This special partition must
be at the beginning of the hard disk, to make sure that the BIOS can
access it.  It can be a very small partition; 32 MB is a good size.  It
must be mounted as "/boot".  Once you have the "/boot" partition
created, partition the rest of the disk as you like."


-- 
harryc