https://www.cnet.com/products/asus-p2b-mother … 1-i440bx/specs/ this is the motherboard i have and the wierd issue with it is that even after ive done like a power supply swap and did servral idea cable swaps on the build, its not detecting the hard drive at all and these hard drives i have are fully functional, mainly 40 gig drives, even the hard drive finder in the bios hangs up.
You have to upgrade BIOS that support HDDs larger than 32GB.
wrote:You have to upgrade BIOS that support HDDs larger than 32GB.
how would i do that without a system on it?
Floppies, smaller capacity HDD with boot sector, burned compact disk with boot sector and all the software, USB thumb drive (if supported), ROM programmer or hot-flashing method.
wrote:Floppies, smaller capacity HDD with boot sector, burned compact disk with boot sector and all the software, USB thumb drive (if supported), ROM programmer or hot-flashing method.
i got servral cdroms and was thinking that method.
Also, if i installed it with dos 5,2 can i just run the update tool from that?
as long as the system can boot to a prompt where you can run the .exe flash tool you'll be fine
edit
PS
You can find the BIOS and flash tool here, the beta bios is safe to use
https://www.asus.com/support/Download/1/2/1/6/10
This would waste a PCI slot, but an alternative would be to get a PCI IDE controller (e.g. Promise Ultra66/100/133.) I have used the Ultra66 card with 80 GB hard drives, and even though the BIOS shows it as a ~10 gig drive, it shows up as the full 80 GB in Windows 98.
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The best way is to make a floppy with boot and copy the flash tool , the new bios file and select backup old bios just in case
Ive fiddled more with the computer and sat in a 20 gig hard drive, and now the drive shows up, but its doing a memory count loop and if i skip it, the computer runs normal, does it mean something is clearly wrong with the bios?
Some bioses are counting multiple times the ram. Is it really looping constantly ?
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wrote:Some bioses are counting multiple times the ram. Is it really looping constantly ?
Yes it is, even with a lower memory stick in it, the lowest i have are 120, or a lonely 512 in it.
wrote:wrote:Some bioses are counting multiple times the ram. Is it really looping constantly ?
Yes it is, even with a lower memory stick in it, the lowest i have are 120, or a lonely 512 in it.
Just to clarify, is your P2B actually (kinda) working with a single 512MB DIMM?
wrote:wrote:wrote:Some bioses are counting multiple times the ram. Is it really looping constantly ?
Yes it is, even with a lower memory stick in it, the lowest i have are 120, or a lonely 512 in it.
Just to clarify, is your P2B actually (kinda) working with a single 512MB DIMM?
Yes! its sorta working with a 512, ive even had the cmos wiped to see if that did the trick wich im afriad it did not, im thinking there is something wrong with the bios.
wrote:This would waste a PCI slot, but an alternative would be to get a PCI IDE controller (e.g. Promise Ultra66/100/133.) I have used the Ultra66 card with 80 GB hard drives, and even though the BIOS shows it as a ~10 gig drive, it shows up as the full 80 GB in Windows 98.
i do have a ide cable raid controller on hhand, and most of my pci slots aint used to much, so maybe ill give it a try.
wrote:Yes! its sorta working with a 512, ive even had the cmos wiped to see if that did the trick wich im afriad it did not, im thinki […]
wrote:Some bioses are counting multiple times the ram. Is it really looping constantly ?
wrote:Yes it is, even with a lower memory stick in it, the lowest i have are 120, or a lonely 512 in it.
wrote:Just to clarify, is your P2B actually (kinda) working with a single 512MB DIMM?
Yes! its sorta working with a 512, ive even had the cmos wiped to see if that did the trick wich im afriad it did not, im thinking there is something wrong with the bios.
440BX isn't supposed to work with modules larger then 256MB. Afaik this chipset shouldn't be able to support it (doesn't matter if it's due to the higher density or a larger number of chips).
This module may be being problematic due to this.
wrote:440BX isn't supposed to work with modules larger then 256MB. Afaik this chipset shouldn't be able to support it (doesn't matter if it's due to the higher density or a larger number of chips).
This module may be being problematic due to this.
^This. Try 2x256MB
I built a floppy disk that had the BIOS Flash Utility and the new BIOS binary file on it. I also made a 2nd floppy into a Windows 98 boot floppy. That gets you to a basic DOS prompt. From there, you swap out the floppies and re-flash the BIOS with the latest version.
After I did that, it recognized a Western Digital 40GB drive no problem. It even recognized the new 600MHz Katmai Pentium III I stuck in there. It's been running stable since.
NOTE: I'm using 2x128MB PC-100 SDRAM sticks for 256MB total. This is severe overkill for Windows 98...just saying.
Hmm, ill try and solve the problem dureing summer vacation, to busy with the situation dureing week days.
hey guys, i treid here this afternoon to flash the bios, and that semd to get the computer back on track, thanks all.
