What's the difference between an enhanced 16 bit ISA IO controller, and a "non enhanced" 16 bit ISA IO controller? Will a non-enhanced controller still be able to cope with a HDD which is approx <2GB in size?
It might be a sign of 16550 serial ports and/or EPP/ECP parallel.
Might be aswell EIDE capabilities:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EIDE#EIDE_and_ATA-2
or maybe AT vs. AT-A.
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That wikipedia link takes you to a great page, and on it, there's a table which says -
pre-ATA = 2.1 GB limit.
That's very useful to know. Basically, any controller should be able to cope with a (approx) 2GB HDD.
The size limits are a pure software problem.
1+1=10
wrote:The size limits are a pure software problem.
Right, it's a common myth that the maximum supported size depends on the controller.
If somewhere is written the controller supports 128 GB max. it is bogus.
What they mean is that their driver software does not support LBA48.
In a simple model LBA28 is just another interpretation of CHS and LBA48 is just setting up twice LBA28 before transferring.
> that the maximum supported size depends on the controller.
It gets a bit of truth if the controller has its own flawed BIOS though.
1+1=10
Yes maybe a bit, still a BIOS is software 😉
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