What version of DOS are you using?

you should use the windows 98se bootdisk and use fat32 only if you want to install windows 95C
older versions of 95 doesn't support Fat32 and are limited to 2gb partitions

The problem here is not the partition size but disk size? First of all, what kind of computer are you trying to setup? I guess it is at least 486 and up right? Is your BIOS correctly idendified the HDD and enabled LBA?

If the answer to the above question is yes, do you know that FAT16 (DOS 6.22 and older and any Windows 95 before OEM Service Release 2.1) can only allows partition sizes 2GB or less?

So you need to create 2 or more partitions in your 4GB HDD if you want to use FAT16, otherwise you need to use some other OS which is FAT32 aware (W95 OSR 2.1 and up, W98, etc.), then you can use your whole HDD as a single partition.

I

So to answer all the questions above:

DOS is 6.22

I'd prefer to keep FAT16 if possible but I heard those partitions could be up to 4GB in unsigned?

Yes the problem is the disk size. It's a 4.3GB Quantum SCSI drive and FDISK thinks there's only 2GB to play with. My C drive is already 1GB and says 50% utilization. When I go to make an extended partition, it says the max is 1GB (because it sees the total as 2). Using FDISK from my 98 diskette supports LBA but it still only sees 2GB.

The computer is a Pentium-S 120MHz running at 133.

The BIOS does not recognize it at all because I disabled everything to do with the master IDE and HDD detection, since it would conflict with my SCSI controller. Up until now, I have logged a few days on this computer with no HDD problems other than the total size being misreported by FDISK. HDD operation is normal and solid.

Depending on how old the SCSI card is the SCSI bios can have limitations to the max size of drive it can see. So it might take whatever the size drive and present it as 2gb. What is the Model of SCSI card?

Gahhhrrrlic wrote:

So to answer all the questions above: […]
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So to answer all the questions above:

DOS is 6.22

I'd prefer to keep FAT16 if possible but I heard those partitions could be up to 4GB in unsigned?

Yes the problem is the disk size. It's a 4.3GB Quantum SCSI drive and FDISK thinks there's only 2GB to play with. My C drive is already 1GB and says 50% utilization. When I go to make an extended partition, it says the max is 1GB (because it sees the total as 2). Using FDISK from my 98 diskette supports LBA but it still only sees 2GB.

The computer is a Pentium-S 120MHz running at 133.

The BIOS does not recognize it at all because I disabled everything to do with the master IDE and HDD detection, since it would conflict with my SCSI controller. Up until now, I have logged a few days on this computer with no HDD problems other than the total size being misreported by FDISK. HDD operation is normal and solid.

Sorry, my bad. I should have seen that the drive is SCSI. I don't know about your SCSI controller but even an adaptec ISA controller can see a 3.2 GB SCSI in my 386, so I believe yours should be fine, too.

In anycase maybe you can check the SCSI BIOS for something like this "Extend BIOS translation for DOS Drives > 1Gbyte : Enabled". It could be related.

My 386 uses an Adaptec card and shows the entire volume but this is an Always IN-2000 and just as you were both replying I was thinking about the SCSI card too. That would suck if it was limiting because I wanted to use what I had at hand. Maybe I could swap the Always into my 386 since it will never use all 4GB. Still need to verify that this is in fact the problem though.

EDIT:

The user manual states that the BIOS revision it was printed for handles up to 8 or so GB, leading me to believe the BIOS I have is a lower version because I don't have some of the other features they're talking about (like showing 'hit ESC to enter setup' during POST). I don't know what capacity it supported in previous BIOS revisions or if I can even upgrade the BIOS through flashing or chip replacement but it's such an obscure card that I doubt it.

I don't have any idea about the inner workings of that card of yours, but just in case:

- "Press XXX to enter setup" kind of boot up message is an optional thing in Adaptec cards and can be disabled or enabled from the SCSI BIOS. Maybe this is what your cards also do.

- As I mentioned before, "Extend BIOS translation for DOS Drives > 1Gbyte : Enabled" is a required thing for MS-DOS 5.0 and 6.0 according to the Adaptec manual

- In an 386 PC, I don't remember which Adaptec card, but the SCSI disk was in need of a device driver (came with the Adaptec driver disk of that card) to be loaded with config.sys to be accessed by DOS.

Gahhhrrrlic wrote:

I'd prefer to keep FAT16 if possible but I heard those partitions could be up to 4GB in unsigned?

As far as I know it is only possible with Windows NT4. It Supports FAT cluster sizes of 64K, allowing a 4GB limit, but you will not be able to access it from DOS. So, no, FAT16 and native pre 7.1 DOS means 2Gb maximum partition size.

Edit: I just learned that there are patches to increase the partition limit above 2GB for some non FAT32 DOS versions.

tayyare wrote:

So, no, FAT16 and DOS means 2Gb maximum partition size.

Not quite, regular DOS supports* a partition sitze close to 4GB. 😉
Re: Intel VS440FX refuses to boot DOS 6.22 from detected SSD

Jo22 wrote:

tayyare wrote:

So, no, FAT16 and DOS means 2Gb maximum partition size.

Not quite, regular DOS supports* a partition sitze close to 4GB. 😉
Re: Intel VS440FX refuses to boot DOS 6.22 from detected SSD

I never heard of this. Is this some kind of patch? Is DOS (pre 7.1) really supports this natively? I'm amazed 😲

tayyare wrote:

I never heard of this. Is this some kind of patch? Is DOS (pre 7.1) really supports this natively? I'm amazed 😲

It's a patched version of DOS, yes. I was using the original version of MS-DOS 5 for this little Halloween experiment.
I don't want to get too much into technical detail, but in essence, it involves surpassing the 1024 cylinder limit.
To make that ol' patch work, an older AT-style BIOS with 12-Bit cylinder numbers for int13h is required.
Virtual PC 2007 worked for me. That's also what I used to take the screenshot, I remember.
Anyway, this modification to DOS and it's utilities surely will create some funny software compatibility issues. 😉
- And yes, these changes could also be adapted to 6.22.. Though its usefulnes is questionable when there's DOS 7.1 already.

Jo22 wrote:

It's a patched version of DOS, yes. I was using the original version of MS-DOS 5 for this little Halloween experiment. I don't w […]
Show full quote

tayyare wrote:

I never heard of this. Is this some kind of patch? Is DOS (pre 7.1) really supports this natively? I'm amazed 😲

It's a patched version of DOS, yes. I was using the original version of MS-DOS 5 for this little Halloween experiment.
I don't want to get too much into technical detail, but in essence, it involves surpassing the 1024 cylinder limit.
To make that ol' patch work, an older AT-style BIOS with 12-Bit cylinder numbers for int13h is required.
Virtual PC 2007 worked for me. That's also what I used to take the screenshot, I remember.
Anyway, this modification to DOS and it's utilities surely will create some funny software compatibility issues. 😉
- And yes, these changes could also be adapted to 6.22.. Though its usefulnes is questionable when there's DOS 7.1 already.

So it's not native then... Ok, changed my message above accordingly 😊