Hi and welcome to the forum! 😃
The 128GiB barrier is related to a BIOS issue as well as Ultra ATA/33 using 28-bit LBA. This is in relation to maximum HDD size.
This is the issue with the P5A-B even with later BIOS versions. Creating a smaller partition will not solve this.

On top of that Win98 can (natively) only manage partitions up to 128GiB but there are workarounds for that or you just use a single 128GiB partition on a larger disk if your controller supports them.

Thanks! 😀

Hmm, so will BIOS see the drive as a 128GiB drive, or will it work at all? If it's the former, I guess it would be good enough.

Joku_242 wrote on 2022-02-16, 10:00:

Thanks! 😀

Hmm, so will BIOS see the drive as a 128GiB drive, or will it work at all? If it's the former, I guess it would be good enough.

Usually it will freeze during HDD detection. 🙁
There are workarounds like dynamic drive overlay software though. I don't know if a BIOS patch is possible for Ultra ATA/33 controllers.

Doornkaat wrote on 2022-02-16, 10:05:

Usually it will freeze during HDD detection. 🙁
There are workarounds like disk drive overlay software though. I don't know if a BIOS patch is possible for Ultra ATA/33 controllers.

What's a disk drive overlay software?

Joku_242 wrote on 2022-02-16, 12:28:

Doornkaat wrote on 2022-02-16, 10:05:

Usually it will freeze during HDD detection. 🙁
There are workarounds like disk drive overlay software though. I don't know if a BIOS patch is possible for Ultra ATA/33 controllers.

What's a disk drive overlay software?

Sorry, I mistyped. It's dynamic drive overlay. It's software that allows for a larger drive than what's supported by BIOS to be used on a system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_drive_overlay

Joku_242 wrote on 2022-02-16, 10:00:

Thanks! 😀

Hmm, so will BIOS see the drive as a 128GiB drive, or will it work at all? If it's the former, I guess it would be good enough.

Hi Joku_242,

The latest P5A-B BIOS is revision 1011 Beta 005 from 05/02/2002. As 48-bit LBA support for IDE drives and BIOSes did not exist before the year 2004, you are indeed limited to 128GiB on this board.

However, I have found that Award BIOSes from 2000 or later allow drives up to 640GiB to be attached, so a 200GB drive shouldn't be a problem. But the BIOS then only "sees" the first 128GiB due to its 28-bit LBA limitation.

Apart from drive overlay software, there is a workaround on these systems.
To be able to use drivespace above 128Gib you have to use Win2000 with SP3 or higher, WinXP with SP1 or higher, Vista or Win7/8/10, or Linux with kernel 2.4.19 or later, as Operating System.
When all code and data required to boot the OS is placed in a partition(s) below the 128Gib limit, the whole drive can be accessed by these OSes after bootup!
So Win98 doesn’t support 48-bit LBA out of the box and it limited to 128GiB. But there has been a developer who has worked on a patched ESDI_506.PDR driver, and his work can still be found at https://rloewelectronics.com/distribute/PATCH137/

Jan

Chkcpu wrote on 2022-02-16, 16:48:

Hi Joku_242, […]
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Hi Joku_242,

The latest P5A-B BIOS is revision 1011 Beta 005 from 05/02/2002. As 48-bit LBA support for IDE drives and BIOSes did not exist before the year 2004, you are indeed limited to 128GiB on this board.

However, I have found that Award BIOSes from 2000 or later allow drives up to 640GiB to be attached, so a 200GB drive shouldn't be a problem. But the BIOS then only "sees" the first 128GiB due to its 28-bit LBA limitation.

Apart from drive overlay software, there is a workaround on these systems.
To be able to use drivespace above 128Gib you have to use Win2000 with SP3 or higher, WinXP with SP1 or higher, Vista or Win7/8/10, or Linux with kernel 2.4.19 or later, as Operating System.
When all code and data required to boot the OS is placed in a partition(s) below the 128Gib limit, the whole drive can be accessed by these OSes after bootup!
So Win98 doesn’t support 48-bit LBA out of the box and it limited to 128GiB. But there has been a developer who has worked on a patched ESDI_506.PDR driver, and his work can still be found at https://rloewelectronics.com/distribute/PATCH137/

Jan

Good to know, I'll try if it works as a 128GiB drive.

It doesn't really matter if the rest of the disk can't be accessed, as it should be enough for retro use. And well, using a more modern OS defeats the purpose of using a retro PC. 😀

I tried it, and it was recognized as a 8,4Gb drive. However, I tried setting disk geometry to 65535 cylinders, 16 heads and 255 sectors. This made BIOS show it as a 137Gb drive, but trying to partition it failed. I was a bit busy, so I might have screwed up something, so I'll try it again later.

These socket 7 BIOSes scan the IDE channels during POST and can automatically configure up to 4 drives.
Just set the Harddisk Type and Mode to Auto in the BIOS Setup for all 4 drives and the BIOS will take care of the rest. 😀

Jan

Setting it to auto caused it to be shown as a 8,4Gb drive. So unfortunately that didn't work.

EDIT: I tried again setting cylinders/heads/sectors to 65535/16/255. It turned out that the issue was that there already were some partitions, some of them non-DOS partitions and Partition Magic 7 didn't recognize them. When I removed those with fdisk, it started to work. Let's see if it boots from that once I have moved the partition to the new disk...

EDIT2: Scandisk found some errors from that new partition, so I suppose that didn't work.

EDIT3: Apparently Seatools could be used to set drive capacity to 128Gb, like shown in this video. Unfortunately Seatools fails to start on my system. 🙁
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh6j5tW0iwU&t=1s

I’m still scratching my head, why your BIOS reports only 8.4GB on your 200GB drive when set to Auto. The BIOS gets the disk parameters directly from the drive’s firmware via the Identify Drive command. This is independent from the drive’s partitioning.
To rule-out a BIOS bug, please check the BIOS STANDARD CMOS SETUP menu. It should look like this:

So you should have 8 times AUTO on this SETUP page, and then the BIOS should report your 200GB drive as 137GB.
If this still doesn’t work, then let us know which P5A-B BIOS version you are using now.

Jan

Chkcpu wrote on 2022-02-24, 12:58:

I’m still scratching my head, why your BIOS reports only 8.4GB on your 200GB drive when set to Auto. The BIOS gets the disk para […]
Show full quote

I’m still scratching my head, why your BIOS reports only 8.4GB on your 200GB drive when set to Auto. The BIOS gets the disk parameters directly from the drive’s firmware via the Identify Drive command. This is independent from the drive’s partitioning.
To rule-out a BIOS bug, please check the BIOS STANDARD CMOS SETUP menu. It should look like this:

P5A-B_HDD_AUTO.png

So you should have 8 times AUTO on this SETUP page, and then the BIOS should report your 200GB drive as 137GB.
If this still doesn’t work, then let us know which P5A-B BIOS version you are using now.

Jan

Yes, it was just like that. I just double checked and it's indeed shown as 8.4GB or 8056MiB drive in fdisk or Partition Magic. My other disk is 40GB, and it's shown correctly.

This happens even though I tried that trick with Seatools, after digging up a mobo with which it works. 😕

BIOS version is 1011 beta 5.

Apparently errors found by scandisk were caused by Partition Magic bugging. However, the drive wouldn't boot when in CHS mode. But setting the values in "normal" mode in BIOS, and then setting mode to "AUTO" (but keeping drive settings in "USER" mode) caused it to be found as a 137GB LBA drive. It seems to work fine at least for now, though.

Joku_242 wrote on 2022-02-27, 12:10:

Apparently errors found by scandisk were caused by Partition Magic bugging. However, the drive wouldn't boot when in CHS mode. But setting the values in "normal" mode in BIOS, and then setting mode to "AUTO" (but keeping drive settings in "USER" mode) caused it to be found as a 137GB LBA drive. It seems to work fine at least for now, though.

Curious. I can’t think of an explanation for this behavior.
But it works at least. 😀

Cheers, Jan