It would be the Controller card reducing the capacity of the hard disc. A newer one would recognise larger discs as progression is the standard.

CF cards would be silent, and the performance would be the same I gather as it would be using the original ATA standard.

OK, you've hit against TWO walls.

First wall: the maximum allowed size for BIOS. Your bios only supports 8.4 Gb disks (some older disks had jumpers to put a "cap" on size), so you won't get more capacity unless you update your BIOS or use a overlay manager (I used Ontrack disk manager when I had a 486).

Second wall: the maximum allowed size for DOS. I remember that FAT16 allowed a partition size up to 2Gb. Maybe your FDISK is "tied" to CHS formatting, so it won't try to use bigger sizes. That may be easy to solve: most modern disk partition software will let you define bigger partitions.

Another hard drive controller won't solve the first issue unless it has it own BIOS (so SCSI disk controllers will do it), and has nothing to do with the second issue (it's software related). But because of the 2Gb limit to FAT16 partitions, I would use a small CF or SD card (unless you're planning to use it with FreeDOS, any FAT32 enabled version of Windows or Linux).

Many thanks for the replies 😀

You are right, I've hit two walls with this machine (software & hardware).

So for solving issue #2 I just need to make some 2GB partitions in another PC using any modern partition software. For the 8GB bios limit there will be 4 partitions available. After that, format this partitions using FAT16 file system through DOS.

About the overlay manager, I don't know how it works or where to get it. Is it a TSR? Could you please add some information regarding this?

I would like to use MSDOS instead of FreeDOS, as compatibility with some software and games should be better.

Already have a cheap CF to IDE adapter, but after plugging it to the hard drive controller I can't see any drive on BIOS (tested with 2GB and 8GB CF cards). I've seen lo-tech.co.uk CF controller kits. Would I need to build one of those to be able to use CF cards on this system?

I personally use < 2GB IDE HDDs in my MS-DOS PCs. They are still pretty common on eBay and even at outlets like this (http://www.elecshopper.com).

Installing a Dynamic Drive Overlay is highly recommended since it will allow you to see the hard disk in its correct size. I'll take a long shot and assume that this is the reason that you can't create partitions up to 2GBs now, as you should be able to do. The 486 just can't recognise correctly a hard disk that large, I remember even some early Pentium II's that couldn't go above 20GB's.

Apart from that, using it will not solve DOS restricitions: You are still stuck to 8GBs in total.

Danger, using another system to partition is a recipe for disaster - an unrecognized translation mode will result in wraparounds and overwriting existing data.
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO-4.html

If the BIOS is allowing 8GB, is it set to either "large" or "LBA" mode? - large is preferred on some older BIOSes as the LBA support could be buggy, but theoretically LBA support is standardized and would allow shifting between LBA capable systems - the "large" translation is not necessarily the same across different systems

This forum is for DOS games. Ask Old hardware questions in Marvin

Matth79 wrote:

Danger, using another system to partition is a recipe for disaster - an unrecognized translation mode will result in wraparounds and overwriting existing data.
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO-4.html

If the BIOS is allowing 8GB, is it set to either "large" or "LBA" mode? - large is preferred on some older BIOSes as the LBA support could be buggy, but theoretically LBA support is standardized and would allow shifting between LBA capable systems - the "large" translation is not necessarily the same across different systems

I meant using Partition Manager or any other program like that to create one or more 2Gb partitions, not using another computer to do it.

Also, is it legal to define a single primary partition and two or more extended partitions (with more partitions on it) to overcome that 8Gb limit?

http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/bioslim.htm
A better description...

If FDISK is seeing the 504MB limit, that suggests the drive is not in translation mode.

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/pc-hardware-faq/enhanced-IDE/part1/
Ah yes, entry 6.5.

It is highly unlikely that any other partitioning program would behave differently.

You cannot override the BIOS 8GB limit by partitioning - only by using an overlay software that supports INT 13 Extended. Looks like the current ontrack (10.46) can, but since they are neither selling it nor releasing it as freeware, the only sources are illicit.

One piece of weirdness I recall, when changing the mode, sometimes it does not seem to "take" - if removing all partitions and FDISK/MBR does not succeed, then zap it with DBAN - that will clear the boot/partition area completely.

Another option: Which DOS?

After using DOS fron 98SE with FAT32 partitions for serveral years now, I can assure you there are not problems whatsoever. Currently all my builds from 386 to p1 use FAT32 and the only thing that needed patching was win3x. Games no matter how old never complained about the filesystem
It's totally worth it, a 20GB single partition on a 386DX? It's just great!

^^ I do the same! FAT32 and MS-DOS 7.1 is awesome. Also can't report a single compatibility issue when it comes to games 😀

I was dubious about the CF option for a long while but bought one for my 486 DOS machine recently and think that it’s the beez kneez. Worth a shot given they’re so cheap – these are the actual items I bought so can attest to their awesomeness:

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/180899844837?ssPag … 984.m1497.l2649
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/300603789796?ssPag … 984.m1497.l2649

Another vote for CF cards. I've got 8GB card in mine. I did have to setup it up manually in BIOS. (I just plugged it into a newer PC, copied the settings and entered them in on the 486) once that's done you have a fast, quiet, reliable storage and don't have to mess around with trying to get large modern disks working on prehistoric motherboards.

If you really need more then the 2GB partition then Dos 7's Fat32 works fine as well.

badmojo wrote:

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/180899844837?ssPag … 984.m1497.l2649
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/300603789796?ssPag … 984.m1497.l2649

I have this same adapter but my BIOS won't recognise the drive at POST time.
Could it be an incompatible CF (I've tried 2 CF cards) or just my controller doesn't like it? The led even doesn't light up, no matter I use IDE power or floppy molex power on it 🙁

How are you plugging your CF to IDE adapter to the motherboard?

Matth79 wrote:

http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/bioslim.htm A better description... […]
Show full quote

http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/bioslim.htm
A better description...

If FDISK is seeing the 504MB limit, that suggests the drive is not in translation mode.

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/pc-hardware-faq/enhanced-IDE/part1/
Ah yes, entry 6.5.

It is highly unlikely that any other partitioning program would behave differently.

One piece of weirdness I recall, when changing the mode, sometimes it does not seem to "take" - if removing all partitions and FDISK/MBR does not succeed, then zap it with DBAN - that will clear the boot/partition area completely.

I don't think my BIOS supports LBA, I will confirm this later. If BIOS doesn't support it, will the overlay software handle this?

pewpewpew wrote:

Another option: Which DOS?

It seems that MS-DOS 7.1 could be a good choice because of FAT32 support. Does it have any problem with hardware drivers (like sound cards)? I would really prefer vanilla 6.22 but FAT16 is a very bad limit nowadays.

Many thanks for your support 😀

dosfriend wrote:

It seems that MS-DOS 7.1 could be a good choice because of FAT32 support. Does it have any problem with hardware drivers (like sound cards)?

See Phil's post just above: "can't report a single compatibility issue"

He's been at this a little while:
http://www.philscomputerlab.com/

Also here on the board & youtube the older posts by Mau1wurf1977 are him.
Which DOS?

The overlay software operates at a level below that of a TSR, as far as I understand it, the overlay loads at the boot/partition level and takes over the disk control functions, overriding pretty much any BIOS limit. I remember the time when they were supplied with most drives - for WD drives, the now unsupported "data Lifeguard tools" can be found on a few sites - it may be possible to find the outdated tools for other makes - these tools are normally a version of Ontrack / EZdrive etc. that are keylocked to a particular drive make.

The main grievance with overlays is that they are in a position where other partition mangers may mess them up.

If your BIOS predates the widespread use of LBA, it might still have "large" support, though the quality of "large" support led to some other limits.

I'm not familiar with your card reader but if the power led isn't lit it sounds like its faulty? Not that you need anything special.
I got 2 of these
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CF-Flash-Card-to-40 … =item5af217e9cc

They are connected with a standard ribbon cable and FDD power cable. you can see a pic here
Another 486 being built

The thinking was I put 1 adaptor in my main PC and the other in my 486 for easy file transfers. Also I would have say 1 card with RTS games, 2nd card with 3d shooters (for example) and just swap cards depending on what I wanted to play. In the end I could fit all my games on a 8GB CF card partitioned in 2GB chunks anyway so added both to the 486.

This might help!

In short I am using Ontrack, a popular DDO from back in the day, to prepare a 32 GB hard drive. In the BIOS you can even set the hard drive type to 0 or not installed, Ontrack will actually change it.

After you prepared the drive with Ontrack you can then partition and format it with FAT32. But you need to make sure that the Ontrack driver is loaded. So when you want to boot from the floppy, don't. Boot from the hard drive, there will be message asking you to boot from the floppy and it will load the Ontrack driver.

Another issue is that you need to remove Ontrack from your drive again. You won't be able to "get rid of it" with fdisk for example 😀

I have made a video showing the entire process in detail: http://youtu.be/sI7U9LYbt28

Many thanks for all your replies 😀

I have managed to power up my IDE CF converter, a jumper was set to use IDE power instead of external power (my big fault)

BIOS IDE auto detection still doesn't detect it, as expected, and manual configuration parameters are not useful in this case.

I really appreciate your video, philscomputerlab! Will Ontrack be able to bypass BIOS with this CF if I set up following your instructions as it would with a regular HDD? I think it will, just want to make sure here 😀

chinny22, my CF to IDE adapter is very similar to this one:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CF-Compact-Flash-to … =item3376e81000

It seems that Ontrack + 2GB FAT32 partitions on 8GB card + Dos 7.x will be the best option I have for this machine.