It's probably a hardware limitation, most if not all 386 boards could only really handle hard drives below 500mb.

cj_reha wrote:

It's probably a hardware limitation, most if not all 386 boards could only really handle hard drives below 500mb.

I have this suspicion as well. If that is the case it's not too big of a deal as I can change the CF card right from the front of the system if needed. I just can't hot swap them out but the boot time is very fast so it's not long to wait on that. 🤣

It's definitely the classic BIOS/IDE limitation. You could use some DDO software though.

konc wrote:

It's definitely the classic BIOS/IDE limitation. You could use some DDO software though.

I prefer to use the hardware natively rather than adding DDO software into it. I just purchased 5 new 1GB PATA compact flash cards very cheaply so I think I have enough capacity now for plenty of DOS games even though I will only be using 500MB from each card. 😀

The 1024 cylinder limit:
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/sizeMB504-c.html

I have the same limit on my 486 motherboard. And like you, I'd rather not use DDO software, so I just install what I'm going to play, rather than have a ton of games installed that I may or may not play.

clueless1 wrote:

The 1024 cylinder limit:
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/sizeMB504-c.html

Thanks for the info. Looks like there are several other limits beyond this one as well as I went through that website. A few I knew about and others I did not.

If you're going to install a network card, you may want to add XT-IDE BIOS (AT version) to its boot socket.
It's free and uses auto-detection by default (no utility required). All you need to figure out is how to get the ROM programmed.

Maybe a fellow Vogoner can do that for you. Or you get yourself a cheap EPROM programmer.
A flash ROM maybe also works, if the network card supports the programming.

Personally, XT-IDE BIOS works just fine in pure DOS for me.
Real OSes perhaps require something else.

For this 386DX 40MHz system, the only expansion cards going in it are an I/O, video, and sound card. I might put a NIC in the 486DX2 66MHz build I am also working on but if not then likely in the Pentium 100MHz system that I am in the early planning stages on.

Okay, then you're pretty much stuck with 500MiB, I'm afraid. Other solutions exist, but involve some additional hardware.
A SCSI controller+SCSI-bridge, an ISA solid-state drive, a Year2000 card, etc.

The only remaining software solutions (except DDOs) are: patching the BIOS or using a DOS driver.
In case of the DOS driver, there's something I know of. It is intended for IDE drives on the secondary channel.

Perhaps it can be used to install a large drive (DOM, CF card) as a storage medium for games or data.
Details are mentioned here: http://oldcomputer.info/hacks/4hdd/index.htm

Personally, I don't think it's that big a deal. Games that are playable on a 386 are typically <20MB, and often <1MB, so 500MB will be plenty of space. Let's say average size of 10MB, take away 50MB for OS and utilities, so 450/10=room for about 45 games. If you also plan to have Win3.1 on there, then I guess you'll have space for about 35-40 games then.

Jo22 wrote:

If you're going to install a network card, you may want to add XT-IDE BIOS (AT version) to its boot socket. It's free and uses a […]
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If you're going to install a network card, you may want to add XT-IDE BIOS (AT version) to its boot socket.
It's free and uses auto-detection by default (no utility required). All you need to figure out is how to get the ROM programmed.

Maybe a fellow Vogoner can do that for you. Or you get yourself a cheap EPROM programmer.
A flash ROM maybe also works, if the network card supports the programming.

Personally, XT-IDE BIOS works just fine in pure DOS for me.
Real OSes perhaps require something else.

I recently tested this solution on one of my legacy PC's and can confirm that it works quite well.
Just a couple of steps to follow before your flash the EEPROM chip and then to also make sure that you configure the network card to be able to boot from the network card.

Dealing with the 500MB limit is not that bad since I have the IDE to CF device mounted in a 3.5 bay that is accessible from the front for easy replacement when desired.

Talking about SCSI though... Just recently I found out about a SCSI to SD device that reportedly works just as well as the IDE to CF devices. Depending on how things go with my current setup I might get fancy and invest in that device and a SCSI controller card but I will wait and see. I may not need to be switching CF cards too often and even then it's a quick thing to do. 500MB is a pretty sizeable capacity when is comes to just DOS games.