Hi Bernd! > > I just noticed that TigerDirect is advertising a P-4 3.2GHz system ... > > running FreeDOS! > nice indeed. 160GB harddisk..I wonder if FreeDOS (kernel) handles > LBA48-addressing correctly
Not sure about the UDMA driver (might reach only the first 128 GB), but at least FreeDOS kernel and LBAcache use 32bit variables for sector numbers. Old BIOSes have a limit at 128 GB, but modern LBA48 BIOSes allow sector numbers with 32 or even 64 bits (although only the low 48 bits are allowed to be nonzero). So if your BIOS allows disks above 128 GB size, FreeDOS will be able to use the first 2048 GB (2 TB) of your disk :-). Bad enough, some BIOSes even get confused with harddisks above 32 GB size. In that case you can often configure (jumper / config tool) the disk to report as 32 GB size, but then you need a way to tell FreeDOS that accessing LBA addresses beyond that is allowed (I think loading EzDrive / OnTrack / ... is not needed: The BIOS may have detection problems, but at least LBA style access should work just fine for up to 128 GB with any BIOS). Actually the system is P4 3.2 GHz with HyperThreading, 512 MB RAM, 160 GB Serial ATA, onboard LAN, graphics with 128 MB RAM... Would be nice to know if the LAN works in DOS and whether the VGA supports VESA VBE 2.0 or even 3.0 (DOS friendly). The virtual 2nd CPU (HyperThreading) is definitely ignored by DOS. Did anybody test if HIMEM can handle more than 2 GB RAM, by the way? Or are there problems even below that? BONUS WISH: Please make HIMEM abort safely on pre-386 computers. That would allow us to have DEVICE=himem... in the config of ODIN and the FreeDOS CD-ROM and the FreeDOS which you can create by copying the CD-ROM contents to harddisk and run the installer (or, on PCs which can boot from CD-ROM, of course by booting the installer from CD-ROM). One autodetection less, particularily important because the kernel has no "if CPU 386+ then DEVICE=..." syntax support in fdconfig at all, and a MENU for that would be annoying (welcome to the super modern FreeDOS installer which supports harddisks of up to 2 TB... please tell us if your PC is less than 15 years old...) ;-). Eric <http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1044843&Sku=BTO%20988683&SRCCODE=GOOPROD&CMP=OTC-FROOGLE> ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: YOU BE THE JUDGE. Be one of 170 Project Admins to receive an Apple iPod Mini FREE for your judgement on who ports your project to Linux PPC the best. Sponsored by IBM. Deadline: Sept. 24. Go here: http://sf.net/ppc_contest.php _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
