Badscrew wrote:

This also can be a 32 GB limit, some of the boards were limited to that. If your hard disk has jumpers for 32GB mode, worth trying that. If this indeed is working, you'll only loose a 1/4 of the drive space which is not that bad.
On my W98 machine I'm using a 80 GB drive in 32 GB mode, loosing more than a half... I'm going to try it with a SD to IDE adapter and a 32 GB SD card soon.

Indeed this is most likely the infamous award bios bug (because yes it is a bug) that crashes when a HDD bigger than 32gb is detected. However you can solve it by patching the BIOS. If you image your bios for me I can attempt to patch it ^^ (and no need for a eeprom writer either, you can do that with the motherboard).

Deksor wrote:

Badscrew wrote:

This also can be a 32 GB limit, some of the boards were limited to that. If your hard disk has jumpers for 32GB mode, worth trying that. If this indeed is working, you'll only loose a 1/4 of the drive space which is not that bad.
On my W98 machine I'm using a 80 GB drive in 32 GB mode, loosing more than a half... I'm going to try it with a SD to IDE adapter and a 32 GB SD card soon.

Indeed this is most likely the infamous award bios bug (because yes it is a bug) that crashes when a HDD bigger than 32gb is detected. However you can solve it by patching the BIOS. If you image your bios for me I can attempt to patch it ^^ (and no need for a eeprom writer either, you can do that with the motherboard).

I would like that very much. It would be nice to have that work with my original BIOS, especially since after using this other PC Chips BIOS I've actually had noticeably worse performance with games like GTA 1 and it also doesn't quite match the hardware listing features the mobo doesn't have. Here's the dump of the BIOS I made with UNIFLASH:
https://mega.nz/#!Op0XmDjK!USkQlRTO1pOyxyHJOY … Tax8obhaV2Y45mg

I would like to add that overlay software a la EZ-Drive will only work if the drive type is set to normal or auto, and the HDD is detected. It doesn't have to be "correctly detected", as in: The C/H/S values could be anything really, but the computer has to be able to at least boot with the HDD (or any card substitute) in place in order for the overlay to kick in and take over the geometry translation.

There it is !

I can't guarantee 100% that it'll work (that's what the patcher I'm using tells me), but I've tried it once on a slot 1 mobo and I didn't have any issues.

Here are the logs from the patcher itself :

1BIOS Patcher ver. 4.23.
2Attention! Advanced qualification is required!
3
4Found 1Mbit BIOS!
5
61. New CPU Support           : -> fixed.
72. P3-detect error           : is not needed to be fixed.
83. New Koeffs Support        : -> fixed.
94. 32Gb-problem              : -> fixed.
105. Some HDD detect-problem   : -> fixed.
116. "MB"/"GB" string search   : -> fixed.
127. 65Gb-problem (1-st step)  : -> fixed.
138. 65Gb-problem (2-nd step)  : -> fixed.
149. Error display Freq>999MHz : is not needed to be fixed.
1510.Error display Koefs>9.5x  : not found.
1611.New Stepping Support      : is not needed to be fixed.
1712.Tualatin L2-init error    : not found.
1813.New Freq in Setup open    : not found.
19
2014.Set "Y" as default on exit: -> fixed.
21
22
23Write Allocate addinng: -> fixed.
24UDMA for "big"-HDD on UDMA33_only_MB fix: -> fixed.
25
26CBROM V2.07 (C)Award Software 2000 All Rights Reserved.
27Adding modul.tmp  30.0%
28CBROM V2.07 (C)Award Software 2000 All Rights Reserved.
29Adding start.tmp  87.5%
30
31if you can`t see all messages - choose 80x50 mode or run with ">report.txt".
32(c)2002-2003 apple_rom, www.ROM.by

Here's the patcher I've used by the way. It comes from http://www.ROM.by but since it's a little difficult to find, I made a .zip file containing all the required files.

Deksor wrote:

There it is ! […]
Show full quote

There it is !

1997BIOS.zip

I can't guarantee 100% that it'll work (that's what the patcher I'm using tells me), but I've tried it once on a slot 1 mobo and I didn't have any issues.

Here are the logs from the patcher itself :

Copy code to clipboard

1BIOS Patcher ver. 4.23.
2Attention! Advanced qualification is required!
3
4Found 1Mbit BIOS!
5
61. New CPU Support           : -> fixed.
72. P3-detect error           : is not needed to be fixed.
83. New Koeffs Support        : -> fixed.
94. 32Gb-problem              : -> fixed.
105. Some HDD detect-problem   : -> fixed.
116. "MB"/"GB" string search   : -> fixed.
127. 65Gb-problem (1-st step)  : -> fixed.
138. 65Gb-problem (2-nd step)  : -> fixed.
149. Error display Freq>999MHz : is not needed to be fixed.
1510.Error display Koefs>9.5x  : not found.
1611.New Stepping Support      : is not needed to be fixed.
1712.Tualatin L2-init error    : not found.
1813.New Freq in Setup open    : not found.
19
2014.Set "Y" as default on exit: -> fixed.
21
22
23Write Allocate addinng: -> fixed.
24UDMA for "big"-HDD on UDMA33_only_MB fix: -> fixed.
25
26CBROM V2.07 (C)Award Software 2000 All Rights Reserved.
27Adding modul.tmp  30.0%
28CBROM V2.07 (C)Award Software 2000 All Rights Reserved.
29Adding start.tmp  87.5%
30
31if you can`t see all messages - choose 80x50 mode or run with ">report.txt".
32(c)2002-2003 apple_rom, www.ROM.by

Here's the patcher I've used by the way. It comes from http://www.ROM.by but since it's a little difficult to find, I made a .zip file containing all the required files.

biosmod.zip

Awesome, it worked! Performance is great, too, unlike the other BIOS I tried. Thank you so much for doing this for me. 😀

You're welcome.
What's your motherboard by the way ? xD

Not my photo, but this is the same motherboard that I own. I have no idea who made it because there's very little markings on it.

Accoring to your BIOS' POST string and this website https://web.archive.org/web/20190127170901/ww … HTML1/xpro.html, you have a PCChips M537DMA33 which should be slightly different form the photo.

The latest BIOS for it is from 1998 and should still have the bug (but now you have the patcher to do the job :p) but it's newer than the current one you have ^^.

(Checkout this website, there's some cool infos concerning driver support 😁)

Deksor wrote on 2019-11-04, 22:14:

Accoring to your BIOS' POST string and this website https://web.archive.org/web/20190127170901/ww … HTML1/xpro.html, you have a PCChips M537DMA33 which should be slightly different form the photo.

The latest BIOS for it is from 1998 and should still have the bug (but now you have the patcher to do the job :p) but it's newer than the current one you have ^^.

(Checkout this website, there's some cool infos concerning driver support 😁)

Sorry for necroposting, but where to get the latest bios?

I would say here https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/pcchip … dma33#downloads