Seagate ST31220A emulation mode. \ VOGONS

Seagate ST31220A emulation mode.

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First post, by Baoran

Posted on 2017-05-06, 09:55

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Does anyone has any experience of using this hard drive in older systems with 500MB hard drive size limitation? It is a 1Gb hard drive that is suppose to have dual drive emulation mode that is suppose to make it look like two 500Mb hard drives.
I also have another question. If I were to use such hard drive in a 386 system, would there be any way to put optical drive in the system in addition to that hard drive? Basically I am asking if it is possible to have multiple ide controllers one having this hard drive in the emulation mode and second one having ide optical drive.

Reply 1 of 8, by Koltoroc

Posted on 2017-05-06, 10:45

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You could use a soundblaster with IDE interface as a secondary or tertiary IDE Channel for that. It was common back in the day.

Reply 2 of 8, by derSammler

Posted on 2017-05-06, 10:47

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I would rather use a disk manager like EZ-Drive to get access to the full 1 gb and leave the emulation mode aside.

Reply 3 of 8, by Baoran

Posted on 2017-05-06, 13:37

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It would still be nice to know if you can setup multiple ide channels on 386 or 486 using multiple ISA cards that have IDE interface.

Reply 4 of 8, by derSammler

Posted on 2017-05-06, 13:51

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Of course you can, and Koltoroc already gave an example. 😉

Reply 5 of 8, by Baoran

Posted on 2017-05-06, 14:07

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How about bios limitations in number of IDE devices?

Reply 6 of 8, by Koltoroc

Posted on 2017-05-06, 15:24

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Baoran wrote:
How about bios limitations in number of IDE devices?

Only affects hard drives, unless the controller has its own bios. ATAPI drives (CD, DVD, etc) are independent from the bios and just need drivers.

Reply 7 of 8, by Baoran

Posted on 2017-05-06, 16:04

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Koltoroc wrote:
Only affects hard drives, unless the controller has its own bios. ATAPI drives (CD, DVD, etc) are independent from the bios and just need drivers.

Thanks. It is good to know.
One more question. In many isa ide controller cards you can set ide address using jumpers. Is this something you need to change if you add a second card that has ide interface like a sound card?

Reply 8 of 8, by Jo22

Posted on 2017-05-06, 20:02

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Baoran wrote:
It would still be nice to know if you can setup multiple ide channels on 386 or 486 using multiple ISA cards that have IDE interface.

286/386 BIOSes do usually only support the primary IDE channel.
There's a tool set for DOS, though, 4hdtools, to overcome that limitation.
http://www.sundby.com/retro/copied_web_sites/ … /4hdd/index.htm

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