First post, by tiim
Hi everyone, I'm sure this topic has been been debated for decades now.
I have two systems. One is a Gateway PIII with the Intel 440BX chipset, the other is custom with an Elitegroup P6LX-A (not B or Plus version) motherboard, PII-233 MMX and the Intel 440LX chipset.
I have tried a number of drive types and sizes to get these machines working. I am not using an XT-IDE BIOS nor a Promise or other 3rd party PCI HDD controller. I aim to use what the motherboard has.
The newer BX Gateway really hasn't been a problem. Every drive under 128GB be it an SSD, CF or spindizzy, works when installing Win95 OSR-2 or 98SE or 2000.
The older system, well, it's been frustrating.
Initially, I was using a 32GB CF... for a day. What fun is 32GB, right?
Enter the rabbit hole...
I (re)learned so much over the next two weeks. Apparently Award BIOS of the 1997/1998 era were flawed, and though they supported "large" (>32GB) disk geometries, they had bugs at 32 or 64 GB levels.
I flashed a patched BIOS with "120GB" support. I am still unclear why it is not labeled "128GB"
My 128GB SSD is recognized as such in BIOS. I set it to AUTO/LBA, however no amount of fdisk /mbr lets Win9x (FAT32) boot. I tried a 64GB MicroSD inside a SD to CF adapter, that was a "WRITE-PROTECTED" nightmare, though the slide switch is unlocked. My 32GB and 8GB CF cards work fine.
Frustrated, I used SeaTools to make it a 117GB drive, no luck. Safe thing. Fdisk and format would complete but it wouldn't see drive C after reboot.
Thinking the BIOS/HDD pair was the culprit the whole time...
Exhausted, I formatted the active partition to 500MB for grins and what do you know, the darn thing booted Win95.
I understand MS-DOS 6 has an 2GB limit boot partition (and subsequent extended) limit, does Win9x using Fat32 have a similar active partition limit? If so, what is it? Why does it lets me go through the right steps only to fail?
OK, that was fun. I am guessing I can use this 120GB SSD but make the boot (C) partition under 32GB and let the rest of the drive be an extended large partition.
