>8 GB requires LBA support, which to my knowledge no 486 board ever offered. You can always use drive overlay software to fully use the hdd's capacity.

The BIOS does offer LBA support and it does recognize the HDD as a 10GB one so something somewhere is either broken/buggy or the BIOS I have is not the best one.

needless to say that the HDD is partitioned/formatted correctly and that it works fine with either XTIDE BIOS or in another system that has no HDD-size issues...

But that's with the patched BIOS, correct? Probably that's were the problems are coming from. What did the 1.72f BIOS with the 10 GB HDD?

Same for 1.72f , the BIOS patches have nothing to do with HDD functions (it's about revealing some hidden options and re-enable the PS/2 mouse support that got canned with the official 4.00A BIOS)

whats the best bios for this board? i read there was a bios lost on an olf ftp that had PNP fixed. maybe some pnp cards like gravis did not work?

either way im fine with the 8GB HDD, ther isnt much i want to add to it.

whats the best bios for this board? i read there was a bios lost on an olf ftp that had PNP fixed. maybe some pnp cards like gravis did not work?

either way im fine with the 8GB HDD, ther isnt much i want to add to it.

its a nice board. sadly it only boots with some of my FPM RAM. no EDO...and not all FPM

No idea what's the best BIOS, I use 500A linked above and called it a day.
Indeed it's picky about RAM but it is indeed a nice board so it is forgiven 🤣

Let's necro this. I'd love to know if anyone ever found a solution for using big IDE drives on these boards

maxtherabbit wrote on 2021-04-25, 15:12:

Let's necro this. I'd love to know if anyone ever found a solution for using big IDE drives on these boards

I just created a thread asking about how to even change the bios on the 4DPS, and after reading this thread, I would also like to see what is up with the HDD limit. I may look into drive overlay software. I have the one by rloew, though that is for terabyte drives and probably not for boards like this. I want to use 64-128gb CF cards with an IDE adapter.

I am re-necroing this. My previous 4DPS fried, and I acquired a replacement. The BIOS is 1.5 and is refusing to properly see 8gb SD-to-CF-to-IDE setups (it sees a 2gb SD card so it isn't the set up.) This board has that UV BIOS chip so I can't flash it and am seeking a solution (I have to find and re-read an old thread.) Is there information on the limits with the 1.5 BIOS? I ordered an 8GB CF card before discovering this issue. Also, can anyone recommend decent overlay software I could use with this board? I will be running MS-DOS and Win 3.11.

I hope to solve the BIOS issue so that I can use larger drives and store some ISOs.

Scythifuge wrote on 2022-10-05, 02:45:

Also, can anyone recommend decent overlay software I could use with this board? I will be running MS-DOS and Win 3.11.

WD/Micro House EZ-Drive?

The Micro House FastDisk replacement for Windows 3.1x worked well for me.
It can handle HDDs of up to 8 GB of total capacity.
That's same limit that MS-DOS 6.22 has, afaik.

It's available way down on this site: http://win31.de/edrivers.htm

Thatt being said, I didn't much use the EZ-Drive DDO itself, however.

(By total capacity I mean physical capacity, such as using an 8 GB CF card.

Since these programs, especially the DDO, interfere with the CF/HDD directly,
it might be possible that they cannot be fooled properly if needed.

Fooled, as using a 120GB HDD and then choosing a smaller drive geometry in BIOS.

For this to work, a drive cap must set, maybe.
HDDs from Seagate have a capacity limiting feature
in their optional available service software.
Phil from Phil's Computerlab covered this in a video, I vaguely remember.)

Jo22 wrote on 2022-10-05, 04:36:

WD/Micro House EZ-Drive? […]
Show full quote

Scythifuge wrote on 2022-10-05, 02:45:

Also, can anyone recommend decent overlay software I could use with this board? I will be running MS-DOS and Win 3.11.

WD/Micro House EZ-Drive?

The Micro House FastDisk replacement for Windows 3.1x worked well for me.
It can handle HDDs of up to 8 GB of total capacity.
That's same limit that MS-DOS 6.22 has, afaik.

It's available way down on this site: http://win31.de/edrivers.htm

Thatt being said, I didn't much use the EZ-Drive DDO itself, however.

(By total capacity I mean physical capacity, such as using an 8 GB CF card.

Since these programs, especially the DDO, interfere with the CF/HDD directly,
it might be possible that they cannot be fooled properly if needed.

Fooled, as using a 120GB HDD and then choosing a smaller drive geometry in BIOS.

For this to work, a drive cap must set, maybe.
HDDs from Seagate have a capacity limiting feature
in their optional available service software.
Phil from Phil's Computerlab covered this in a video, I vaguely remember.)

Thank you for the tips! After I made the post, I went back to tinkering with the board and my collection of cards and adapters. It turns out that even with BIOS 1.5, all I need to do is set the hard drives to AUTO in the BIOS. The problem was that despite having two of the "same" CF/SD adapter cards, they each must have different chips inside, because one would work with only a 2gb SD card, while the other card displays 8GB but the system sees the total 32GB of that particular card. It seems that whatever chip which inside that adapter doesn't talk to the 4DPS properly. Thus, I am hoping that the 8GB CF card I ordered works, or that perhaps I can put a 32GB in each slot (my CF drive for my 486 is a dual slot.) It looks like as long as I have certain CF cards and/or certain CF/SD adapters, they will be seen by the system. It seems that I will be able to achieve my MS-DOS game library and early 90's Win/DOS app storage goals.

I am still hoping to upgrade the BIOS, so I have been watching videos of people using a UV device to wipe the chip and then putting it in a cheap little BIOS programmer and updating the chips via USB on a main PC. I have never had this problem outside of my two 4DPS boards, but perhaps buying the two devices is a good idea, since I imagine that I will waste money on yet another 4DPS if and when this one dies. However, an electronics repair shop opened up near me so perhaps they can recap these things.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I am using MS-DOS 7 in order to be able to cheat and use FAT32 and thus bigger drives.