hm, i wonder if some SCSI also suffering some IDE/BIOS geometric limitation too?

Which SCSI card do you have? I seem to recall dealing with this issue a long time ago, and i ended up getting a newer SCSI PCI adapter that resolved the issue.

I'm using an Adaptec 2940UW. Can't find anything about it's ability to see a larger drive. My Mboard and BIOS are said to support it though....ASUS P5A-B, latest BIOS revision.

Since I posted, I've been trying to just get Windows on an 8GB partition. The Adaptec utility sees the drive just fine and will low level format it. It will show it at 8GB. Fdisk though, won't partition it. It also sees it but when I try to create a partition on it, it errors out. The drive does make a fairly loud sound when starting up. This is my first SCSI drive, but I'm pretty competent...just not sure what to expect. Windows install won't touch it either. Although, the drive posts and even posts as the C: drive within the Adaptec SCSI BIOS. The system doesn't see it as any drive letter though.

Incidentally, I only got my DOS drive originally formatted to 2GB, but I think that's a DOS thing based on the FAT16 file sys. Not that I would need more, but it seems like I could tack on an extended partition to that drive. That is really the least of my worries right now though.

Does anyone have ideas beyond what's been said so far?

I haven't had a lot of experience with SCSI drives, but the ones I messed with have a lot of jumpers. Have you found documentation for your drive and checked that all the jumpers seem to be correct?
I don't know if they could have an 8GB capacity limit jumper, I think that would just be an IDE thing.
One of my drives had a jumper for a read-only mode. I tried using it once and Windows started hating the drive, so I guess the feature was working.
As far as generally glitchy behavior, maybe that could be caused by termination settings or cabling not being correct. I'm not real experienced with those issues, but they are issues with SCSI.

NooNaN wrote:

I'm using an Adaptec 2940UW. Can't find anything about it's ability to see a larger drive. My Mboard and BIOS are said to support it though....ASUS P5A-B, latest BIOS revision.

Since I posted, I've been trying to just get Windows on an 8GB partition. The Adaptec utility sees the drive just fine and will low level format it. It will show it at 8GB. Fdisk though, won't partition it. It also sees it but when I try to create a partition on it, it errors out. The drive does make a fairly loud sound when starting up. This is my first SCSI drive, but I'm pretty competent...just not sure what to expect. Windows install won't touch it either. Although, the drive posts and even posts as the C: drive within the Adaptec SCSI BIOS. The system doesn't see it as any drive letter though.

Incidentally, I only got my DOS drive originally formatted to 2GB, but I think that's a DOS thing based on the FAT16 file sys. Not that I would need more, but it seems like I could tack on an extended partition to that drive. That is really the least of my worries right now though.

One thing is sure: Your motherboard certainly can accept drives bigger than 8GB and it is not even relevant, since your drive is SCSI.

I also have a couple of 2940UWs in two current setups, which run 18GB, 36GB and 73GB drives, without a problem.

By the way, " The drive does make a fairly loud sound when starting up." might be just the normal. SCSI drives are noisy, especially during ramping up.

Are you sure its jumpers are all adjusted correctly (most SCSI drives have manuals on the net)?
Did you adjust the SCSI BIOS setting of "BIOS Support for Init13 Extensions" to "enabled"?
And for the last, are you sure your drive is not defective?

NooNaN wrote:

I have a TEAC 3.5"/5.25" combo floppy drive. It's naturally A: and B:. I also have a Gotek Floppy Emulator. Any way to get all these working together?

No, you can't do that under normal conditions. But there are some ways to create "abnormal" conditions:

http://www.seasip.info/VintagePC/floppies.html

Thanks tayyare + shamino! I'll def make sure all jumpers etc are good. I'm pretty sure the drive has no jumpers, which is generally default. I do have a terminator at the end of the SCSI cable. There is a blank connector in the middle as I only have the one drive. The drive does format, but even the Adaptec BIOS only sees 8GB. When the machine posts, the Adaptec stuff comes up and shows the drive with a drive letter. That drive letter is not valid once Dos boots. I've got some work to do to mess around with the jumpers, etc and then I'll report back.

Really appreciate that link re: the more than 2 floppy drives. I'll mess around with that as well. That would be a huge convenience. I think tracking down the USB I/O board for my mboard will help here. Prob gonna be tough to find though. I originally thought I wouldn't need USB for this rig, but missing it already.