Hm, that's weird. 🤔 The advices from our fellow Vogons users are fine.
Traditionally, there's the 504MB limit of old BIOSes and the 8GB limit (Large model, E-CHS).
And for DOS:
- 32MB (FAT12 or old FAT16, DOS 3.x),
- 2GB (max. partition size without patching; DOS 5/6)
- 8GB maximum HDD capacity (DOS 5/6)
Here's a chart that I drew.
Re: 512mb CF card cylinder values ?
However, there are also BIOSes with known HDD limits.
Edit: That link was also mentioned by weedeewee. 😎
http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/bioslim.htm
If you can, please run some more diagnostic programs.
Maybe there will be an inconsistency at some point. 🤷♂️
I recommend trying these:
MSD
CheckIt (CMOS information part)
SYSINFO (Symantec and/or Central Point versions)
IDEDIAG (Re: IDE disk-on-module + 386)
NSSI (very good)
DR. HARDWARE
Alternatively, you can try using XFDISK.
Or patch MS-DOS 5.00 for big HDDs. It really works.
Re: Intel VS440FX refuses to boot DOS 6.22 from detected SSD
Re: Browsing a harddisk under DOS without using BIOS routines (INT13H)
Or experiment with MS-DOS 7.1.
It also has FDISK (just dont use support for big HDDs/FAT32).
Good luck! 🙂🤞
PS: Are you from France? I'm asking, because I'm from Germany.
I could theoretically send you a spare EPROM pre-programmed with XTIDE Universal BIOS if nothing works.
It then can be installed on an network card, for example. 🙂
Edit: I forgot to mention.. The BIOS and the Setup Utility in a PC are two separare programs.
The Setup Utility is just like a DOS program on an EPROM which can show the correct data, even though the BIOS routines themselves don't support them.
Edit: I forgot. There's also DR DOS, Novell DOS 7 and PTS DOS/Paragon DOS.
Maybe their FDISK programs can help you.
They can be found at Winworldpc site, but I can't provide you with a link.
This forum doesn't support using them from such sources, also.
I merely mention this for testing purposes, so you can create yourself a bootable system disk with FDISK/FORMAT/SYS etc.
Similar to how Windows itself used to provide a bootable DOS diskette for troubleshooting.
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