27 Jun
2006
27 Jun
'06
4:39 p.m.
I was wondering if there were any drivers or utils available that would allow a DOS or
Win3.1 machine to have drive partitions over 2GB? I know old IDE controller had hardware
limitations to the drive size they can read (BIOS issues also) but would there be a
problem with raiding SCSI drives on say an old Adaptec card to give you 20GB of space that
DOS could read and write to (non booting)? I am not worried about DOS being modified so
that the individual file size can be extended, just the available partition size so I
don't have a dozen 2GB partitions.
There are drivers made for Mac systems that would allow system 7.x to use volumes up to a
couple TB when Mac OS 7.x could not have greater then 2GB partitions so I figured there
might be something like that for the DOS machines.
27 Jun
27 Jun
4:59 p.m.
On 6/27/2006 at 7:39 PM Teo Zenios wrote:
I was wondering if there were any drivers or utils
available that would
allow a DOS or Win3.1 machine to have drive partitions over 2GB? I know
old IDE controller had hardware limitations to the drive size they can
read (BIOS issues also) but would there be a problem with raiding SCSI
drives on say an old Adaptec card to give you 20GB of space that DOS could
read and write to (non booting)? I am not worried about DOS being modified
so that the individual file size can be extended, just the available
partition size so I don't have a dozen 2GB partitions.
Why not use the FAT32 feature that comes with DOS 7 under Win95. You don't
have to install Windows, just use the underlying DOS. I usually add a long
filename DOS driver to the combination and it works just fine.
Also have a look at FreeDOS--I think it supports FAT32.
Cheers,
Chuck
5:10 p.m.
Teo Zenios wrote:
I was wondering if there were any drivers or utils
available that would allow a DOS or Win3.1 machine to have drive partitions over 2GB? I
know old IDE controller had hardware limitations to the drive size they can read (BIOS
issues also) but would there be a problem with raiding SCSI drives on say an old Adaptec
card to give you 20GB of space that DOS could read and write to (non booting)? I am not
worried about DOS being modified so that the individual file size can be extended, just
the available partition size so I don't have a dozen 2GB partitions.
I've been an owner of System Commander since about 1995. It won't let
you exceed problems that are built-in to DOS, but it makes life easier
all around. It can resize partitions and filesystems, so you don't lose
data repartitioning; it can store several DOS OSes in a single FAT16
partition (I have MSDOS 6.22, IBM DOS 2000, and Caldera 7.03 in the same
FAT16 2G partition), and other neat stuff.
MSDOS 6.22 boots from a single 2G or smaller primary partition 0 --
that's it, there's no way of getting around it. SCSI or IDE, doesn't
matter: Must be primary partition 0, and smaller than 2 gig. Later
versions are a little more flexible; I believe IBM PC DOS 2000 can boot
from any primary partition, for example, but don't
quote me on that.
FreeDOS might be more flexible in that area as well.
Now, if all you want is more drive space, just create an extended
partition and create as many 2G logical drives as you like. Depending
on your BIOS and drive, you may run out of drive letters before space :-)
If you need partitions/drives over 2G, you'll need to run something
other than FAT16 DOS. Win9x FAT32 (shows up as "MS-DOS 7", whatever
that is) allows for extended partition sizes up to 127G I think, again,
don't quote me on that.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
5:49 p.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Leonard" <trixter at oldskool.org>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2006 8:10 PM
Subject: Re: HD formatting utils for DOS
I've been an owner of System Commander since about
1995. It won't let
you exceed problems that are built-in to DOS, but it makes life easier
all around. It can resize partitions and filesystems, so you don't lose
data repartitioning; it can store several DOS OSes in a single FAT16
partition (I have MSDOS 6.22, IBM DOS 2000, and Caldera 7.03 in the same
FAT16 2G partition), and other neat stuff.
MSDOS 6.22 boots from a single 2G or smaller primary partition 0 --
that's it, there's no way of getting around it. SCSI or IDE, doesn't
matter: Must be primary partition 0, and smaller than 2 gig. Later
versions are a little more flexible; I believe IBM PC DOS 2000 can boot
from any primary partition, for example, but don't quote me on that.
FreeDOS might be more flexible in that area as well.
Now, if all you want is more drive space, just create an extended
partition and create as many 2G logical drives as you like. Depending
on your BIOS and drive, you may run out of drive letters before space :-)
If you need partitions/drives over 2G, you'll need to run something
other than FAT16 DOS. Win9x FAT32 (shows up as "MS-DOS 7", whatever
that is) allows for extended partition sizes up to 127G I think, again,
don't quote me on that.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
I don't care about the DOS booting partition, 2GB is fine for that. I wanted
something that would allow a D: drive greater then 2GB and still allow DOS
6.22 to read and write to it. It would also have to allow Win 3.11 to read
and write to the drive.
I don't want to have issues with DOS 7.x (AKA Win 95 OEMSR2 with fat32)
since I still want to run win 3.11 and use some cranky old video capture
cards.
Outside of DOS 7.x is there any other solution available?
6:10 p.m.
On 6/27/2006 at 8:49 PM Teo Zenios wrote:
I don't want to have issues with DOS 7.x (AKA Win
95 OEMSR2 with fat32)
since I still want to run win 3.11 and use some cranky old video capture
cards.
Outside of DOS 7.x is there any other solution available?
A solution that won't cause similar problems? I doubt it, but before
FAT32, there were some utilities that faked a large sector size to get
beyond the maximum cluster size and sector number problems when using 512
byte sectors. I probably still have one or two of these packages. But
IIRC, the problems with these and old code were worse than with FAT32.
Cheers,
Chuck
6:16 p.m.
I have had an opportunity to use this once. Basically wanted to do a
ghost backup in DOS, but wanted to read the NTFS partition from DOS
before the backup. For my little requirements, it worked fine.
Certainly an NTFS partition would be big enough. There is a version
with read/write capability. However, you would have to format the drive
with some other program, partition magic or the like.
Joe Heck
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/NtfsDos.html
Teo Zenios wrote:
I don't care about the DOS booting partition, 2GB
is fine for that. I wanted
something that would allow a D: drive greater then 2GB and still allow DOS
6.22 to read and write to it. It would also have to allow Win 3.11 to read
and write to the drive.
I don't want to have issues with DOS 7.x (AKA Win 95 OEMSR2 with fat32)
since I still want to run win 3.11 and use some cranky old video capture
cards.
Outside of DOS 7.x is there any other solution available?
7:41 p.m.
On Tue, 27 Jun 2006, Teo Zenios wrote:
I don't care about the DOS booting partition, 2GB
is fine for that. I wanted
something that would allow a D: drive greater then 2GB and still allow DOS
6.22 to read and write to it. It would also have to allow Win 3.11 to read
and write to the drive.
I don't want to have issues with DOS 7.x (AKA Win 95 OEMSR2 with fat32)
since I still want to run win 3.11 and use some cranky old video capture
cards.
Outside of DOS 7.x is there any other solution available?
Win 3.1x CAN be installed and RUN, as an application program on Win9x!!
10:53 p.m.
On 6/27/2006 at 7:41 PM Fred Cisin wrote:
Yes, but how is that different from DOS 7 with a DPMI server installed?
The problem with using other filesystems (or network files) is that not all
filesystem calls are supported. Chances are if FAT32 causes a problem,
something like a network file or an NTFS server will also.
I've done a few conversion packages for some very strange alien diskettes
(e.g. sector size not a power of 2) by tying into the DOS network hooks.
You could even write your own filesystem this way--it's not hard. But as I
said, there are limits to this approach.
Cheers,
Chuck
On Tue, 27 Jun 2006, Teo Zenios wrote:
Outside of DOS
7.x is there any other solution available?
Win 3.1x CAN be installed and RUN, as an application program on Win9x!!
28 Jun
28 Jun
7:50 p.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
It's better because a crash won't down the whole system :-)
Win 3.1 works fine on Win9x as long as you don't try any [386Enh] HD
controller-type swapfile direct access tricks (geez, I can't believe I
still remember the lingo. Ick.) And you do need one -- don't be
tempted to run without one because you will eventually run into problems
no matter how much memory you have. (This holds for all versions of
Windows, unfortunately. I have 1G RAM on my XP machine and if I try to
disable the swapfile entirely I get programs that hang -- stoopid OS!)
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
Win 3.1x CAN
be installed and RUN, as an application program on Win9x!!
Yes, but how is that different from DOS 7 with a DPMI server installed?
7:47 p.m.
Teo Zenios wrote:
I don't care about the DOS booting partition, 2GB
is fine for that. I wanted
something that would allow a D: drive greater then 2GB and still allow DOS
6.22 to read and write to it. It would also have to allow Win 3.11 to read
and write to the drive.
Then this is impossible, since the underlying data structures of FAT16
simply don't go that high. The limit isn't arbitrary, it's 2G because
that's where the structures max out.
I don't want to have issues with DOS 7.x (AKA Win
95 OEMSR2 with fat32)
since I still want to run win 3.11 and use some cranky old video capture
cards.
Works fine, actually. Try it.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
27 Jun
27 Jun
7:28 p.m.
On Tue, 27 Jun 2006, Teo Zenios wrote:
I was wondering if there were any drivers or utils
available that would
allow a DOS or Win3.1 machine to have drive partitions over 2GB? I know
old IDE controller had hardware limitations to the drive size they can
read (BIOS issues also) but would there be a problem with raiding SCSI
drives on say an old Adaptec card to give you 20GB of space that DOS
could read and write to (non booting)? I am not worried about DOS being
modified so that the individual file size can be extended, just the
available partition size so I don't have a dozen 2GB partitions.
At one time, there were patches available to correct the
error and permit some versions of MS-DOS to go to 4G.
BUT, some application programs (such as "Norton fUtilities"?)
also didn't grasp the difference between a signed and unsigned
long int.
(Early versions of DOS would permit having a drive or file that
was -2G! But, copying a -2G file to your hardwrive did NOT
increase the free space.)
DOS >= 7 can handle FAT32. But, if you do, I'd suggest
a 2G first partition followed by a 198G second partition.
DOS CAN handle a larger partition, not as a local drive,
but as a network drive. That's what MSCDEX is for - if
you ever try to CHKDSK a CD-ROM (2/3G), DOS will tell you
that that can't be done on a Network Drive!
About 7? years ago, there was a "CD-ROM" emulator, that
permitted accessing a hard drive through MSCDEX. It was
so that you could copy a CD-ROM onto a hard drive, for
faster speed, and some "only work from the CD-ROM" copy
protection.
There are a number of third party "device drivers" that
are specifically for using drives >2G. Didn't WD give
out one of those?
Watch out; some might want to make your cluster size way too big.
Even if you succeed, you might want to consider keeping one,
preferably the first, partition <2G (so that there is SOMEWHERE
on the drive that can be accessed by OS's and program that
"still don't get it".
There are drivers made for Mac systems that would
allow system 7.x to
use volumes up to a couple TB when Mac OS 7.x could not have greater
then 2GB partitions so I figured there might be something like that for
the DOS machines.
Yes, there were such. But the Mac OS 7.x ones will NOT work on the PC :-)
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
28 Jun
28 Jun
7:52 p.m.
Fred Cisin wrote:
DOS CAN handle a larger partition, not as a local
drive,
but as a network drive. That's what MSCDEX is for - if
you ever try to CHKDSK a CD-ROM (2/3G), DOS will tell you
CDROMs don't exceed 2G so I'm not sure what you're getting at. I've
never seen anything that provides volumes larger than 2G to DOS, in any
form or format. Not even the older VCOM and Golden Bow stuff.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
9:28 p.m.
On 6/28/2006 at 9:52 PM Jim Leonard wrote:
CDROMs don't exceed 2G so I'm not sure what
you're getting at. I've
never seen anything that provides volumes larger than 2G to DOS, in any
form or format. Not even the older VCOM and Golden Bow stuff.
Funny thing about that--NT can support FAT16 partitions up to 4G, but if
you have such a partition, stock DOS barfs on it.
However, Fred's right--you can use the network interface to implement
whatever size filesystem you desire. You may have to "bracket" return
values for total and free sizes when you report them back to DOS, but
basically, DOS doesn't care what you've got out there for a filesystem.
Unless MS has broken the interface, you can still access another (NT)
system using NTFS for a filesystem using DOS 5 running real-mode Microsoft
networking--or even WFWG. However, individual file sizes can be 2G at
most--but I think DOS 7 can handle 4G files (i.e. MS fixed enough of the
code)..
Cheers,
Chuck
29 Jun
29 Jun
2:43 p.m.
CDROMs don't exceed 2G so I'm not sure what
you're getting at. I've
never seen anything that provides volumes larger than 2G to DOS, in any
form or format. Not even the older VCOM and Golden Bow stuff.
As I said, CDROMs are about 2/3 G. But, at the time that they came out,
DOS was limited to 32M.
In order to get around that limitation, MSCDEX presented the CDROM to DOS,
NOT as a drive, but as a network device. That technique can also get
around the 32bit (2G/4G) limit.
There is a little information about it in "Undocumented DOS", and there
was another similar book at the same time (whose title I don't recall)
that had more thorough coverage.
I don't know all of the details, so check with Chuck.
On Wed, 28 Jun 2006, Chuck Guzis wrote:
Funny thing about that--NT can support FAT16
partitions up to 4G, but if
you have such a partition, stock DOS barfs on it.
I believe that the reason for the 2G limit was the use of a 32 bit long
integer in the code. If they had respected Moore's law, then they would
at least have used an UNSIGNED long integer, which would have made the
limit 4G (and given them another 18 months :-).
Do we really need support for NEGATIVE file and drive sizes??
Did Gordon Letwin fix that in OS/2?
Or did it persist until Dave Cutler did NT?
I once saw a copy of DOS that had been modified to fix that!
I don't have a copy, and I don't know whether it, (or the patches)
were ever available. It never had a retail release.
It would be a trivial fix with a recompile of the source code, or a
very tedious task patching the object code; how many JL,JNL,JG,JNG
instructions would need to be changed to JB,JNB,JA,JNA?
However, Fred's right--you can use the network
interface to implement
whatever size filesystem you desire. You may have to "bracket" return
values for total and free sizes when you report them back to DOS, but
basically, DOS doesn't care what you've got out there for a filesystem.
Unless MS has broken the interface, you can still access another (NT)
system using NTFS for a filesystem using DOS 5 running real-mode Microsoft
networking--or even WFWG. However, individual file sizes can be 2G at
most--but I think DOS 7 can handle 4G files (i.e. MS fixed enough of the
code)..
Some programs that attempt to get below DOS, such as CHKDSK and Norton
fUtilitie, can still have some serious problems.
If you run Win3.1x (WFWG) on DOS 7.10, can you then access >4G drives?
It is interesting to run Int21h Fn30h and see what versions different MS
OS's claim to be! My copy of PCDOS 4.01 claimed to be 4.00; OS/2
claimed to be 10.00; NTx claims to be 5.00; WIN9x claims to be 7.xx, etc.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
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days inactive
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