The 32GB limit is a bug common for socket 7/slot 1 era. BIOS made before 1999 will have the bug and will hang when a bigger drive is detected. There are several ways of solving this : - update the bios to a newer version (the tx97 must have one)
- Set the drive to a incorrect geometry in the bios and install Ontrack disk manager

DOS 4 to 7.0 cannot read over 8GB indeed. However DOS 7.1 can read FAT32 partitions, so you can use that instead if you're not willing to run windows 3.11 (which can be run if you patch one DOS file), you will get a total access to the drive

Also, you don't need to make your own FAT 16 partition, FDISK will just ignore anything beyond 8GB. Also a single 8GB partition in FAT16 is incorrect for DOS use. Biggest partition possible in DOS 4-7.0 is 2GB, but you can make 4 of them to have access to 8GB, so you'll need to re partition your disk.

Here are some photos if it will help anyone.

You can get a patched bios here that will let you use big HDDs (up to 128GB) : http://www.win3x.org/win3board/viewtopic.php? … 30&f=16&t=26232

Deksor wrote:

The 32GB limit is a bug common for socket 7/slot 1 era. BIOS made before 1999 will have the bug and will hang when a bigger drive is detected. There are several ways of solving this : - update the bios to a newer version (the tx97 must have one)
- Set the drive to a incorrect geometry in the bios and install Ontrack disk manager

DOS 4 to 7.0 cannot read over 8GB indeed. However DOS 7.1 can read FAT32 partitions, so you can use that instead if you're not willing to run windows 3.11 (which can be run if you patch one DOS file), you will get a total access to the drive

I have updated to the newest bios 122.001 on the asus website. Windows 3.1 would be fine i just cant get far enough to install it. How do i set it to an incorrect geometry? Also will DOS read a full 8gb or would it have to be a total of 8gb as smaller partitions? I have read somewhere also that another way to possibly get around it is an ide/sata controller. Do you have an opinion on this? However I may just try to do an sd/compact flash to IDE since they are not expensive and i can get the right size cards easily.

gonna try that patched bios real quick.

Well the latest bios seem to be from 1998, so it's still too old ... There's a patched bios in the link I've posted, this should give you the ability to use any drive up to 128GB.

Yes this is 8GB by stacking each partitions, one partition can be 2GB large at most in DOS 4-7.0 and there's a maximum of 4.

IDE to sata controller would probably work, but it's kinda overkill for such a computer, and sata drives smaller than 32GB must be very rare, except SSDs perhaps ? A IDE to SD card would work very well for your needs !

If the patched bios didn't solve your issue, does the 80GB drive have a jumper setting for limiting capacity? If it does, it should limit it to a reasonable value that the older BIOS should be able to detect without hanging the system. Otherwise I'll agree with using an IDE to SD interface, those work great for older machines

UPDATE!!! VERY HAPPY CAMPER!!! Thankyou guys especially you Deksor.

Deksor wrote:

You can get a patched bios here that will let you use big HDDs (up to 128GB) : http://www.win3x.org/win3board/viewtopic.php? … 30&f=16&t=26232

This ended up working more or less. It got me past the post hang and I was able to create a partition with Fdisk and install DOS and the DOS started pack.
Now question about disk support. Since this bios lets me surpass the disk limitations, is there any way to surpass or patch the DOS limitations? I plan to use this pc strictly for DOS games but prefer to do full install from disk. I know there is DOS 7 and freeDOS but there are compatibility issues. Its not a huge deal because I do have another retro machine (P4 build) but I wanted to have some space on this one for games that need an older a slower clock speed and ISA sound.

Also, you don't need to make your own FAT 16 partition, FDISK will just ignore anything beyond 8GB. Also a single 8GB partition in FAT16 is incorrect for DOS use. Biggest partition possible in DOS 4-7.0 is 2GB, but you can make 4 of them to have access to 8GB, so you'll need to re partition your disk.

Also interesting thing i noted. Dos 6.22 installer made a 4gb partition not multiple 2gb partitions.

Gixxxer wrote:

Also, you don't need to make your own FAT 16 partition, FDISK will just ignore anything beyond 8GB. Also a single 8GB partition in FAT16 is incorrect for DOS use. Biggest partition possible in DOS 4-7.0 is 2GB, but you can make 4 of them to have access to 8GB, so you'll need to re partition your disk.

Also interesting thing i noted. Dos 6.22 installer made a 4gb partition not multiple 2gb partitions.

Interesting, indeed. Under certain circumstances (i.e. oddball BIOS, patched), DOS 5/6 at its core can handle between 3GB and 4GB for each FAT16 partition.
It mainly depends on the BIOS, however. Also, a lot of third party utilites don't support that.
See screenshot -> Re: Intel VS440FX refuses to boot DOS 6.22 from detected SSD

PS: Older OEM DOSes and clones had variable sector sizes (default=512 Bytes per sector),
which made it possible to break the barriers of the time (original FAT16 had a 32MB limit on DOS 3.x or so).

Edit: Ok, I'm not sure if I can explain that well, but in simple words, for example,
it's possible to alter DOS 5/6's system files to handle more than 1024 cylinders.
This requires a BIOS that reports more than 1024 cylinders via int13h (not the extended one).
Even though IBM's AT BIOS had that limit by default (10bits only), later AT-Bus hard disks usually didn't expose that limit (~4096cyl).

Now, some clone BIOSes could handle ~4095 cylinders -via classic int13h- by using 2 more bits in the DH register (12bits),
which can be taken advantage of to let DOS see more than 1024 cylinders (beware cyl. 1023 is a diagnostic cylinder).
The BIOS inside of Virtual PC 200x falls into this category, for example.
Other BIOSes may limit the int13h in order to maintain maximum copatibility with mainstream OSes.

Another requirement is that the BIOS uses the fixed disk parameters blocks int41h/int46h, respectively, for hard disk #0 and #1.
That's required for FDISK. Once FDISK is modified, it can use these two ints instead of int13h, function 08 to retrieve the maximum cylinder count.
(If it is misbehaving for what ever reason, I imagine it could be encouraged to do the same without modification.)
DOS itelf is quite easy to please. During boot-up it looks for a partitio table with a partition that's within a length of 1024 cylinders
and once found, uses that and calculates the end of it by using the 32-Bit sector count in the partition table.
Anyway, I hope got that right. 😅

The bottom line is: FDISK and BIOS are the main cause that limit DOS5/6 to 2GB partitions.
DOS may or may not beable to handle bigger partitions, depending on the system it is being run on-
That being said, I'm curious what DOS4 is capable of, once tweaked. 😀

Huh I wasn't aware of that !

Gixxxer wrote:

is there any way to surpass or patch the DOS limitations? I plan to use this pc strictly for DOS games but prefer to do full install from disk. I know there is DOS 7 and freeDOS but there are compatibility issues.

Short answer no.
Long answer, You can try other disk manages, I know Nt4 supports 4GB Fat16, so must of been commercial versions for Dos?
but would bet this would casue more compatibility issues then using Fat32.

If you really need more space and don't want Fat32, a second HDD would be a better option

Fat 32 or a second hard drive is fine. i dont care about the volume format as long as Dos can access it. I was just under the impression that there was an 8gb limit as to what could be accessed across all partitions on all discs. If this is not case though. Since the bios is patched for larger drive recognition, I have other drives i can put in. My goal overall is to have something like my other retro machine. Small boot/os drive large storage drive for games.