With ontrack you can just create a 8 GB FAT32 partition. No need to have several.

Will it work? Only one way of finding out 😀

Too bad it didn't work. I can start DM through Win98 boot disk, as in your video, but the program itself doesn't detect the CF drive, throwing a red background error.

Tried with 8GB, 4GB CF cards of different brands with same bad results 🙁

That's a shame...

Another option is sourcing a controller card. For PCI it's easy, for ISA you need to hunt around. You can contact Donutking, he has one in his 386.

Just tried the CF to IDE on a Pentium 133MHz computer and it throws the same error with DM "Disk manager was unable to locate a hard disk".

Will try to build an ISA CF controller, I think it wont need an overlay software using one of them.

Just to double check was the CF card being detected in BIOS? (it may need to be done manually)
I would put the reader in the latest IDE PC you have, its the most likely to detect the settings while on Auto.

I'm not sure what you mean by ISA CF controller? the card reader isn't PCI or ISA, think of it as an IDE pin out adaptor. Phils talking about replacing the on board IDE controller.

When I first got my CF card I plugged it into a P4 running XP. Sometimes it helps seeing things in a gui to get your head around things

Why is this in the DOS games forum? Old hardware and BIOS stuff belongs in Marvin.

collector wrote:

Why is this in the DOS games forum? Old hardware and BIOS stuff belongs in Marvin.

I am so sorry for posting this on wrong forum section. Thanks to the admin who moved it into place 😀

chinny22 wrote:

Just to double check was the CF card being detected in BIOS? (it may need to be done manually)
I'm not sure what you mean by ISA CF controller? the card reader isn't PCI or ISA, think of it as an IDE pin out adaptor. Phils talking about replacing the on board IDE controller.

I meant something like Lo-tech ISA CompactFlash Adapter. Since it has its own BIOS I think this will be a good solution to bypass onboard BIOS and its limits without needing any overlay software.
Already ordered one of them, but anyways I will try your approach to get the right parameters for the CF card on a newer PC.

Cool, let us know how you get on. Havent seen many people here go down the Lo-tech path before

The Lo-tech card is supplied with the XT-IDE Universal bios. I've used the lo tech rom card for my 486, but i now
have the XTIDE bios in a rom chip on my ISA network card.

On my 486, it allowed me to beat the 504MB limit, but i do not know which translation it uses.

On a 486 computer or older, up to an early Pentium PC, the method to allow higher storage than 504MB is Logical Block Addressing.

What this does is it tells disk partition programs such as FDISK, that the hard drive space is what it is on the hard drive. Let's just say you have a 1.2GB HDD and the hard drive is partitioned correctly, and the disk geometry is incorrect (e.g: the FDISK program says your hard drive is 504MB instead of the full space, but the storage space is correct) the LBA is disabled on the Hard Drive IDE Channel and must be enabled in order to let the FDISK program translate the hard drive disk geometry correctly and the hard drive must be resurfaced in order to perform operations, such as formatting, installing an Operating System, and so on.

The maximum storage in MS-DOS, including Windows 9x is 8.4GB of storage (7.8GB in real life), and Windows NT allowed additional storage with Service Pack 4 or higher, up to 2TB.

My Pentium MMX-based PC has a 200GB HDD (formally an 80GB HDD) and the PC sees the hard drive, but MS-DOS only allows 7.8GB Storage, and XP sees the rest of the hard drive without issues.

I have 2 CF 4Gb cards on IDE in my Pentium 166Mhz machine. It works well and fast. My Bios has a 6 Gb limit for hard drives.
I have more than 7 Gb for DOS Games, that's a lot more than I could fill.

bjwil1991 wrote:

The maximum storage in MS-DOS, including Windows 9x is 8.4GB of storage (7.8GB in real life), and Windows NT allowed additional storage with Service Pack 4 or higher, up to 2TB.

Nope.
Windows 95C and 98(SE)/Me actually allows up to 128GB to be used. There are some other limitations mainly on the FDISK utility, but it works one way or another.

^ and you can bypass the limits easily, I have a 320GB FAT32 HDD in my 98SE p4 build

Yes but let's say that natively, 128MB is the maximum 😀

keropi wrote:

^ and you can bypass the limits easily, I have a 320GB FAT32 HDD in my 98SE p4 build

The 128GB barrier is a bit tough to bypass on the FAT32, though. 😀

philscomputerlab wrote:

Yes but let's say that natively, 128MB is the maximum 😀

GB I'd say 🤣

Nah, breaking the 128GB barrier is quite easy. 😀

Link me plz 🤣

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/129027-big-hd … a-thread-index/

Nothing easy about it IMO. It took someone to write a patch, so this is something way outside of what Windows natively supports. And even with the patch there are lots of steps involved. And when you dig deeper there aren't many that actually use larger drives with the drive actually being filled and long-term reliability accounts.

philscomputerlab wrote:

It took someone to write a patch, so this is something way outside of what Windows natively supports.

Non-natively doesn't automatically mean bad.

And even with the patch there are lots of steps involved.

I don't think so.

And when you dig deeper there aren't many that actually use larger drives with the drive actually being filled and long-term reliability accounts.

The rule is simple: if you want long-term reliability then don't use Win9x.