40GB: Totem TM-P2EXAT

[Denniss]

Recommended by Wim's BIOS...

[Denniss]

@mika : I see you have Win2K so please remove the Drive overlay software and use the 32GB clip(let your HDD show only 32GB) - Win2K is able to use full capacity of your disk without using this software - the only limitation is the boot partition has to be in the first 32GB .
Or use the patched Bios but please stay away from these DDO Softwares especially with NT-based systems (NT 2K XP)

Win2k was not able to use the full capacity of the hard disk, i.e. about 38GB. Win2k only showed about 31.5GB. The boot partition is in C drive. It is not a multi-boot system. Do you mean anything else by full capacity?

[NickS]

Does the Win2K Computer Management/Disk Management partition display show only the space for the C: partition on drive 0 ? Or does it show additional unused space ?

[NickS]

mika wrote:

What features will your patched BIOS offer ?

There's a well-known set of bugs in the Award 4.50- 4.51 BIOSes which will do any or all of the following:
- hang when auto-detecting drives bigger than 32 Gb
- fall over when trying to display the capacity of drives bigger than 32 Gb
- fail to allow the use of drives bigger than 32 Gb.

People have looked into the reasons for this and come up with rules for modifying the BIOS. Rainbow, a moderator on this site, has produced a utility used by the Associates and Moderators on this site to patch BIOSes for people to try out on a non-commercial basis.

What precautions should I take before flashing ?
I know about the backup bios, himem.sys, emm386.exe, pure dos 6.22, things but not anything other than this.
Am I missing out anything?

Well, if you have read the instructions that should be fine.

If the flash goes bad, what should i write in the autoexec.bat file for automatic flashing of the old bios ?
Thanks in advance.

It depends on the flash utility you are using. I would use "uniflash -E whatever.bin".

NickS, THANKS.
Your patched BIOS solved all my problems.
Thanks again.

[NickS]

You're welcome, Mika. Thanks for the feedback.

How can I see the contents of a .bin or .rom file ?
How can I edit these kind of files ?
What am I supposed to know to do this kind of thing ?
Can a 256 Kb .bin file be flashed in a bios whose original size is 128 kb ?
What features can be added with a flash other than the 32GB HDD limitation ?
Can ATA/UDMA 66/100 OR higher FSB 100/133Mhz features be added by a flash?

[NickS]

mika wrote:

How can I see the contents of a .bin or .rom file ?
How can I edit these kind of files ?

Using a hexadecimal editor, LHARC, and the utilities CBROM and MODBIN if you are talking of modifying Award BIOSes.

What am I supposed to know to do this kind of thing ?

80x86 machine code is a good start. Then you need to read up about how BIOSes work. Some of the posts here about patching the 32 Gb bug give useful information about the structure ofAward BIOSes. Google search on patching BIOSes turns up some other stuff, such as updating which Pentium microcode patches are in the .bin file.

Can a 256 Kb .bin file be flashed in a bios whose original size is 128 kb ?

In general, no.

What features can be added with a flash other than the 32GB HDD limitation ?

Custom EPA logos (check Collected Wisdom) and start-up messages, and support for different processors, BIOS antivirus updates, integrated video or SCSI BIOS, or even custom routines which will be executed at start-up.

Can ATA/UDMA 66/100 OR higher FSB 100/133Mhz features be added by a flash?

The ATA/UDMA capability is limited by the chipset. The FSB may be changeable, and some manufacturers have produced "overclocking" versions of BIOSes which allow intermediate clock speeds to be set. Again, this depends on the chipset and is not simple- I don't know how to do it.

Recently my PC clock is losing a lot of time.
It did not happened before, EVER.
This started after my BIOS flash.

Any idea on this?

[NickS]

Well, it's not the BIOS patching as Rainbow's utility only modifies two small areas of code which are used during start-up. One area is to autodetect the drive and the other is to display the drive size.

If your PC clock is running slow there are two main suspects. One is the CMOS/Real Time Clock and its battery. The other is the operating system. If you are losing time while the PC is switched off, replace the battery.

If you are losing time while the PC is switched on, the operating system is not counting the clock ticks because it is too busy doing some other thing, such as servicing the HDD, with interrupts disabled or at a higher priority than the clock. For example, back in the days of Windows 3.11 before everyone had a sound card, Microsoft produced a "loudspeaker driver" which produced PWM sound from the PC loudspeaker. You could run this at low priority and it would sound rubbish, or run it at high priority and your clock would lose time. If you have a fast drive and a relatively low-powered processor I guess this might result in some ticks being lost. Is DMA working ?

My new HDD is actually a ATA100 capable, set to run at ATA33 because of my motherboard. My CPU is a 266 Mhz celeron(without L2 cache).

The time lost is always 1 hour behind actual time.

I have to check whether it is losing time in windows or while its switched off.

Who is the manufacturer of this board?
Award Modular BIOS v4.51PG
08/03/1998-VP3-586B-8661-2A5LEC39C-00
Super I/O - ITE 8661/SiS 6801 rev 2 found at port 279h
Chipset - VIA 82C597 rev 4

[NickS]

mika wrote:

The time lost is always 1 hour behind actual time.

I don't think that's losing time, I think that's a problem with the "daylight saving" settings.