Sorry, never mind. I just made a mistake myself. It actually is detected, at a smaller size though, but I don't care.

Actually no. The disk gets detected by FreeDOS as 503 MB, and whenever I try to partition it, it seems to succeed but after rebooting (which FreeDOS demands) the disk is again unpartitioned. I know the disk is good, I've recently used it in a different computer. I remember similar issues like this from the past, but I have forgotten how to deal with them.

As far as I can understand, your 486's BIOS is rather old and cannot support LBA translation, so it has a limit of 504 MB maximum allowable HDD size. I suggest you to find a copy of Ontrack Disk Manager and try to install your HDD using that utility.

tayyare wrote:

As far as I can understand, your 486's BIOS is rather old and cannot support LBA translation, so it has a limit of 504 MB maximum allowable HDD size. I suggest you to find a copy of Ontrack Disk Manager and try to install your HDD using that utility.

Actually the BIOS supports "LBA", "NORMAL" and "LARGE".

However regardless of what I select, FreeDOS gives the error "Error reading MBR!" and offers me to repartition the disk. I select yes, it works for a long time and it seems to succeed, then it needs to reboot to proceed, I accept and end up with the same "Error reading MBR!" message.

I've also noticed that the HDD activity LED keeps being lit, even when the disk should not be working.

I have the "cap limit" jumper set on the disk. What should I select from "LBA", "NORMAL" and "LARGE"?

Depends on the BIOS - LBA is the most standardized form of translation, but was defective in some early BIOSes. LARGE is a CHS translation that can vary between systems.

I'd try LBA, if there are still problems, try LARGE.

fractal5 wrote:

Actually the BIOS supports "LBA", "NORMAL" and "LARGE". […]
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tayyare wrote:

As far as I can understand, your 486's BIOS is rather old and cannot support LBA translation, so it has a limit of 504 MB maximum allowable HDD size. I suggest you to find a copy of Ontrack Disk Manager and try to install your HDD using that utility.

Actually the BIOS supports "LBA", "NORMAL" and "LARGE".

However regardless of what I select, FreeDOS gives the error "Error reading MBR!" and offers me to repartition the disk. I select yes, it works for a long time and it seems to succeed, then it needs to reboot to proceed, I accept and end up with the same "Error reading MBR!" message.

I've also noticed that the HDD activity LED keeps being lit, even when the disk should not be working.

I have the "cap limit" jumper set on the disk. What should I select from "LBA", "NORMAL" and "LARGE"?

My 486 MB (a rather modern one from FIC - with PCI slots, 72 pin SIMMs, PS/2 socket and such) had LBA translation but was still unable to see anything larger than 8GB. Might your problem be similar? You mentioned a cap limiter jumper but to which size it is limiting the HDD?

I own late 486 PCI Boards.
Now a other Way is built in a Vadem ISA-Pcmcia Controller Card and insert e.g. a modern Sandisk 64GB Compact Flash Card, running as 'Standard IDE/ESDI Harddisk.'

Works with Windows 98 SE, Windows NT 4.0, Fat32 for Nt4 Driver.
If you want to use the CF in Dos 6.x too with any Cardmanager, repartitionize the CF in 1x 2 GB FAT16, Rest in FAT32

I use a 20Gb HDD as 2gbyte.

Just specify manual CHS.. if not autodetected.

for 2gb for example: 4096, 16, 63 😳
Or 512Mb: 1024,16,63 etc.

You may want check if your disk has a capacity limit switch..
There also modern disk with such features..

Or 1023, 15, 63.

Or, go the XT-IDE BIOS on a NIC (LAN card) route.
That way, you can utilise the full capacity of the hard drive (taking into account DOS partitioning limitations).