40GB: FIC VT-503

Recommended by Wim's BIOS...

I'm trying to upgrade the HDD on a system with a FIC VT-503 MoBo. BIOS ID is i-430tx-669-2a59if09c-00. Date is 3/23/00

New drive is a Maxtor 40GB 5400RPM unit.Old drive is 3.2GB Samsung formatted as FAT32 under Win95 OSR2.

I got past the first glitch (POST hang during HDD detect) by jumpering the drive to limit its size to NOMINAL 32GB. It still reports the drive as having 3300 or so "kb" but I don't know if they are using 1,000 byte "k" or 1,024 byte "k". The CMOS HDD autodetect screen shows the jumpered drive as having 4111 cylinders. (Could anything over 4,095 be a choke point for this BIOS?)

Anyhow, ScanDisk doesn't like it.
The 16 bit version tells me that it can't read from the last cluster on the drive and the 32 bit version tells me that I don't have enough memory to run it even tho I have 128MB and nothing else running.

The full blown Maxtor diagnostic indicates a BIOS incompatability problem but doesn't go into detail.

I am guessing that even when jumpered, the drive is still too big for the BIOS.

I guess that my primary question is whether I can use FDISK to partition it to some size less than a nominal 32 mb to get past it and if so, what should my maximum partition size be?

TIA.

SteveF

[Rainbow]

I can patch the BIOS to support HDDs up to 64GB. Post URL for the BIOS or send it by e-mail.

Rainbow:

Tks for the offer but the particular computer really doesn't need a lot of capacity and although it now has a large drive installed, I have no problem with scaling it back to a size that will be compatible with the BIOS.

As a result, what I am really looking for is whether anyone knows what size hard drive that particular BIOS will handle without any modification to it at all. If the limit is still 8.4GB with that BIOS, then I will repartition and leave it that way with 24GB unused.


I don't want to let the guy think he can get along with that old relic rather than consider replacing it entirely. Removing limitations won't help convince him that it's time for a new one.

Tks for your help.

S. F.

Rainbow:

Tks for the offer but the particular computer really doesn't need a lot of capacity and although it now has a large drive installed, I have no problem with scaling it back to a size that will be compatible with the BIOS.

As a result, what I am really looking for is whether anyone knows what size hard drive that particular BIOS will handle without any modification to it at all. If the limit is still 8.4GB with that BIOS, then I will repartition and leave it that way with 24GB unused.


I don't want to let the guy think he can get along with that old relic rather than consider replacing it entirely. Removing limitations won't help convince him that it's time for a new one.

Tks for your help.

S. F.

[Rainbow]

32GB