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Intel SE440BX-2 P13 BIOS Maximum HDD Size?

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First post, by boxpressed

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I've been tearing my hair out over the past few weeks trying to get my usually trusty Intel SE440BX-2 to work. For the longest time, I was running a 120GB HDD with no problems.

The problems started when the bootup would get stuck on the Intel splash screen for a long time. Sometimes it would work after that delay, and sometimes I would get an "Operating System Not Found" error.

I was pretty sure the problems had to do with the HDD because when I disconnected it, the bootup from floppy was fast.

I tried three different 440BX-2 mobos, three different power supplies, three different Slot 1 CPUs, a couple different CR2032s, and three different sticks of RAM and could replicate the problem.

It didn't seem right that five or six different HDDs and IDE cables would be malfunctioning.

But as a last resort, I put in an old 6GB HDD--and everything worked normally. I realized then that all of the other HDDs I tried were 40GB or more.

Does it seem possible that the board would suddenly stop being compatible with a large HDD? Does the P13 BIOS have a 32GB limit? Thanks for any help!

Reply 1 of 7, by Horun

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No mention of HD size changes between 12 and 17, from the Intel BIOS .pdf. Did you use a Drive Overlay like Disk Manager to originally set up the HD ?

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 2 of 7, by boxpressed

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Horun wrote on 2020-07-18, 20:38:

No mention of HD size changes between 12 and 17, from the Intel BIOS .pdf. Did you use a Drive Overlay like Disk Manager to originally set up the HD ?

No, I didn't use any drive overlay software. Is it possible that it was already there in the MBR by default? Because I did do an FDISK /MBR, which may have wiped it out.

I also read that FDISK was a little buggy before the WinME version.

Reply 3 of 7, by Horun

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The original FDISK from Win98 and 98se had quirk above 64gb HD . I attached the Windows 98 and Windows 98 Second Edition Q263044 update.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150123013845/ht … .com/?id=263044
also added the two Fdisk in a zip, have to rename them to fdisk.exe

Attachments

  • Filename
    fdsik_win98_SE.7z
    File size
    34.07 KiB
    Downloads
    45 downloads
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception
  • Filename
    263044USA8.EXE
    File size
    175.16 KiB
    Downloads
    43 downloads
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 4 of 7, by boxpressed

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Horun wrote on 2020-07-18, 21:55:

The original FDISK from Win98 and 98se had quirk above 64gb HD . I attached the Windows 98 and Windows 98 Second Edition Q263044 update.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150123013845/ht … .com/?id=263044
also added the two Fdisk in a zip, have to rename them to fdisk.exe

Thank you--I'll give these a shot!

Reply 5 of 7, by boxpressed

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Making progress. I went ahead and updated the BIOS of one board to P16. This seemed to fix the problem of the boot stalling out at the Intel splash screen when a large-ish drive is attached. Not 100% sure, but things seem normal now.

I haven't run the general Q263044 update yet, but the updated FDISK did correctly recognize the capacity of an 80GB SATA laptop HDD (using a SATA-to-IDE adapter) and a 40GB 3.5" IDE HDD.

However, it did not get the correct capacity of a 250GB 3.5" IDE HDD even when I created a 120GB partition (because of the Windows 98 127GB limit). This could be another case of user error, but I'm not going to worry about it because I don't really need to use any drive that large.

Reply 6 of 7, by pentiumspeed

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Again, cannot do this with windows 98/ 98se with anything over 127GB physical size. Even limited to 127GB, windows will wrap around and corrupt on 250GB drive.

Cheers,

Great Northern aka Canada.

Reply 7 of 7, by Cobra42898

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the win98se fdisk works fine up to the 127gb limit, if you can work with it's quirkiness.

I've done several 120gb drives with it.
The trick is instead of typing in a number of MB, to type "100%" in the dialog, and it does the job just fine. Haven't tried a 250gb drive (don't have any) but i bet if you tried "45%" or something similar to stay under the limit, it would probably work fine.

Searching for Epson Actiontower 3000 486 PC.

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