Rikintosh wrote on 2022-02-26, 18:46:

Is this a problem with my bios or msdos?

Sounds like you got the 504/528 MB limit. Very common in BIOS before July 1994. Even the MR BIOS from before July 1994 commonly have some instability or compatibility issues with drives larger than that.

Here's the article that I wrote up-- https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/Storage# … age_Limitations

Let me know if I need to make any improvements or corrections.

it's normal, update bios if available. or use a drive overlay, or get xt-ide adapter, or use a nic with a programmable boot rom and flash it with xt ide.

Does that WinBios support options like NORMAL/LARGE/LBA ?
If yes, make sure it's set to LBA.
If not, can't use >528 MB without special software, eg. Ontrack Disk Manager.

Unfortunately it does not support LBA. I have 2 problems: Firstly I don't have the tool to be able to do the dump, the TL866 is very expensive in my country. And the second problem is that my motherboard seems to be a clone (or maybe even original) IBM PS/2 486 socket 2, and no one has been able to identify it.

Guess I'll have to keep stuck with the ontrack disk manager 😒

A little off topic: I'm building a perfect build of Win 3.1 + msdos 6.22 on this machine (I've set up an identical configuration in PCEM to make transferring files and testing programs easier), I'm putting things of my own personal taste, and in At the end I will create a dump of the entire hd, which will be used for other 486 machines that I have, so I intend to upload this image to archive.org with a description of the content, for those interested...

Rikintosh wrote on 2022-02-27, 00:23:

Guess I'll have to keep stuck with the ontrack disk manager 😒

Yep, 'fraid so.
I wouldn't even bother with contemplating the BIOS, unless you'd know how to mod it yourself. (It has been done by mortals.)
That's simply how things were with early 486 and before.

Which is why you'll find so many HDDs with a nominal 540 MB from back then. The original Quantum Fireball, iirc. I got one for my parent's 386. Felt vast and fast for its day.
Remember, 640 k of RAM will do for anyone, so who even needs a hard drive?!?

If you don't like the thought of needing a low level tool for the boot drive: You could use a CF card in an IDE adapter as c:\, then those 504 MB will at least be fast. And a larger disk behind that.
If you want a CD drive as a third device, many ISA sound cards will provide a controller for that.

Many thanks to douglar for that article, seems like a good practical guide to the issue.

I used to refer to this one, it's a bit more in depth, if you're interested:
https://www.cs.uaf.edu/2012/fall/cs441/studen … hard_drive.html

Rikintosh wrote on 2022-02-27, 00:23:

Unfortunately it does not support LBA. I have 2 problems: Firstly I don't have the tool to be able to do the dump, the TL866 is very expensive in my country. And the second problem is that my motherboard seems to be a clone (or maybe even original) IBM PS/2 486 socket 2, and no one has been able to identify it.

Guess I'll have to keep stuck with the ontrack disk manager 😒

Hi there! If it helps, I could write XUB to an old spare EPROM and send it to you like a letter via mail..
If shipping cost to your place is ~5€ or less, it won't hurt me and I can send it to you for free.
Just let me know via PM, if you like.

Edit: Or a newer version of WinBIOS for your PC (with LBA), if there is one available online. 🙂

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-02-27, 03:52:

Yep, 'fraid so. I wouldn't even bother with contemplating the BIOS, unless you'd know how to mod it yourself. (It has been done […]
Show full quote

Rikintosh wrote on 2022-02-27, 00:23:

Guess I'll have to keep stuck with the ontrack disk manager 😒

Yep, 'fraid so.
I wouldn't even bother with contemplating the BIOS, unless you'd know how to mod it yourself. (It has been done by mortals.)
That's simply how things were with early 486 and before.

Which is why you'll find so many HDDs with a nominal 540 MB from back then. The original Quantum Fireball, iirc. I got one for my parent's 386. Felt vast and fast for its day.
Remember, 640 k of RAM will do for anyone, so who even needs a hard drive?!?

If you don't like the thought of needing a low level tool for the boot drive: You could use a CF card in an IDE adapter as c:\, then those 504 MB will at least be fast. And a larger disk behind that.
If you want a CD drive as a third device, many ISA sound cards will provide a controller for that.

Many thanks to douglar for that article, seems like a good practical guide to the issue.

I used to refer to this one, it's a bit more in depth, if you're interested:
https://www.cs.uaf.edu/2012/fall/cs441/studen … hard_drive.html

Here in Brazil HDs were very expensive, so I never had to worry about this problem, as I was never able to buy a HDD larger than 500mb for a 486... Then I had to live with a Pentium 133mhz with 1.3gb of HD, I used it until mid 2007, I don't even know how I managed to survive with 1.3gb 🤣

Jo22 wrote on 2022-02-27, 20:20:

Hi there! If it helps, I could write XUB to an old spare EPROM and send it to you like a letter via mail.. If shipping cost to y […]
Show full quote

Rikintosh wrote on 2022-02-27, 00:23:

Unfortunately it does not support LBA. I have 2 problems: Firstly I don't have the tool to be able to do the dump, the TL866 is very expensive in my country. And the second problem is that my motherboard seems to be a clone (or maybe even original) IBM PS/2 486 socket 2, and no one has been able to identify it.

Guess I'll have to keep stuck with the ontrack disk manager 😒

Hi there! If it helps, I could write XUB to an old spare EPROM and send it to you like a letter via mail..
If shipping cost to your place is ~5€ or less, it won't hurt me and I can send it to you for free.
Just let me know via PM, if you like.

Edit: Or a newer version of WinBIOS for your PC (with LBA), if there is one available online. 🙂

I don't think it would be viable, I'm out of the US. I think living with disk overlay won't be a big problem, I was imagining that it would be annoying to have to use disk overlay every time I needed to format the hd and reinstall the system, but I thought better of it, and I think it would be simpler if I did an image from the HD, and when I need it, I would just record the image on the HD...

Disk Overlays are not hard to work with. Just use one that has good documentation. Imaging a drive with an overlay can be a bit tricky depending on how you do it....and you cannot record the image to the same drive unless in a different partition but then again the Overlay can impact how it works...

Well, XUB's LBA translation scheme does work with modern OSes in general.
Some overlays may use older translation maps that won't. 🤷‍♂️

Also, Win9x (Win95) has built-in VXDs that work with certain DDOs or their respective DDO versions only.
If the wrong combination of DDO/Win9x is running, the MS-DOS part will see a different drive geometry than the Win9x GUI with native HDD drivers.

Anyway, if a DDO does replace those Win9x VXDs by its own VXDs, then everything should be fine.

That's one of the reasons I prefer XUB.
However, XUB itself isn't free from compatibility issues with Win95/9x.
There's a 386 version, that might be needed to not run Win9x in DOS compatibility mode or something along these lines.

Speaking of XTIDE Universal BIOS..
Some people said they had luck programming EPROMs or EEPROMs directly through the network card.
If that's true, then no prommer is needed.
Just some CMOS (E)EPROM and a compatible network card with a boot socket.