120Gb: 06/10/1999-i440LX-P6LX-AP

BIOS update, EIDE card, or overlay software? (FAQ Hard disk recognition)
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Nelly
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Bios Type: Award modular BIOS v4.51PG
Bios ID: 06/10/1999-i440LX-P6LX-AP

Other post information:
P6LX-A+ Ver 3.1d 06/07/1999
Award Plug and play bios extensions v1.0A

The board is a ECS P6LX-A+ running the intel i440LX chipset.
It is running a celeron 533Mhz and has 390Mb of RAM

The bios (Ver 3.1d) that i am using at the moment can be found at:
http://www.ecs.com.tw/download/p6lxap.htm

It is the 1mb bios and it does not recognise my 120Gb hard Disks or my 40Gb ones.

any help would be most appreciated
ajzchips
El cheapo dude
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OK, it's patched and uploaded to http://wims.rainbow-software.org/ajz/

Try it and please post your results.
Nelly
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Thank you for the prompt responce and the bios.

However it doesn't work. It flashes fine but when i reboot it still won't auto-detect the hard disk.

Any suggestions?
Nelly
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After a bit of bodging it's detecting the disks. It doesn't show the disk size in the BIOS. But power saving works and i can boot of the disks.

Great job thanks.
edwin
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That is a known limitation of the patch, getting that bug out would require recoding of a larger amount of each bios which would increase the risk of it not working on all bioses. Set for autodetect and never look back :)
edwin/evasive

Do not assume anything

System error, strike any user to continue...
Safo
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Hi

I have the same Bios and patch with 3.1d from ajz.

My 10GB HD is only working with 8 GB.

I have selected the disks in bios of AUTO. It doesn't show the disk size in the bios.

What's the problem?

best regards

Safo
ajzchips
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You might have the 8GB-limiting jumper set. Check the back of your HDD.
Safo
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No, I have only set the jumper J50 (master).

Safo
Rainbow
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Set HDD mode to LBA in Standard CMOS setup.
Patched and tested BIOSes are at http://wims.rainbow-software.org
UniFlash - Flash anything anywhere
Ritchie
BIOS Guru
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On an AWARD BIOS, usually when you run the autodetection it will show the possible modes of each drive as it detects them. You can then type in the corresponding number next to the listed mode that you want to use.

However, if you press Y for YES, this will automatically select the mode next to which Y is shown, which will normally be the optimal (LBA for modern drives) mode for the drive.

However I am unsure if a LBA capable drive formatted under NORMAL or LARGE mode will detect as LBA or the mode which it is formatted under. If this is your situation you may need to backup any data of the drive first, redetect and deliberately select the LBA mode during the detection process, then repartition and reformat to complete the drive setup for LBA mode.
Safo
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If I let the HD search automatically, then the Bios recognizes the HD only as 8,4 GB.

Maybe I test with another HD of the same type.

Sorry for my bad english but I try it nevertheless :wink:

Safo
Ritchie
BIOS Guru
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Safo - Are you sure your installed BIOS patch is from AJZ?

Just that going by the version number this is the same that Nelly reports from ECS.

Maybe you are still running the ECS version, which may NOT be patched to recognise 8GB+ disks.


Also, once checking this, if you have another system handy which, ideally, has detected disks of the size or larger than the size that you wish to install, then you might want to put your 10GB disk into that system if see if it detects correctly.

Then you would know for sure that any capacity limiting jumpers are set/unset correctly and that any remaining problem with detecting the full size is not with the drive (and probably still with the BIOS).
ajzchips
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The BIOSes are only patchable if they already support HDDs upto 32GB.
If they only support upto 8GB, then there's no way to patch them, not with our utilities, at least.
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