At 08:45 AM 11/21/01 +0000, you wrote: >Can anyone set me straight on the situation regarding large HDs and >(early) BIOS limitations? I seem to remember a limit of 8.4Gb for 486 >and early 586 BIOSes, but does that mean that HDs > 8.4Gb won't work at >all on these motherboards, or will the space above 8.4Gb just be >unreachable?
Actually it's 2.2GB if my experiences are correct. I had a 3.2G drive on a 486 and could only get 2.2GB using partitioning. Partition magic can split up a drive nicer than fdisk. I don't know how it'll handle something even larger. I really don't think you'll be pleased with the mix between a more modern 20GB drive and your old system. I hope I'm corrected. >I know that one can get special drivers to overcome the >limit, but this is going to be for Linux mainly, so the possibility of >using a DOS driver doesn't exist. Ohhhh, Linux is different! Then maybe it's 8.4 total, maybe more. Again I'd recommend partition magic to divide up the drive, it can format for linux and is easy to use in it's dos mode. I've got a disk here that just has a basic DOS7 for win98 and the DOS pqmagic.exe on it. I am able to use it on a 486/66 with 32MB RAM so if you've that much it would work. I wouldn't recommend the whole PQ partition magic suite, the rest is dross and overstuff meant for win$ Something you can try is to enter the drive parameters in your BIOS under USER type 49 (usually is type 49 but maybe different in yours) and see if it can accept the parameters. This you can do without buying the drive. You could also try advertising a request for a smaller drive. Many folks think these things are too valueless to advertise and sell and just leave them sitting on a shelf. -- For a country to be free it's citizens must have a way to defy unjust laws. The new electronic snooping devices are a step in the direction of fascism. Consequently I am appending the following Carnivore Confusion noise to all outgoing email: "Allah; America; Anthrax; arms; bomb; border; capitalist; communicate; customs; death; delivery; economic; imperialist; jihad; plane; PGP; rendevous; trucks; war; weapons; U.S.A.; end transmission
