Tempest wrote on 2024-09-13, 13:28:

I have an IBM Valuepoint 486SX which has an older BIOS that has the 506MB hard drive limit. I was told that by using XTIDE BIOS I can bypass this limit but when I go to format a CF card with FDISK it still only shows 506MB available. Is there something else I need to do to get my computer to recognize the larger drive?

Let's start at the beginning. Do you see XTIDE post any messages during boot?

douglar wrote on 2024-09-13, 17:48:

Let's start at the beginning. Do you see XTIDE post any messages during boot?

I see the menu come up (A drive, C drive, ROM Boot, etc.) at the top of the screen and it says it sees my CF card at one of the addresses and will eventually boot from it.

When I boot the DOS 6.22 Install disk FDISK only sees the drive as 506MB as does my old BIOS still.

Tempest wrote on 2024-09-13, 17:50:

douglar wrote on 2024-09-13, 17:48:

Let's start at the beginning. Do you see XTIDE post any messages during boot?

I see the menu come up (A drive, C drive, ROM Boot, etc.) at the top of the screen and it says it sees my CF card at one of the addresses and will eventually boot from it.

When I boot the DOS 6.22 Install disk FDISK only sees the drive as 506MB as does my old BIOS still.

OK, great. Did you start with one of the pre built binaries? Which one / what version? Did you run the configuration program before you burned it?

douglar wrote on 2024-09-13, 18:02:

OK, great. Did you start with one of the pre built binaries? Which one / what version? Did you run the configuration program before you burned it?

Yes I used the large 386 (the 486 one didn't seem to work). I used the configuration program and did auto-config then saved and burned the rom.

You should set HDDs to none in the system BIOS first, then XTIDE will be able to cleanly take over with nothing else getting in the way.

Tiido wrote on 2024-09-13, 18:09:

You should set HDDs to none in the system BIOS first, then XTIDE will be able to cleanly take over with nothing else getting in the way.

I dont think I can. The hard drive field is just for information, I don't think it's editable.

There should still be a number of "types" with different geometries, and one of them should be "none"

Tiido wrote on 2024-09-13, 19:11:

There should still be a number of "types" with different geometries, and one of them should be "none"

I'll check but I dont think so. This is an old IBM ValuePoint SurePath BIOS

Tempest wrote on 2024-09-13, 18:05:

Yes I used the large 386 (the 486 one didn't seem to work). I used the configuration program and did auto-config then saved and burned the rom.

Where did you get the 486 prebuilt binary from? I'm not familiar with that version.

Oh fun, the surepath I last messed with had some pre-LBA large addressing scheme, think it's sometimes known as BIGDOS, that might be getting in the way... and yeah it wasn't particularly friendly at disabling drives it just redetected next boot.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-09-13, 20:56:

Oh fun, the surepath I last messed with had some pre-LBA large addressing scheme, think it's sometimes known as BIGDOS, that might be getting in the way... and yeah it wasn't particularly friendly at disabling drives it just redetected next boot.

I was afraid of that. Oh well, 500MB is more than enough.

There's always ezdrive...

wierd_w wrote on 2024-09-14, 05:49:

There's always ezdrive...

Is that an overlay thing?

Tempest wrote on 2024-09-14, 15:23:

wierd_w wrote on 2024-09-14, 05:49:

There's always ezdrive...

Is that an overlay thing?

Yes.