Does your bios support 120GB drives?

douglar wrote on 2020-05-14, 14:00:

Does your bios support 120GB drives?

According to various online sources it should support up to 127GB. It lists correctly in the BIOS and POST screens too.

sorry if this stuff is too basic, but I gotta ask. Have you:
1) made sure you have a viable MBR (master boot record) "Fdisk /MBR" in dos will do this
2) marked the partition you want to boot from as active in Fdisk?
3) put the boot sector & system files on the partition "sys: c:" or "format c: /s" in dos

I have tried this.

Fdisk refuses to touch it at all. Booting to commandline from the windows 98 se cd doesn’t mount C:\ either.

It seems only visible to more modern applications such as the windows 7 PE environment, windows XP installer, gparted live cd etc.

Almost as if it’s missing some kind of driver? Could it be I am missing a dos driver for the IDE controller or something? I couldn’t find anything relevant to any dos drivers for the VIA Apollo pro 133.

Some additional images

Not sure why it's not being picked up by windows 98 or freedos, one thing you could try is plop boot manager

The older systems may not like the ide bridge chip on the sata to ide board.

When you go into the bios one thing to try is to go into where it detects IDE drives and make sure everything is populated, heads/cylinders/sectors etc and not just "AUTO" with nothing there. I've had to do that with some IDE to SD adapters before the bios would boot from them, might not help but worth a try.

Also make sure you do the fdisk /mbr, maybe try this on another system(or if plop works for you)

https://www.plop.at/en/home.html

synrgy87 wrote on 2020-05-15, 01:33:

Not sure why it's not being picked up by windows 98 or freedos, one thing you could try is plop boot manager […]
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Not sure why it's not being picked up by windows 98 or freedos, one thing you could try is plop boot manager

...

Also make sure you do the fdisk /mbr, maybe try this on another system(or if plop works for you)

https://www.plop.at/en/home.html

Thank you for your reply. I’ve tried plop but I currently don’t have a ps2 keyboard laying around to make it work after booting from the selected media.

A small update however:

I managed to get a SATA 300 250GB hard disk from WD (WD2500AAKX) to recognize just fine. It formatted with fdisk as well. So I’m beginning to think this may be a sata/ide converter issue. The only difference between the 2 SSD’s and HDD I tried is that the SSD’s are both SATA 600 and the HDD is 300. Possibly confusing the SATA2IDE converter’s controller or something? Though it doesn’t make much sense that it would still work fine in certain software...

And to think the SATA HDD that worked was even larger too!

What a mystery..

Update 2:

The BIOS recognized the SATA HDD’s max LBA size as ~8GB. The win98 Maybe that’s why it worked with win98/fdisk. Gparted once again sees the full available space.

Update 3:
Successfully partitioned the HDD with gparted. 32GB FAT32 for C:\ and 2 more extended FAT32 partitions of 120 and 80GB. Windows 98 SE recognized it as such as well.

I have to admit I’m not extremely well versed in old hdd geometry translation/LBA’s and what have you.

What should the max LBA look like on for example a 120GB drive in an older BIOS such as this one?

Bimmy wrote on 2020-05-15, 02:13:

Thank you for your reply. I’ve tried plop but I currently don’t have a ps2 keyboard laying around to make it work after booting […]
Show full quote

synrgy87 wrote on 2020-05-15, 01:33:

Not sure why it's not being picked up by windows 98 or freedos, one thing you could try is plop boot manager […]
Show full quote

Not sure why it's not being picked up by windows 98 or freedos, one thing you could try is plop boot manager

...

Also make sure you do the fdisk /mbr, maybe try this on another system(or if plop works for you)

https://www.plop.at/en/home.html

Thank you for your reply. I’ve tried plop but I currently don’t have a ps2 keyboard laying around to make it work after booting from the selected media.

A small update however:

I managed to get a SATA 300 250GB hard disk from WD (WD2500AAKX) to recognize just fine. It formatted with fdisk as well. So I’m beginning to think this may be a sata/ide converter issue. The only difference between the 2 SSD’s and HDD I tried is that the SSD’s are both SATA 600 and the HDD is 300. Possibly confusing the SATA2IDE converter’s controller or something? Though it doesn’t make much sense that it would still work fine in certain software...

And to think the SATA HDD that worked was even larger too!

What a mystery..

Update 2:

The BIOS recognized the SATA HDD’s max LBA size as ~8GB. The win98 Maybe that’s why it worked with win98/fdisk. Gparted once again sees the full available space.

Update 3:
Successfully partitioned the HDD with gparted. 32GB FAT32 for C:\ and 2 more extended FAT32 partitions of 120 and 80GB. Windows 98 SE recognized it as such as well.

I have to admit I’m not extremely well versed in old hdd geometry translation/LBA’s and what have you.

What should the max LBA look like on for example a 120GB drive in an older BIOS such as this one?

I suggest you read this to have an idea of the issues you will be facing with large drives in Windows 9x : Re: SSD Woes On Windows 98 SE

For determining if your BIOS can handle 127GB without corruption, I suggest trying the 48BITLBA.EXE from this package : http://lonecrusader.x10host.com/rloew/files/PATCHATA.ZIP

If your BIOS support 48-bit LBA, the simplest patch is this one : http://www.mdgx.com/add.htm#BHD and if your BIOS , just remember to create partitions smaller than 127GB .

If your BIOS does not support 48-bit LBA, I suggest you consider using http://lonecrusader.x10host.com/rloew/files/TBPLUS.ZIP

EDIT : If you intend to use Windows XP on a 127GB plus drive on a controller BIOS that does not support 48-bit LBA, I honestly do not know what awaits you, as I have never tried that .

EDIT2 : For XP See https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/f … 83-4391ece25c90
and disk document from Seagate : https://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/tp/137gb.pdf

It does sound like a 48bit LBA issue. The newer OS's bypass the bios once they boot and are fine, but any time the bios tries to use the drive, it fails. So that's why you can't boot from the drive or see the drive in dos, but you can see it from XP once you boot from CD or Floppy.

You need a bios from 2003 or newer for LBA48 support. Check for a newer bios or on the more popular boards, a hacked bios.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_block_addressing#LBA48

You could also try disk overlay software. That should work too.

douglar wrote on 2020-05-15, 03:46:

It does sound like a 48bit LBA issue. The newer OS's bypass the bios once they boot and are fine, but any time the bios tries t […]
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It does sound like a 48bit LBA issue. The newer OS's bypass the bios once they boot and are fine, but any time the bios tries to use the drive, it fails. So that's why you can't boot from the drive or see the drive in dos, but you can see it from XP once you boot from CD or Floppy.

You need a bios from 2003 or newer for LBA48 support. Check for a newer bios or on the more popular boards, a hacked bios.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_block_addressing#LBA48

You could also try disk overlay software. That should work too.

Was there actually disk overlay software that was 48bit LBA capable and compatible with Windows XP's bootloader ? I honestly do not know as I avoided such software as much as possible at the time and still do .
EDIT: For Seagate drives, there is such a thing called DiscWizard . I do not know which version(s) support(s) 48-bit LBA .

I would go with a PCI controller that has drivers for Windows XP and Windows 9x (if that is still the intent) . Promise Ultra133 TX2 is probably the most well regarded. A SIL3114 based card is cheaper and easier to find, works well too IMHO (but no TRIM support for SSDs), but not everybody likes them . Either one will likely need to have its BIOS updated (files are readily available) .

douglar wrote on 2020-05-15, 03:46:

You could also try disk overlay software. That should work too.

Thank you all for your replies, much appreciated!

The thing is I can't get the SSD to boot at all, any software solution would require me to always boot with some kind of bootdisk, which is not really ideal.

What also makes very little sense is that the 250GB HDD gave me a max LBA size in the bios of around 8GB whereas the SSD shows 120GB.

I'm going to check the 48bitLBA support on the BIOS with the tool linked by Darry.

Update: The BIOS seems to support 28-bit LBA but I don’t see how this should could prove to be an issue for a 120GB drive.

I’ve ordered a different controller (Marvell I think, instead of Jmicron) sata2ide converter, as well as a SIL3114 pci SATA controller. I hope the sata controller can be booted from by the BIOS, but if it can’t I’ll just return it.

Thank you all for your valuable inputs so far!

Bimmy wrote on 2020-05-15, 05:24:

Thank you all for your replies, much appreciated! […]
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douglar wrote on 2020-05-15, 03:46:

You could also try disk overlay software. That should work too.

Thank you all for your replies, much appreciated!

The thing is I can't get the SSD to boot at all, any software solution would require me to always boot with some kind of bootdisk, which is not really ideal.

What also makes very little sense is that the 250GB HDD gave me a max LBA size in the bios of around 8GB whereas the SSD shows 120GB.

I'm going to check the 48bitLBA support on the BIOS with the tool linked by Darry.

Update: The BIOS seems to support 28-bit LBA but I don’t see how this should could prove to be an issue for a 120GB drive.

I’ve ordered a different controller (Marvell I think, instead of Jmicron) sata2ide converter, as well as a SIL3114 pci SATA controller. I hope the sata controller can be booted from by the BIOS, but if it can’t I’ll just return it.

Thank you all for your valuable inputs so far!

I agree the issue with the 120GB is likely some kind of incompatibility .
If your SIL3114 card has a BIOS chip and your system's BIOS allows booting from "SCSI" (that's the way it will see the SIL3114), you should be fine .
As mentioned before, you will likely need to flash your SIL3114 to recent non-RAID BIOS, though .

I hope it works out for you . Let us know your successes and failure as they may well help someone else in a similar situation .

Bimmy wrote on 2020-05-15, 05:24:

I'm going to check the 48bitLBA support on the BIOS with the tool linked by Darry.

Update: The BIOS seems to support 28-bit LBA but I don’t see how this should could prove to be an issue for a 120GB drive.

The Sata drive is almost certainly going to try for ATA-7 / UDMA 6 if it can. Is your 250GB drive rated ATA-6 or ATA7? What does the bios see?

I have found that there is a lot of unusual activity between new drives & old controllers. One drive might work while another drive rated the same PATA level might not. And not all BIOS are bug free. I have a motherboard that locks up tight if it sees certain valid drive geometries. There's a lot of interaction between the drive, controller, and the bios during the P.O.S.T. The PATA/SATA bridge complicates this further, no doubt. Sometimes the BIOS does not have a full implementation of a spec that a new drive expects to see, which can be worse than falling back to a slower but working protocol. Can you see the PATA info for the drive using Dos HWinfo if you boot from a floppy ? I find that's often revealing. Sometimes switching to a 40 pin cable or disabling DMA in the drive config can encourage the system to fall back to a slower, working protocol when the bios doesn't let you manually select your PATA level.

But all that protocol stuff aside, because the drive geometry is detected and the drive works with XP drivers, but won't work from the BIOS, I still think this is ultimately an LBA48 bug in your BIOS.

What is the date on your BIOS? If it is older than November 2003, it's unlikely it has fully functional LBA 48 support.

It bet it will work if you install EZ-drive or get a PCI IDE controller with bios boot extensions from 2004 or newer.

Some updates!

I have tried lots of things over the weekend but still couldn't get it to work.

I've tried the following:

Got the SiI3114 card, flashed to regular SATALINK BIOS -> Could Install Windows 98 but after the initial reboot after the files have been copied, it won't boot and ends up with corrupted reads. However the errors were always consistent. (i.e. same files that ended up corrupt or unreadable, so it appears not random.) Gets as far as the Safe Mode prompt and then hangs or displays some gibberish.

Tried 2 different 120GB SSD's 1 from SANDISK and one from ADATA. Both couldn't be booted from reliably through the SiI3114 controller. However Windows 98 did recognize it in FDISK and the installer, so Installation worked, and the drive IS "bootable" (no INSERT DISK error) but the boot fails.

Tried cloning the working 98SE installation from the 250GB HDD to the SSD (which has aligned partitions so it should be fine on SSD too) with Gparted, which also failed (similar to the installation it crashed quickly after the Safe Mode prompt)

Tried switching the SiI3114 to other PCI slots. Removed all other cards to see if it made any difference, but alas it did not.

Tried different IDE cables and different UDMA modes as well as UDMA disabled.

Tried messing with IRQ's which also made no difference.

The Marvell based SATA2IDE adapter behaved in the exact same way as the JMicron one. 250GB HDD worked, SSD's both failed to even recognize at all by anything besides the BIOS itself. So that didn't work either.

I'm very close to giving up, I might give a 250GB SSD a shot to see if it may have anything to do with this specific 120GB drive geometry.

Some additional screens:

Im not sure if this gonna help, but i had issues booting from a SSD on a 440BX P3 machine. Here's what i did to get it working.

- "Clean" the SSD. Remove any NTFS partitions, anything that Windows98 can't read. Just clear the drive. I did this at first on my modern machine, but GParted can do this for you too on a retro rig.
-Ignore FDISK. NONE of my SSD's could be properly recognized in Fdisk. It would freeze during "Drive integrity" check.
-Instead, try Super FDisk. It picked up my SSD and allowed me to create and format a fat32 partition. Try something small at first like 30-60gb. My IDE2SAT2 adapter likes to act up with certain sizes.
-Super Fdisk may complain on first boot. I know it did it for me with my ADATA SU800 but not my 850Evo. Either way, it could be bypassed without issue. (I think it was just because i cleaned the disk on Windows 10 and it got confused over something?)

-Install Windows98!

Have done this with every SSD since and Windows 98 SE now installs fine.
Are you using generic sata-ide adapters off Ebay? I found it helpful to skip the el-cheepo ones and go for a good brand like StarTech's IDE2SAT2.

All the cheapo ones I have used are fine after years of use.

SodaSuccubus wrote on 2020-05-17, 07:23:

Im not sure if this gonna help, but i had issues booting from a SSD on a 440BX P3 machine. Here's what i did to get it working. […]
Show full quote

Im not sure if this gonna help, but i had issues booting from a SSD on a 440BX P3 machine. Here's what i did to get it working.

- "Clean" the SSD. Remove any NTFS partitions, anything that Windows98 can't read. Just clear the drive. I did this at first on my modern machine, but GParted can do this for you too on a retro rig.
-Ignore FDISK. NONE of my SSD's could be properly recognized in Fdisk. It would freeze during "Drive integrity" check.
-Instead, try Super FDisk. It picked up my SSD and allowed me to create and format a fat32 partition. Try something small at first like 30-60gb. My IDE2SAT2 adapter likes to act up with certain sizes.
-Super Fdisk may complain on first boot. I know it did it for me with my ADATA SU800 but not my 850Evo. Either way, it could be bypassed without issue. (I think it was just because i cleaned the disk on Windows 10 and it got confused over something?)

-Install Windows98!

Have done this with every SSD since and Windows 98 SE now installs fine.
Are you using generic sata-ide adapters off Ebay? I found it helpful to skip the el-cheepo ones and go for a good brand like StarTech's IDE2SAT2.

I have partitioned and formatted them every time with Gparted and then set BOOT and LBA flags.
FDISK was only used to help visualize what Windows 98 was seeing, not to actually format the drive.
The drives have never actually been formatted by Windows 98's FDISK.

Also I have tried various partition sizes from 10 to 16 to 32 as primary partitions but it doesn't make any difference.

kolderman wrote on 2020-05-17, 07:42:

All the cheapo ones I have used are fine after years of use.

I can confirm that the more expensive Marvell yielded the exactly the same results as the 800 yen JMicron one.
But the 3 layer PCB was noticeably less flexible when removing the IDE cable haha.

Interesting new find:

I connected a 250GB samsung 750 evo to the SATA2IDE adapter and it was picked up the same as the 250GB HDD which looked as follows:

Which leads me to believe that the 250GB may be bootable like the HDD is. I have yet to confirm this, since the 250GB ssd contains my main PC’s EFI boot partition so I’ll have to image it first to try it.

Bimmy wrote on 2020-05-17, 09:06:

Interesting new find: […]
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Interesting new find:

I connected a 250GB samsung 750 evo to the SATA2IDE adapter and it was picked up the same as the 250GB HDD which looked as follows:

101AEF65-5817-4291-BDF5-7DEFFC000A87.jpeg

3DF69B63-2A11-4F1E-96A5-130A3EE66C36.jpeg

Which leads me to believe that the 250GB may be bootable like the HDD is. I have yet to confirm this, since the 250GB ssd contains my main PC’s EFI boot partition so I’ll have to image it first to try it.

I hope it works . I still suggest you use the BHDD31 patch for Windows 98 SE to avoid corruption later on and stick with partitions smaller than 127GB .

EDIT: I am currently using a Samsung 500GB 860 EVO . It worked great with a Jmicron JMD330 SATA to IDE on both a Promise card and onboard IDE . My SIL3114 seems to like it too, but have not tested that combo as extensively .