VOGONS


First post, by Great Hierophant

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So you have that huge 500GB hard drive, one that still uses a parallel ATA/IDE interface (80-pin ribbon cable). Feeling the need for storage space, you want to install it in that retro-PC of yours. How do you do it so you can safely store software on it?

You have two prerequisites in order to make that hard drive work, hardware and operating system.

1. Hardware - Your motherboard must support 48-bit Logical Block Addressing or you will need an ATA-6/UDMA 100 PCI interface card. The standard IDE interface on a BX motherboard only supports 28-bit Logical Block Addressing, so you will probably need an interface card or a motherboard with a third party IDE controller. You can almost always disable the motherboard's IDE controllers to free up resources. If you can find a Serial ATA controller that includes a Win 98 driver, all the better.

2. Operating System - If you are using Windows 2000/XP, you simply format in NTFS and you will be happy. But that isn't retro enough, we are dealing with Windows 98 here. No DOS-based version of Windows (which includes everything from 1.0 to ME) supports 48-bit LBA natively, you must use a driver from the interface manufacturer.

This means two very important things. Number one, you cannot use Microsoft's FORMAT, FDISK, SCANDISK and DEFRAG utilities on a 48-bit LBA drive. These utilities also have bugs regarding their implementation of FAT32 that limits their functionality over 127GB. Number two, you cannot install Windows to a 48-bit LBA drive. Therefore, your Windows 98SE drive should be a 28-bit LBA drive (max size was 120GB), the 48-bit LBA drives should be drive E: or above.

A large drive C: is useful for running Windows, its programs and games. The large hard drives E: & F: should be used for storage and backups. You can include disk images on these drives and virtualize them through Daemon Tools. Windows programs, which should go through the IDE controller drivers, can safely store to these drives. DOS programs should be run on the C: drive as they will not deal with Windows drivers and will cause errors if they try to read from a disk addressing system they do not fully understand.

The OS still needs to support FAT32, so you need Win 95 OSR2, Win 98, Win 98SE or Win ME. Otherwise, be prepared for a ridiculous number of partitions.

Reply 1 of 10, by retro games 100

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I'm really interested in this. Please can I double-check something - will Windows 98SE installed on a C: drive partition never be able to see more than 127? GB on that C: drive partition?

I have a "BX-based mobo", and my HDD is 300GB. Luckily, the mobo BIOS does not hang/freeze on POST with this HDD, however it does identify its capacity as only being 137GB. I think the mobo's built-in IDE controller is ATA4.

(Please note, I really don't want to install an additional PCI-based IDE controller - I really want to use my PCI slots for other components.)

I was thinking, can I do this -

Install a 3rd party boot manager, such as "Boot It Next Generation". Would this allow me to get around the BIOS limitation of only being able to see 137GB for my 300GB HDD - and then get "Boot It NG" to make 3 bootable Win98SE partitions, each occupying about 100GB on the 300GB HDD?

Thanks for any thoughts, best regards, Robert.

Reply 2 of 10, by Great Hierophant

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retro games 100 wrote:
I'm really interested in this. Please can I double-check something - will Windows 98SE installed on a C: drive partition never […]
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I'm really interested in this. Please can I double-check something - will Windows 98SE installed on a C: drive partition never be able to see more than 127? GB on that C: drive partition?

I have a "BX-based mobo", and my HDD is 300GB. Luckily, the mobo BIOS does not hang/freeze on POST with this HDD, however it does identify its capacity as only being 137GB. I think the mobo's built-in IDE controller is ATA4.

(Please note, I really don't want to install an additional PCI-based IDE controller - I really want to use my PCI slots for other components.)

I was thinking, can I do this -

Install a 3rd party boot manager, such as "Boot It Next Generation". Would this allow me to get around the BIOS limitation of only being able to see 137GB for my 300GB HDD - and then get "Boot It NG" to make 3 bootable Win98SE partitions, each occupying about 100GB on the 300GB HDD?

Thanks for any thoughts, best regards, Robert.

I do not think Boot It Next Generation would work because it uses the BIOS for disk processing options. If your BIOS only supports 28-bit LBA, then the program probably will not work with a 48-bit LBA drive.

A BX motherboard's built in IDE ports support only 28-bit LBA. Get a board with alot of PCI slots and you can overcome this easily and have access to higher speed ports (UMDA100/133, SATA).

Some motherboards, like the Abit BX/133 RAID, have a UDMA/100 controller that will support 48-bit LBA. Myself, I am looking strongly at an Abit BE6-II, some of which has a UDMA/66 controller onboard that can be upgraded to support 48-bit LBA. (I need a slot processor.)

Reply 3 of 10, by GL1zdA

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On most drives you can use a jumper to cap the available space. I know that you lose some space, but drives are today extremely cheap and 127 GB is still a lot. I always hate installing drivers for IDE controllers because I always had troubles with OSs installed on non-generic controllers. Personally I was looking to buy some new 80 GB drives for my retro PCs - most of the new ones have 1 platter and 1 head so they are silent and cold. It would still exceed the transfer rate available on the IDE controller on the PIIX4E (not to mention the SIO...), but I don't think this would be a problem.

Reply 4 of 10, by Jorpho

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Wait a minute. The ToastyTech guy managed to do this with Windows 95.
http://toastytech.com/guis/miscb2.html

(Unfortunately he's a wee sparse on the details for that particular bit.)

Reply 6 of 10, by bestemor

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Here's a link regarding win98 and big drives:
http://www.msfn.org/board/Install-w98-on-Larg … -1-t113142.html

And there is a treasure trove of info, as well as links with all sorts of strange downloads etc, if you poke around, both in that particular thread and elsewhere on that site.

And, though I assume most are familiar with this page, here's another 'wow' factor site...
http://www.mdgx.com/

Reply 7 of 10, by fillosaurus

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The answer is simple, my friends... Partitions, partitions. FAT32, that is.
Had a 40 Gig HDD on a mobo that supported max 8. I made a 7.5 C:\ partition, installed Win98SE on it, and the OS managed the rest of the HDD, a 32 Gig D:\

Y2K box: AMD Athlon K75 (second generation slot A)@700, ASUS K7M motherboard, 256 MB SDRAM, ATI Radeon 7500+2xVoodoo2 in SLI, SB Live! 5.1, VIA USB 2.0 PCI card, 40 GB Seagate HDD.
WIP: external midi module based on NEC wavetable (Yamaha clone)

Reply 8 of 10, by Great Hierophant

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Not a bad idea, but I think the D:\ drive really should be a CD-ROM drive. Some games assume that.

Reply 9 of 10, by Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman

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GL1zdA wrote:

On most drives you can use a jumper to cap the available space.

IIRC we can cap the space using a linux-based util as well, but I don't quite remember the name of the application. Didn't we have similar discussion some threads ago?

Never thought this thread would be that long, but now, for something different.....
Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman.

Reply 10 of 10, by swaaye

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I made a 180 GB FAT32 partition for 98 to read. 😀 I have a 200 GB drive on a Pentium Pro (VS440FX) mobo. 20GB for 98 partition, ~180GB for CD ISO storage (I hate using the actual CDs.) Works fine. I used a Promise Ultra 66 and Partition Magic to get the partitions made and then switched to the old 440FX IDE controller to actually run the system. Needed that PCI slot. I've found that if you can get the partitions on the HDD with the use of a modern PCI IDE card that older IDE controllers will still read them even if the BIOS thinks it's a 64gig or some such.

If the board freezes during post though, that's another story.... Then you'll need to limit the drive or just use a PCI IDE card.