23 Nov
2006
23 Nov
'06
11:52 a.m.
Got this barebones 486 mobo. I'm trying to setup a 20
gig Fujitsu MPG3204AH drive. Types 1-46...then there's
47. I'm looking for the parameters as I type this. Has
anyone accomplished this? What about a newer cd-rom
drive? I don't have any 3.5" drives at my location,
but I know that somewhere I have a Win98SE boot cd (I
made it). Don't think I have any 5.25" boot floppies
either. I'm a mess! Trying to get some images burned
onto floppies, so I can play :). I doubt I can get
this working today. I did make that hard drive
bootable some time ago, but the P166MMX unit wouldn't
boot from it. I don't have a clue.
If anyone can call me, that would be great LOL!
8016260<area code 732>. I can't get my dialup stuph
working, and I had to drive to a nearby hotspot w/my
laptop just to do this! Man am I a mess.
Can't find a 3.5 anywhere in my stash. That would
make everything work. O man.
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23 Nov
23 Nov
12:04 p.m.
On 11/23/06, Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> wrote:
Got this barebones 486 mobo. I'm trying to setup a 20
gig Fujitsu MPG3204AH drive. Types 1-46...then there's
47. I'm looking for the parameters as I type this. Has
Old 486 can only support 540MB HD. Newer might support bigger. But surely
not 20G! Find an old HD and you are OK.
anyone accomplished this? What about a newer cd-rom
drive? I don't have any 3.5" drives at my location,
but I know that somewhere I have a Win98SE boot cd (I
made it). Don't think I have any 5.25" boot floppies
either. I'm a mess! Trying to get some images burned
onto floppies, so I can play :). I doubt I can get
this working today. I did make that hard drive
bootable some time ago, but the P166MMX unit wouldn't
boot from it. I don't have a clue.
If anyone can call me, that would be great LOL!
8016260<area code 732>. I can't get my dialup stuph
working, and I had to drive to a nearby hotspot w/my
laptop just to do this! Man am I a mess.
Can't find a 3.5 anywhere in my stash. That would
make everything work. O man.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Want to start your own business?
Learn how on Yahoo! Small Business.
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/r-index
12:12 p.m.
when I originally setup this drive on an old pentium,
which couldn't support it's capacity w/o an overlay
either, it formatted it to the capacity it was able.
Shouldn't dos on the 486 do the same? I'm now
realizing it won't even see the partition I did create
though (~8 gigs) presumably.
--- 9000 VAX <vax9000 at gmail.com> wrote:
____________________________________________________________________________________
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http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/r-index
On 11/23/06, Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com>
wrote:
____________________________________________________________________________________
Got this barebones 486 mobo. I'm trying to setup a
20
gig Fujitsu MPG3204AH drive. Types 1-46...then
there's
47. I'm looking for the parameters as I type
this.
Has
Old 486 can only support 540MB HD. Newer might
support bigger. But surely
not 20G! Find an old HD and you are OK.
anyone accomplished this? What about a newer
cd-rom
drive? I don't have any 3.5" drives at
my
location,
but I know that somewhere I have a Win98SE boot
cd
(I
made it). Don't think I have any 5.25"
boot
floppies
either. I'm a mess! Trying to get some images
burned
onto floppies, so I can play :). I doubt I can
get
this working today. I did make that hard drive
bootable some time ago, but the P166MMX unit
wouldn't
boot from it. I don't have a clue.
If anyone can call me, that would be great LOL!
8016260<area code 732>. I can't get my dialup
stuph
working, and I had to drive to a nearby hotspot
w/my
laptop just to do this! Man am I a mess.
Can't find a 3.5 anywhere in my stash. That would
make everything work. O man.
Want to start
your own business?
Learn how on Yahoo! Small Business.
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/r-index
12:29 p.m.
Chris M wrote:
when I originally setup this drive on an old pentium,
which couldn't support it's capacity w/o an overlay
either, it formatted it to the capacity it was able.
Shouldn't dos on the 486 do the same?
remember that pc controllers for hard drives, and later IDE drives
get their capacity from what you tell them.
when a 486 bios boots up, it will use the HD access definition that
the bios supported. It may be compatable with the original AT only
and only go to ~500mb, or may have bios that will work with the
# of sectors / trk and # of cylinders maxed out and go to ~2.2gb
total (some called it LBA, some bios other things).
The trick is to get a boot written that will not remap the boot region
when you change methods of access.
you may well not have a bios with can write 63 sectors / track
and init the disk to that. If so, you will need a boot that will
work with the lowest common denomentator, which is to map
to the 0:0.0 spot on the disk, then read a boot from the remainder
of what would be the first track, then it will have to be able to
remap and replace the :80 / :81 bios hard disk requests and
read the disk till the OS comes up. I thought that LILO installed
on the disk as the boot in early versions of linux handled this
problem. It may not be possible to have more than one
OS on the disk if you use Linux and LILO on a system,
since you cannot mix up the OS's if they don't share the
mapping of the cylinders, etc.
The 8gb mapping, 32gb mapping, and huge disk mapping
all use a different way of passing the disk address seek info
after the disk is booted by the bios with the smaller older
seek commands, but the whole mess has to be carefully
managed to be sure all the mappings are able to miss each
other during the boot process.
Jim
12:59 p.m.
One other trick is to hang a SCSI drive of a 1542 Adaptec or if it's got
VESA or EISA one of those controllers.
I've got a couple of VESA and EISA scsi's as well as a bunch of 1542's...
One 1542's running in my PIII firewall running IPCop behind my cablemodem.
Works forever 24x7 and you can't kill those adaptecs.
Bill
1:18 p.m.
--- Bill Pechter <pechter at gmail.com> wrote:
One other trick is to hang a SCSI drive of a 1542
Adaptec or if it's got
VESA or EISA one of those controllers.
I was thinking about something like that. I do have
some kind of scsi controller...not sure about a
compatible drive though (ain't got any sca to scsi-1?
adapters). SCSI hard drives don't require a setup?
I've got a couple of VESA and EISA scsi's as
well as
a bunch of 1542's...
One 1542's running in my PIII firewall running IPCop
behind my cablemodem.
Works forever 24x7 and you can't kill those
adaptecs.
Bill
Is there any longer any question whether SCSI is the
Promised Land?
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2:54 p.m.
On Thu, 23 Nov 2006, 9000 VAX wrote:
On 11/23/06, Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com>
wrote:
If memory serves, the magic numbers were actually 527MB and 8GB. A 20GB
drive could still be used as an 8GB drive though.
-Toth
Got this barebones 486 mobo. I'm trying to
setup a 20 gig Fujitsu
MPG3204AH drive. Types 1-46...then there's 47. I'm looking for the
parameters as I type this. Has
Old 486 can only support 540MB HD. Newer might support bigger. But
surely not 20G! Find an old HD and you are OK. 
4:33 p.m.
On 11/23/06, Tothwolf <tothwolf at concentric.net> wrote:
If memory serves, the magic numbers were actually
527MB and 8GB. A 20GB
drive could still be used as an 8GB drive though.
You beat me to that answer... check your drive jumper options... many
(most? all?) modern large drives have a setting that limits the
reported (and usable!) capacity to 8GB.
Fortunately, I've never had to fiddle with that one - I've always
either had a new enough motherboard to handle the drives I've thrown
at it (I _do_ have a stock of smallish drives around for older
machines), or I've used the Drive Overlay Manager (or equivalent)
software, that adds a bit of a secondary boot/drive overlay to fiddle
the numbers to keep the BIOS happy.
Of course, as others have pointed out, one can get an ISA or PCI IDE
interface, typically ATA100 or ATA133, that includes onboard BIOS
extensions, or just a BIOS-extension-only card - just some way to
trick out the BIOS and get around its limitations.
-ethan
4:43 p.m.
--- Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote:
Of course, as others have pointed out, one can get
an ISA or PCI IDE
interface, typically ATA100 or ATA133, that includes
onboard BIOS
extensions, or just a BIOS-extension-only card -
just some way to
trick out the BIOS and get around its limitations.
-ethan
In an ISA card?
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4:50 p.m.
On 11/23/06, Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> wrote:
--- Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Of course, as others have pointed out, one can get
> an ISA or PCI IDE interface, typically ATA100 or ATA133, that includes
> onboard BIOS extensions, or just a BIOS-extension-only card...
In an ISA card?
I am reasonably certain that one can find an after-market ISA IDE
interface that includes a BIOS extension... they weren't common, but
they were available to those who chose to upgrade in-box as opposed to
replacing their old computers when gigabyte drives hit the streets.
-ethan
5:01 p.m.
--- Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote:
I am reasonably certain that one can find an
after-market ISA IDE
interface that includes a BIOS extension... they
weren't common, but
they were available to those who chose to upgrade
in-box as opposed to
replacing their old computers when gigabyte drives
hit the streets.
-ethan
I was mainly wondering if an ISA card exists that has
a ATA100 or 133 interface. Not that it matters that
much, any drive of that type is going to be at least
40 gigs I would imagine. I just can't erase some of
these drives I have laying aroung (probably
approaching 1 terabyte worth), but I'm truly wondering
whether the Western Digital overlay software would
work on a 486 (386? 286?). Ah well. Maybe I'll have
the time to explore it next Thanksgiving!
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5:48 p.m.
On 23 Nov 2006 at 14:01, Chris M wrote:
--- Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com>
wrote:
I was mainly wondering if an ISA card exists that has
a ATA100 or 133 interface. Not that it matters that
much, any drive of that type is going to be at least
40 gigs I would imagine. I just can't erase some of
these drives I have laying aroung (probably
approaching 1 terabyte worth), but I'm truly wondering
whether the Western Digital overlay software would
work on a 486 (386? 286?). Ah well. Maybe I'll have
the time to explore it next Thanksgiving!
I rather doubt that they exist. Pwrt of the ATA 100/133 spec is fast
DMA mode transfers over the PCI bus. I don't think the ISA bus has
the bandwidth for it.
But accomodating large drives (even ATA-6 drives) is mostly a matter
of software. What hasn't changed much at all is the electrical
aspect of the parallel ATA hookup. Even the UDAM4 cable (presence or
absence) is mostly invisible to the host. And every ATA drive ever
made will perform mode 0 PIO transfers.
Cheers,
Chuck
7:45 p.m.
On Thu, 23 Nov 2006, Chris M wrote:
--- Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com>
wrote:
Promise made several models, as did Mylex (formerly BusLogic/BusTek). If
your motherboard has VLB slots, VLB controllers with address translation
for larger drives were fairly common. I've not personally seen a ATA133
card, but I know 100s were available.
-Toth
Of course, as others have pointed out, one can
get an ISA or PCI IDE
interface, typically ATA100 or ATA133, that includes onboard BIOS
extensions, or just a BIOS-extension-only card - just some way to trick
out the BIOS and get around its limitations.
In an ISA card?
11:39 p.m.
On 11/24/06, Tothwolf <tothwolf at concentric.net> wrote:
On Thu, 23 Nov 2006, Chris M wrote:
Perhaps that's what I'm remembering - VLB... I was reasonably certain
that there was an option for folks besides PCI.
-ethan
--- Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com>
wrote:
Promise made several models, as did Mylex (formerly BusLogic/BusTek). If
your motherboard has VLB slots, VLB controllers with address translation
for larger drives were fairly common. I've not personally seen a ATA133
card, but I know 100s were available. Of course, as others have pointed out, one can
get an ISA or PCI IDE
interface... that includes onboard BIOS
In an ISA card?
24 Nov
24 Nov
1:29 p.m.
On Fri, 24 Nov 2006, Ethan Dicks wrote:
On 11/24/06, Tothwolf <tothwolf at
concentric.net> wrote:
I have quite a few VLB ATA controllers around here still. Some of my
favorite designs were from Promise, but there wasn't much in the way of
software support for the onboard processor unless you only ran DOS (and
win 3.1). You were pretty much out of luck with them if you ran say BSD or
Minix. These predated modern hard drives with read-ahead, fast seek times,
and on-board cache memory, so they made a huge difference for the high end
workstation type PC compatible computers of that era.
There were EISA boards too, but they weren't very common because they were
much more expensive. VLB boards tended to be faster anyway, a EISA was
still limited to the same clock rate as ISA cards.
-Toth
On Thu, 23 Nov 2006, Chris M wrote:
Perhaps that's what I'm remembering - VLB... I was reasonably certain
that there was an option for folks besides PCI. --- Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com>
wrote:
Promise made several models, as did Mylex (formerly BusLogic/BusTek).
If your motherboard has VLB slots, VLB controllers with address
translation for larger drives were fairly common. I've not personally
seen a ATA133 card, but I know 100s were available. Of course, as others have pointed out, one can
get an ISA or PCI IDE
interface... that includes onboard BIOS
In an ISA card?
23 Nov
23 Nov
12:19 p.m.
On 23 Nov 2006 at 8:52, Chris M wrote:
Got this barebones 486 mobo. I'm trying to setup a
20
gig Fujitsu MPG3204AH drive. Types 1-46...then there's
47. I'm looking for the parameters as I type this. Has
anyone accomplished this?
(Note that I'm talking about Windows/DOS here. Other OS-es handle
hard disks differently)
You're going to need DDO software installed on the drive, such as
EZDrive or DiskManager installed. Your 486 BIOS can't deal with
anything larger than about 8.4GB, if that. I think both WD and
Maxtor still have DDO software on their installation CDs, but I'm not
certain that it will work with a Fujitsu drive (they used to check
the manufacturer's ID coming back from the IDENTIFY command).
If you don't care about having access to the entire 20GB, then just
plug some big numbers into the BIOS setup for type 47; 63
sectors/track, 16 heads and 16383 cylinders. Almost all big IDE
drives understand that much.
You may have to get that floppy installed, particularly if your Mobo
BIOS is old enough that it doesn't understand booting from CD..
Cheers,
Chuck
12:57 p.m.
Does anyone really care about the smaller (<2GB) 3.5" drives anymore?
I've been wiping and recycling the ones that I have--is this a
mistake? I've still got a few old <1GB Conner drives if anyone's
interested. Some <4GB WD's and Quantums also.
Cheers,
Chuck
1 p.m.
I've got some if anyone want's 'em. The only 1gb drives I want are SCSI for
my VaxStation's boot disk.
On 11/23/06, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
Does anyone really care about the smaller (<2GB) 3.5" drives anymore?
I've been wiping and recycling the ones that I have--is this a
mistake? I've still got a few old <1GB Conner drives if anyone's
interested. Some <4GB WD's and Quantums also.
Cheers,
Chuck
2:24 p.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 23, 2006 12:57 PM
Subject: Re: OT - 486 w/newer IDE drives
Does anyone really care about the smaller (<2GB)
3.5" drives anymore?
I've been wiping and recycling the ones that I have--is this a
mistake? I've still got a few old <1GB Conner drives if anyone's
interested. Some <4GB WD's and Quantums also.
Cheers,
Chuck
I find IDE from 500MB to 4GB and SCSI from 500MB to 4GB (especially with 50
pin interface) to be very useful for my old 486 systems and my multiple 68K
Macs. If anybody has a small stack of drives they want gone let me know.
2:42 p.m.
On Thu, 23 Nov 2006, Chuck Guzis wrote:
Does anyone really care about the smaller (<2GB)
3.5" drives anymore?
I've been wiping and recycling the ones that I have--is this a mistake?
I've still got a few old <1GB Conner drives if anyone's interested.
Some <4GB WD's and Quantums also.
If they still work, its a waste anyway. I still use a bunch of 486 boxes
here and plan to eventually replace their hard drives (300-500mb) with
something a little larger. 2-4GB drives work great in my old Sun
workstations...
-Toth
3:02 p.m.
--- Tothwolf <tothwolf at concentric.net> wrote:
On Thu, 23 Nov 2006, Chuck Guzis wrote:
which Sun stations? Were the Ultras the first to
support IDE drives?
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Does anyone really care about the smaller
(<2GB)
3.5" drives anymore?
I've been wiping and recycling the ones that
I
have--is this a mistake?
I've still got a few old <1GB Conner
drives if
anyone's interested.
Some <4GB WD's and Quantums also.
If they still work, its a waste anyway. I still use
a bunch of 486 boxes
here and plan to eventually replace their hard
drives (300-500mb) with
something a little larger. 2-4GB drives work great
in my old Sun
workstations...
-Toth
4:29 p.m.
Does anyone really care about the smaller (<2GB)
3.5" drives anymore?
I do.
In rough order of usefulness:
- 50-pin SCSI
- Parallel IDE
- 80-pin SCA SCSI
- 68-pin SCSI
Serial ATA is of no use whatever to me - though I doubt you'll have any
SATA in that size range.
But anything under about 1G is of little value even to me, and those
incredibly noisy 2G Seagate Barracudas are lower on the value list than
the above info otherwise implies - their whine is just too piercing.
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
4:57 p.m.
On 11/23/06, der Mouse <mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca> wrote:
I bought some 20x 1G 50pin SCSI disks from ebay for $17.
- Parallel IDE
Does anyone really care about the smaller
(<2GB) 3.5" drives anymore?
I do.
In rough order of usefulness:
- 50-pin SCSI - 80-pin SCA SCSI
- 68-pin SCSI
Serial ATA is of no use whatever to me - though I doubt you'll have any
SATA in that size range.
But anything under about 1G is of little value even to me, and those
incredibly noisy 2G Seagate Barracudas are lower on the value list than
the above info otherwise implies - their whine is just too piercing.
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
5:05 p.m.
New subject: SCSI stuph was Re: OT - 486 w/newer IDE drives
--- 9000 VAX <vax9000 at gmail.com> wrote:
I bought some 20x 1G 50pin SCSI disks from ebay for
$17.
I bought 3 20 gig SCA SCSI drives...brand new wrapped
in some goofy Unisys caddy for $10 each. I've been
dying to plug them in to an Indy or Indigo 2, but
lacking the adapter (SCA -> 50 pin?) and the time...
Curious if they'd work in a Mac SE, or even one of
the Mac II's...
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5:42 p.m.
There are plenty of projects on the net which add IDE drives
to various on-topic machines. Often these projects will not work
with drives bigger that ~500MB (or sometimes ~2GB). So small
drives can be useful sometimes.
Various on-topic machines have limits on the size of drive
with which they will work. For example, the VAXstation 3100s
are (usually) limited to 1.073GB system drives (at least for
OpenVMS).
Antonio
24 Nov
24 Nov
9:02 a.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
Does anyone really care about the smaller (<2GB)
3.5" drives anymore?
I've been wiping and recycling the ones that I have--is this a
mistake?
They're very useful (IDE or SCSI) on old machines for which there's no way of
easily backing up / restoring / rebuilding at the OS level - it's a lot easier
to do a raw backup of a <2GB drive and store it somewhere than it is if you go
dropping a massive disk in that vintage machine :-)
cheers
Jules
--
And if eight out of ten cats all prefer whiskas
Do the other two prefer Leslie Judd?
12:43 p.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
Does anyone really care about the smaller (<2GB)
3.5" drives anymore?
I've been wiping and recycling the ones that I have--is this a
mistake? I've still got a few old <1GB Conner drives if anyone's
interested. Some <4GB WD's and Quantums also.
Seagate Medalists of < 2GB are of interest to owners of IBM PC/RT
systems. The RT's original storage is ESDI, but a "dumb" IDE controller
works perfectly with an IDE drive, IFF the drive speaks the entire IDE
(not EIDE if I remember right) command set. The early Medalists are the
only well-known drive that does. I forget which command the others
ignore, but it's critical to operation in the RT.
My RT has an install of AIX v2.2 on a 650MB Medalist, so I can vouch
for this. And I'd pay shipping and "a token fee" for a couple more.
Doc
23 Nov
23 Nov
12:41 p.m.
The maximum allowable values for each field of type 47 will tell you how
much of the 20GB drive the BIOS of the machine can support. If the
number turns out to be small (like only 540MB) and you need more
capacity, disable the onboard controller and get a replacement
controller that has a replacement BIOS. Promise made quite a few of
these, to name one manufacturer.
If you can't do that, go for the drive overlay software.
Your chances on booting from CD using the BIOS on a 486 are slim and
none. Even SCSI cards of the era with their own BIOS don't do that. So
plan on getting a 3.5" floppy for it.
1:10 p.m.
--- "Michael B. Brutman"
<mbbrutman-cctalk at brutman.com> wrote:
The maximum allowable values for each field of type
47 will tell you how
much of the 20GB drive the BIOS of the machine can
support. If the
number turns out to be small (like only 540MB) and
you need more
capacity, disable the onboard controller and get a
replacement
controller that has a replacement BIOS. Promise
made quite a few of
these, to name one manufacturer.
Funny, this mobo has no onboard anything. Nada. Chips
say "UMC". I have this skinny little IDE/floppy
controller, with a Goldstar chip. This thing doesn't
even have headers for serial or parallel ports. I have
a Cyrix 486 DX2-66 and 16 megs of ram. There's an
empty socket besides the uP - what in blazes is that
for???
If you can't do that, go for the drive overlay
software.
The capacity isn't a problem. Like I said I have time
to play today, so I wanted to at the least create
floppies from images for my TIPPC. If the hard
drive/boot floppies that came with my Victor 9000's
(from a kind individual on this list :) work, I'm
gonna have fun with it too!
Your chances on booting from CD using the BIOS on a
486 are slim and
none. Even SCSI cards of the era with their own
BIOS don't do that. So
plan on getting a 3.5" floppy for it.
Yeah forgot about that part, as Chuck also pointed
out. Problem is I wanted to get this done today.
There's a couple of old hulks sitting out on lawns up
the road. Maybe I can scrounge some parts from them
lol. I think I'll wait until it's dark though...
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1:25 p.m.
On 23 Nov 2006 at 10:10, Chris M wrote:
Funny, this mobo has no onboard anything. Nada.
Chips
say "UMC". I have this skinny little IDE/floppy
controller, with a Goldstar chip. This thing doesn't
even have headers for serial or parallel ports. I have
a Cyrix 486 DX2-66 and 16 megs of ram. There's an
empty socket besides the uP - what in blazes is that
for???
Some of these old boards were built to accommodate the Weitek 4167
NDP. I suspect that's what yours is for.
Cheers,
Chuck
1:38 p.m.
--- Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> wrote:
Funny, this mobo has no onboard anything. Nada.
Chips
say "UMC". I have this skinny little IDE/floppy
controller, with a Goldstar chip. This thing doesn't
even have headers for serial or parallel ports.
Yeah, most machines from that period didn't have
onboard stuff, that came along later, and didn't
become common until the Pentium MMX machines. But the
BIOS still can directly talk to that controller, and
you need to be sure that the BIOS can address enough
disk to boot. Check and see if the board has a "Detect
IDE Disks" option. A lot of them did, it just won't be
where the values for the disks are, it'll be in
another menu.
I have
a Cyrix 486 DX2-66 and 16 megs of ram. There's an
empty socket besides the uP - what in blazes is that
for???
Coprocessor. The SX CPU's didn't have a math
coprocessor onboard, so that socket is meant for a
80487 math coprocessor. You don't need it, the DX has
one already.
Yeah forgot about that part, as Chuck also pointed
out. Problem is I wanted to get this done today.
There's a couple of old hulks sitting out on lawns
up
the road. Maybe I can scrounge some parts from them
lol. I think I'll wait until it's dark though...
Don't bother waiting, just go up there and toss them
in the trunk of the car. I've picked up tons of stuff
from the side of the road. Nobody cares. Any old PC
should supply you with a floppy drive, and probably
even an old hard drive that your machine can see
directly. You _can_ use a really big disk with a 486,
you just need to have an OS or other software that
will see it. I have an 80 gig disk on a 16mhz 386
running Linux. :)
-Ian
1:47 p.m.
Mr Ian Primus wrote:
--- Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> wrote:
If you have older 500mb to 2gb drives, another approach on your
486 or lower if you are lucky would be to install the larger drive as
your D drive and install the a boot partition, or older windows on
the C drive, which would be bios compatable.
With windows, you need the magic cd that is shipped with wd,
seagate, and maxtor, etc drives installed, and it can run off the
C drive even if it is the older drive. It will then allow windows
to get to the cdrive and the ddrive after you get the system
up.
On windows you can install to the D drive when you install,
and your windows resident stuff will go on the larger drive,
but you will still have the loader, etc on C.
with linux, you would put /boot on the small drive, and
the rest on the second drive.
I believe that once linux booted it would rescramble the
disk as it boots up to access the d drive properly.
another way if the IDE drives interfere with each other
would be to put a CD drive and the old IDE on the first
IDE port, and the newer drive on the second ide port.
jim
2:37 p.m.
On 23 Nov 2006 at 10:38, Mr Ian Primus wrote:
Coprocessor. The SX CPU's didn't have a math
coprocessor onboard, so that socket is meant for a
80487 math coprocessor. You don't need it, the DX has
one already.
The insanity of the 486SX--basically a 486 with the FPU disabled as a
marketing ploy Sold for substantially less than the 486DX, even
though it cost more to make. Adding a 487SX often cost more than
simply replacing the 486SX with DX--so some canny manufacturers got
the SX in PQFP form (like the 386SX) and soldered the bloody thing to
the mobo.
But many 486 mobos could accept the Weitek 4167 alongside a DX. I
have one such mobo kicking around here somewhere.
Cheers,
Chuck
2:45 p.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
The insanity of the 486SX--basically a 486 with the
FPU disabled as a
marketing ploy Sold for substantially less than the 486DX, even
though it cost more to make.
I always assumed that the 486SX was a 486DX that failed the FPU tests
but all the other bits worked. I guess there were some links blown
so it could be identified as such. If that was how things were
done then it would surely have helped bring costs down (by effectively
upping the yield of sellable parts).
Antonio
3:01 p.m.
On Thu, 23 Nov 2006, arcarlini at iee.org wrote:
I always assumed that the 486SX was a 486DX that
failed the FPU tests
but all the other bits worked. I guess there were some links blown so it
could be identified as such. If that was how things were done then it
would surely have helped bring costs down (by effectively upping the
yield of sellable parts).
Actually, the early 486SX dies were fully working 486DX parts. They just
had a different pinout and no bond wires were installed for the FPU. Intel
did ship later 486SX chips that were made from dies with defective FPUs.
-Toth
3:17 p.m.
--- Tothwolf <tothwolf at concentric.net> wrote:
Actually, the early 486SX dies were fully working
486DX parts. They just
had a different pinout and no bond wires were
installed for the FPU. Intel
did ship later 486SX chips that were made from dies
with defective FPUs.
-Toth
So totally drifting off topic here, but what was this
I read about some 386-? thing actually being a 486-?
under the hood? I know that sounds vague, and I hope
I'm not actually referring to some MOTOROLA chip line
lol. Huddo Moto.
____________________________________________________________________________________
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3:59 p.m.
On 23 Nov 2006 at 14:01, Tothwolf wrote:
Actually, the early 486SX dies were fully working
486DX parts. They just
had a different pinout and no bond wires were installed for the FPU. Intel
did ship later 486SX chips that were made from dies with defective FPUs.
As I understand it, Intel on the early -20 486s had a yield problem
with the FPU circuitry. So the 486sx was born. NMI* was moved from
B15 to A15 and and FERR* and IGNNE* weren't bonded out. Later 486s
(the -25 and -33) had no NDP on the die.
The 487 has the same pinout as the 486DX with the exception of
bringing MP* out to B14 (nc on the 486SX) and FERR* out to A13. As I
understand it, the 487sx was essentially a fully-functional 486DX
under the clay.
Cheers,
Chuck
3:46 p.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 23, 2006 2:37 PM
Subject: Re: OT - 486 w/newer IDE drives
But many 486 mobos could accept the Weitek 4167 alongside a DX. I
have one such mobo kicking around here somewhere.
Cheers,
Chuck
I think my EISA 486/50 has the 4167 socket, do apps need to have specific
code for those chips to be usefull or do they kick in when an FPU is needed?
4:14 p.m.
New subject: 486 w/newer IDE drives
I am curious about the sources and causes of various limits that
developed.
64K: 16 bit address bus
640K: 1M address bus, with 384K "reserved"
32M: use of a 16 bit int for "relative sector number"
4G: 32 bits
2G: 32 bits using a SIGNED long int (many versions of DOS will permit the
existence of a NEGATIVE 2 G file or drive!)
Is the "540M" actually 512 "honest" M (535870912)?
Is the "2.2G" actually 2 "honest" G (2147483648)?
4:40 p.m.
New subject: 486 w/newer IDE drives
--- Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:
640K: 1M address bus, with 384K "reserved"
768k on the Tandy 2000 (896k w/aftermarket mod). I
think the Rainbow 100 supported up to 896k natively.
Victor 9000, something suitably "large" also IIRC.
____________________________________________________________________________________
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24 Nov
24 Nov
7:53 a.m.
New subject: 486 w/newer IDE drives
Fred Cisin wrote:
640K: 1M address bus, with 384K "reserved"
It really was reserved. No need for quotes. At the 640K barrier lived
the video memory for whatever kind of card happened to be there. At the
very top of memory was the BIOS. The rest of the space was reserved for
ISA cards (which weren't called that until the clones arrived).
Even though the 8086/8088 had a dedicated I/O bus, you'd still need to
be able to access any ROM extensions on the ISA cards and perhaps
whatever shared memory there was available for DMA, etc. The I/O bus
just wasn't enough because you of course couldn't execute code via the
in/out opcodes and some cards required BIOS extensions to say the least.
The 8086/8088's could only address 1MB of memory, so the 640K barrier
was a reasonable one at the time despite the infamous "640K ought to be
enough for anyone" quote attributed to Mr. Gates.
Of course there was nothing to stop you from installing a RAM card in
the rest of the I/O space and getting a few more KB, but a better way
was to use a memory expansion card and bank switch through a 64K window
to access it, which is what the LIM (Lotus, Intel, Microsoft standard
was about.
That is until 286's came out.
2:07 p.m.
New subject: PC Memory maps (was: Re: 486 w/newer IDE drives)
It was thus said that the Great Ray Arachelian once stated:
The 8086/8088's could only address 1MB of memory, so the 640K barrier
was a reasonable one at the time despite the infamous "640K ought to be
enough for anyone" quote attributed to Mr. Gates.
Of course there was nothing to stop you from installing a RAM card in
the rest of the I/O space and getting a few more KB, but a better way
was to use a memory expansion card and bank switch through a 64K window
to access it, which is what the LIM (Lotus, Intel, Microsoft standard
was about.
The major problem with that is MS-DOS---it can't handle non-contiguous RAM
and therefore there is no standard way to reserve or use memory in the upper
384K of the address space (well, for those PClones that followed the IBM
spec).
-spc (Fortunately for me, by the time the 640K barrier would have become
a problem for me, I was using Amigas and Unix work stations ... )
2:30 p.m.
New subject: PC Memory maps (was: Re: 486 w/newer IDE drives)
On 24 Nov 2006 at 14:07, Sean Conner wrote:
The major problem with that is MS-DOS---it can't
handle non-contiguous RAM
and therefore there is no standard way to reserve or use memory in the upper
384K of the address space (well, for those PClones that followed the IBM
spec).
I seem to recall a few PCs with built-in CGA display adapters gave
one more contiguous memory than 640K by filling the space between
A000 and C000 with RAM. And many "not very compatible" PCs running
MS-DOS made the entire 1MB available.
Anyone with an old Visual Commuter want to verify this? I think that
the Commuter was one of the aforementioned.
Cheers,
Chuck
4:17 p.m.
New subject: PC Memory maps (was: Re: 486 w/newer IDE drives)
On 24 Nov 2006 at 14:07, Sean Conner wrote:
> The major problem with that is MS-DOS---it can't handle non-contiguous RAM
> and therefore there is no standard way to reserve or use memory in the upper
> 384K of the address space (well, for those PClones that followed the IBM
> spec).
MS-DOS CAN handle non-contiguous RAM, although in general applications
require contiguous chunks. It is possible to patch the memory allocation
linked list to show a non-existent TSR occupying the unavailable space.
Going past 640K requires some other minor patches.
Alternatively, as was mentioned, isolated chunks of RAM can be used for
various dedicated purposes, including "Expanded" memory, such as
JRAM, or the LIM spec.
On Fri, 24 Nov 2006, Chuck Guzis wrote:
I seem to recall a few PCs with built-in CGA display
adapters gave
one more contiguous memory than 640K by filling the space between
A000 and C000 with RAM. And many "not very compatible" PCs running
MS-DOS made the entire 1MB available.
Stock CGA started at B800. With a suitably addressable RAM card, and some
trivial patches, it was possible to have contiguous RAM from 0 to B800.
Sorry, I can't find copies of the various patches.
5:12 p.m.
New subject: PC Memory maps (was: Re: 486 w/newer IDE drives)
On 24 Nov 2006 at 13:17, Fred Cisin wrote:
Stock CGA started at B800. With a suitably
addressable RAM card, and some
trivial patches, it was possible to have contiguous RAM from 0 to B800.
Quite right--I was hung over from T-day when I wrote that.
Chuck
(still a little hungover)
9:50 p.m.
New subject: PC Memory maps (was: Re: 486 w/newer IDE drives)
--- Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
I seem to recall a few PCs with built-in CGA display
adapters gave
one more contiguous memory than 640K by filling the
space between
A000 and C000 with RAM. And many "not very
compatible" PCs running
MS-DOS made the entire 1MB available.
Were these in the Tandy 1000 series? I'm curious if
there were any others (I think some of the later 1K's
may have done something like that).
____________________________________________________________________________________
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Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta.
http://new.mail.yahoo.com
26 Nov
26 Nov
5:45 p.m.
New subject: PC Memory maps (was: Re: 486 w/newer IDE drives)
Using a Tecmar Graphics Master in a DTK XT clone, I could get, IIRC, 704 KB
of RAM.
Bob
From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at
sydex.com>
Reply-To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic
Posts"<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Subject: Re: PC Memory maps (was: Re: 486 w/newer IDE drives)
Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2006 11:30:11 -0800
On 24 Nov 2006 at 14:07, Sean Conner wrote:
_________________________________________________________________
Stay up-to-date with your friends through the Windows Live Spaces friends
list.
http://clk.atdmt.com/MSN/go/msnnkwsp0070000001msn/direct/01/?href=http://sp…
The major problem with that is MS-DOS---it
can't handle non-contiguous
RAM
and therefore there is no standard way to reserve
or use memory in the
upper
384K of the address space (well, for those
PClones that followed the IBM
spec).
I seem to recall a few PCs with built-in CGA display adapters gave
one more contiguous memory than 640K by filling the space between
A000 and C000 with RAM. And many "not very compatible" PCs running
MS-DOS made the entire 1MB available.
Anyone with an old Visual Commuter want to verify this? I think that
the Commuter was one of the aforementioned.
Cheers,
Chuck
9:37 p.m.
New subject: PC Memory maps (was: Re: 486 w/newer IDE drives)
--- Robert Feldman <r_a_feldman at hotmail.com> wrote:
Using a Tecmar Graphics Master in a DTK XT clone, I
could get, IIRC, 704 KB
of RAM.
Bob
I'm very much enamored with the pre-EGA 400 line
boards - Tecmar, STB, Sigma, Taxan. Even the Hercules
InColor card I considered desireable. If anyone should
have any stashed away.
And of course, o of course, IBM PGA clones.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Music Unlimited
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27 Nov
27 Nov
10:53 a.m.
New subject: PC Memory maps (was: Re: 486 w/newer IDE drives)
On Nov 26, 2006, at 5:45 PM, Robert Feldman wrote:
Using a Tecmar Graphics Master in a DTK XT clone, I
could get,
IIRC, 704 KB of RAM.
I did this with a CP/M card in an XT clone. I had a device driver
that loaded from config.sys which bumped it up to 704KB.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Cape Coral, FL
23 Nov
23 Nov
2:45 p.m.
On Thu, 23 Nov 2006, Chris M wrote:
Funny, this mobo has no onboard anything. Nada. Chips
say "UMC". I have
this skinny little IDE/floppy controller, with a Goldstar chip. This
thing doesn't even have headers for serial or parallel ports. I have a
Cyrix 486 DX2-66 and 16 megs of ram. There's an empty socket besides the
uP - what in blazes is that for???
UMC's ATA implementation was horrible. You'd be far better off using a
separate controller (especially if you plan to run anything besides DOS).
-Toth
3:10 p.m.
--- Tothwolf <tothwolf at concentric.net> wrote:
On Thu, 23 Nov 2006, Chris M wrote:
Don't have a choice. This board has nothing. And I
don't intend to do anything with this board in
particular after today. That P166 is in storage in PA,
and that was essentially all I ever used/needed for
imaging and such. Maybe I never much played with
no-name stuph back in the 386-486 years, but this is
horrible! Yuck
And I do miss my Vectra 386 tower. Loved that poc. If
anyone has any 286-386 HP Vectras, I could be
interested. Just not on the west coast :(
And come to think of it my old DEC pizza box 486 (to
which this chip used to belong) wasn't so bad either.
And you could plug right into a workstation *fixed
frequency* monitor (w/the right cable of course). But
only base VGA modes. And at that they had to be
emulated on that weird TI graphics chipset. 34010 or
something like that.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta.
http://new.mail.yahoo.com
Funny, this mobo has no onboard anything. Nada.
Chips say "UMC". I have
this skinny little IDE/floppy controller, with a
Goldstar chip. This
thing doesn't even have headers for serial or
parallel ports. I have a
Cyrix 486 DX2-66 and 16 megs of ram. There's
an
empty socket besides the
uP - what in blazes is that for???
UMC's ATA implementation was horrible. You'd be far
better off using a
separate controller (especially if you plan to run
anything besides DOS).
-Toth
2:52 p.m.
On Thu, 23 Nov 2006, Michael B. Brutman wrote:
The maximum allowable values for each field of type 47
will tell you how
much of the 20GB drive the BIOS of the machine can support. If the
number turns out to be small (like only 540MB) and you need more
capacity, disable the onboard controller and get a replacement
controller that has a replacement BIOS. Promise made quite a few of
these, to name one manufacturer.
If you can't do that, go for the drive overlay software.
The other option is an overlay/feature ROM on an ISA card. There were lots
of these made around that time period, but they can be hard to find now as
I suspect most were tossed out. I have a few around here that I use from
time to time. One even has a correction for the Y2K BIOS problems.
Your chances on booting from CD using the BIOS on a
486 are slim and
none. Even SCSI cards of the era with their own BIOS don't do that. So
plan on getting a 3.5" floppy for it.
Some of the last ISA cards from Mylex could do that. Adaptec cards didn't
though. Wish I'd kept the couple Mylex ISA cards I had now...
-Toth
6487
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51 comments
19 participants
participants (19)
-
arcarlini＠iee.org -
cclist＠sydex.com -
chrism3667＠yahoo.com -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
doc＠mdrconsult.com -
ethan.dicks＠gmail.com -
ian_primus＠yahoo.com -
julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk -
jwstephens＠msm.umr.edu -
mbbrutman-cctalk＠brutman.com -
mcguire＠neurotica.com -
mouse＠Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA -
pechter＠gmail.com -
r_a_feldman＠hotmail.com -
ray＠arachelian.com -
spc＠conman.org -
teoz＠neo.rr.com -
tothwolf＠concentric.net -
vax9000＠gmail.com