A while ago I asked for advice. I have a 486SX-25 with a 126 Mbyte HDD,
and was concerned that if the HDD failed I could not find a replacement
small enough to work with the BIOS. I received a number of helpful replies:
Fraser Farrell (http://www.dove.net.au/~fraserf/) suggested I purchase
another HDD that came equipped with Disk Manager (from OnTrack Computer
Systems). Disk Manager writes a short piece of code to the boot sector
which translates the disk parameters into something the BIOS is happy to
work with. He reminded me of the limitation on partition size placed by DOS
and Win 3.1x; and suggested I get a 1-2GB HDD now and keep for The Day Your
Disk Dies. He also advised me that with 2 HDD's in my system I'd need
concern myself with their master-slave relationship via jumper settings.
But let's not go there. His assessment is confirmed by Yolanda
([EMAIL PROTECTED]) and Gary, who both report that Disk Manager is the only
software that never gives either of them an ounce of grief.
On the other hand, Ben A L Jemmett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, reports
several horror stories with the program and warns against its use. This
negative assessment is seconded by Mike Web ([EMAIL PROTECTED]).
Chad A. Fernandez ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) suggested my attention was
misplaced, and recommended I start looking for a case, motherboard, I/O
board, and video card; because he believes the the drive will outlast the
motherboard.
Mike Webb offered two solutions, one hardware and one software. Programs
like Disk Manager, EZ-Drive, MaxBlast, and others, are usually provided
with the HDD, while would enable me to set up an EIDE hard drive on an
older machine. He recommends the hardware route, however, an add-on board
(his favorite is the GSI Model 1C) that adds BIOS support for the larger
drives, and autodetects the parameters on bootup. Last he knew, the GSI
Model 1C boards were still available for about $30 at
<http://www.insight.com> and <http://www.cdw.com>.
Ole Juul ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) recommended Anydrive, a small program which
allows one to specify any size drive. He reports that it is easy to use and
designed to solve just such problems with older BIOS's. It's run at boot
time and does not take up any RAM. The file is 12K compressed and he will
send it to anyone who wants.
Dale Mentzer suggested tweeking the BIOS, as follows: "Most BIOS's have
one or two choices in the drive setup for a user defined HD parameters. Go
into you BIOS and scroll through the various drive types and see if there
is a type 47 or 48 (IIRC). Unless somebody has already defined one before
(unlikely) you can then proceed to input the parameters of whatever drive
you are installing. Of course some larger drives might not work to their
full capacity if the BIOS does not support them (mostly drives more than
540 megs)." Chad A. Fernandez agreed.
I thank all of you for your advice and apologize if I have neglected to
include comments from others. With all this excellent advice, I'm going to
have to think about which of the ideas to put in place.
Paul Crable
Portland OR
Paul Crable
Portland OR
To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with
unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message.
Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies.
