60GB: 08/04/97 i430TX-2A59ID48C-00

[fjcobas]

Hi,

Seen this BIOS on the "wanted" list here. [ It is from a DFI's 586ITBD (rev. A+) motherboard ]. Think that maybe a bad start point.

On DFI's website i have seen a "new" updated BIOS on http://www.dfi.com/download/BIOS/ITBD7138.ZIP
(The description is: 586ITBD ITBD7138.ZIP (116 KB) 07/13/1998 ).

It seems to solve some other problems, but docs tell nothing about big disk updates.

Also, being 1998 update it is not going to be able to cope with 60 GB disk.

On boot it prompts:"Award Modular BIOS 4.51 PG".

Does anybody know how to patch it ?
Any help appreciated.

[NickS]

The BIOS ID on that file is 07/13/98-i430TX-2A59ID4TC-00 which will make the Award flasher complain. It may still be correct for your board as some manufacturers changed the ID even when the board was unchanged. (There is no BIOS OEM message - that's left blank). It is patchable....done.

[fjcobas]

Nicks,

Thanks so very much for your reply

By patchable you mean:

1) Maneageable/Compatible with "Award Flasher" for my motherboard [DFI's 586ITBD (rev
. A+)]
2) Recognizing 60 GB. disk
3) Both

> ....done.

[ BTW, i'm a novice here, Where do you guys store the ones you patch ?]

Just in case i'm going to buy, if possible, my BIOS chip "ATMEL AT29c010a 'PEROM'", and copy the current BIOS to it with an EEPROM copier when i get access to one.

Cheers,

[NickS]

Ah, my apologies. I have got into the bad habit of leaving my signature off to save space. Look at the link in my signature.
By "patchable" I mean recognising disks up to 128 GiB (137 GB).** It should also be as flashable as the original....


As usual:
- you flash at your own risk
- read and follow the flash utility instructions.
- we recommend you clear the CMOS ( take notes of how it is set up first if you want) after flashing - use /cc and /cd switches with the Award flasher.
- remember that you *may* need to run the HDD manufacturer's utility to reduce the transfer rate of a UDMA66 or UDMA100 drive to UDMA33. See the post "links to ATA mode setting utilities" in the "Collected Wisdom" forum at WIM's BIOS forums.
- if you have already used Disk Manager, EZ-Drive or similar, getting rid of it may be VERY hard. You will probably have to fdisk/mbr, repartition and reformat the disk and maybe run the manufacturer's utility to reset the disk size.
- remember that FAT32 does not allow single partitions over 32GB in size - an operating system which supports NTFS partitions is required.
- remember that for Windows 98 an updated FDISK is required from Microsoft to handle disks over 64GB in size.

**Please note that to simplify the automatic patching process, the disk capacity display has not been patched and the capacity may not be displayed correctly in the configuration report screen or CMOS setup. For example, a 120 GByte disc could show as 2139 Mbytes.