Wanting to know if my oldAMIBIOS chip will support a 40GB HD

[mr9inchnail]

I have an old 486 computer that I got off my brother. I have a 40GB hard drive order and I want to put it in my brother's old computer install linux and run an ftp site from that computer. But i'm not sure if the computer will support the new 40GB hard drive and I was wondering if anybody could give me some information on the BIOS that's in this computer. Any information will be useful, mostly looking for information on the compatibility of the HD with the computer though, THANKS!!

[soupy]

486? No. AFAIK, you can't use drive overlay software with Linux, so you'll probably need to buy an EIDE controller card.

[mr9inchnail]

The computer has a controller card

[a_user]

Yes but we are talking about one that support 40 gig and has it's own bios routines. Do you really need 40 gig?

[mr9inchnail]

well i was looking into having an ftp site with movies that are atleast 700MB each so a nice sized 40 GB would be a nice start for my ftp site

do you know if I would be able to find an IDE controller card that will support a 40GB hard drive and also run in an old 486?

[edwin]

Hmmm, not going to be easy. Usually those cards want a PCI slot that is 2.1 spec compliant. I don't know that much 486-based boards that have those. What motherboard are we dealing with exactly (make/model)?

[soupy]

http://www.provantage.com/VPROM108.HTM

[Rainbow]

I think that Linux might be able to use full drive capacity.