Please explain a bit more about this?
A bios overlay is code thats loaded at boot time
that adds that sort of functionality to a bios that
doesnt have it. Thats why its called an overlay.
Thats just one way of doing that, Win just uses the bios
to load the basics and then uses its own drivers for the
hard drives and those can do what the bios cant too.
Are you suggesting to update the bios with a bios that is
different from the one that the mobo manufacturer supplies?
Yep, there have always been some of those.
Sounds like a good way to mess up your system,
Not if the new bios is written properly.
but I suppose it could work.
Corse it can.
And it doesnt have to replace the motherboard bios anyway.
The PC architecture has always allowed supplementary bios to be
loaded at boot time to had specific devices, hard drives in spades.
Seems you haven't read my reply.
Corse I had. And replied to it too, pointing out the problems in it.
Seems you didnt bother to check that before that assertion.
ATA66 devices follow the ATA5 specs
Its MUCH more complicated than that, particularly when
48bit LBA support has been added to the motherboard bios.
and were made long before 48bit LBA
was defined and put in the ATA6 specs.
The ATA6 specs are completely irrelevant. 48bit LBA
was in use well before that was formally finalised.
Show me one ATA66 device which has 48bit addressing!
Plenty of motherboard bios do.
In spades with ATA100 devices, regardless of the original dud claim.
As I said before, there is a difference between theory and reallife.
As I said before, thats just waffle.
In real life there are plenty of ATA66 and
ATA100 devices with 48bit LBA support.
In theory 48bit LBA support has nothing
to do with speed on the ribbon> calbe.
In practice too.
In reallife the speed on the ribbon cable
tells you when a device was made
Bullshit it does.
and whether the 48bit support would even be
defined at the time the device was produced.
When it was produced is completely irrelevant when 48bit LBA can
be and has been added to plenty of ATA66 and ATA100 devices.
You stick to theory.
Wrong.
He used real-life.
Wrong. Nothing like real life. Hordes of
ATA100 devices have 48bit LBA support.
Go chase the motherboards up for yourself.
ATA33 and ATA66 devices were produced long
before 48 bit addressing was needed and defined.
Completely and utterly irrelevant to what can and has been
added since to those devices, particularly motherboards.
That part of his statement yes.
All the rest too.
Crap. Plenty of ATA100 systems that
aint ATA6 have 48bit LBA support.
The ones that dont, stupid.
This discussion is proof that it is not wrong.
Crap. Your confusion is your problem.
Correct.
Which is in contrast to the statement you made before
that ATA133 would be more then just the speed:
" Plenty of systems that claim to support say ATA133 dont
have everything its supposed to have implemented."
No 'contrast' there at all.
If you want to be nitty picky.
Dont have to be nit picky, it was always just plain
wrong stated as absolutely as he clearly did.
You just said a moment ago that it wasnt.
But if you want to be realistic, you have
to agree that the ATAXXX does tell you
something about the capability of a device.
Yes, particularly the maximum
speed supported on the ribbon cable.
But NOT other stuff like 48bit LBA
or a raft of other stuff as well.
Very little except the maximum speed supported on the ribbon cable.
Since lots of manufacturers just use ATAXXX instead
of ATAY in the specifications of their devices, you'll
sometimes have to make do with that.
Says nothing useful about whether the
original claim was just plain wrong or not.
Which poses a problem in the case
of ATA100, but not for older devices.
Wrong again.
Please show me who have done that.
I've never seen them anywhere.
You want to get out more.
Wrong again.
Well, that wouldn't be so bad if the hardware
manufacturers made that distinction.
Duh.
But as I have shown, hardware manufacturers often
don't make a distinction between ATA-Y and ATAXXX.
Duh.
And the website of the ATA-Y standard
is unreadable to most people.
Duh.
I haven't found a single website that
has a good overview of the standards.
Yep, its much too complex for that.
Do you happen to have a url to a good site?
Nope, I use the standards.
Ehm, Rod. You are replying to your own post here
Wrong. I was adding another point to that earlier point of mine.
Correct.
But since Maxtor has pushed ATA133 and 48bit LBA as one thing,
Pigs arse they ever did.
the manufacturers that have used Maxtor's ATA133
It aint Maxtor's.
have AFAIK all introduced 48bit
LBA at the same time as ATA133.
Fraid not.
The only real effect there is that Maxtor did choose to use
ATA133 before some other hard drive manufacturers and
also chose to have those larger drives earlier than some too.
The two capabilitys are entirely separate issue.
There is a part concerning that, that still isn't clear to me.
Every document I found on the internet yesterday about
this says that ATA6 uses or defines ATA/100 or ATA/133
ONLY in the sense that that specifys
the maximum speed on the ribbon cable.
AND it ever 'define' that anyway.
But the ATA6 document from the people that make
that standard doesn't say anything about that.
Yep, ATA100 and ATA133 are just a commonly used informal
way of stating the maximum speed on the ribbon cable.
I have searched the document, but there is no mention
anywhere in the document about 100 or 133MB/s cable speed.
Correct. So it clearly doesnt 'define' ATA100 or ATA133.
Aparantly all those documents and webpage's on the internet are wrong,
Not wrong, just using the informal naming, rather than
the formal ATA6 standard which covers a hell of a lot
more than just the maximum speed on the ribbon cable.
Same with IDE too, its just an informal commonly used term now.
or that ATA6 document is not complete.
Corse its complete.
Part of the reason for that ATA6 style naming is to get way
from the informal commonly used terminology like ATA100.
Anywhere, it is clear that the people of the ATA6
standard haven't done a good job when nobody
on the internet know what their standard contains.
Thats a silly statement. Plenty do know what it contains.
One thing is clear. When ATA66 devices were created the
ATA6 standard and 48 bit addressing had not yet been defined.
Separate issue entirely to whether devices which
can only do 66 can have 48 bit LBA support NOW.
So those devices won't support 48 bit addressing out of the box.
The box is completely irrelevant to the original question.
I guess it is possible that support is added with an update,
but as I said before, I have never found a device which did.
Your problem.
Those ATA66 devices are already so old that most
companies don't make such updates for them anymore.
Most is completely irrelevant.
Well, in the case of Epox I know that in Europe
they have native speakers for Germany and the
Netherlands for these kind of firstline questions.
Irrelevant. Thats because there arent that
many german or dutch speaking chinese.
English is a different matter entirely.
I'd think the market in the US is big enough
for some support people in the US too.
It hasnt got anything to do with size, what
matters is being able to find enough german
or dutch speaking chinese back in taiwan.
But apparantly this is not the case?
What's the point with english ?
For secondline questions it would probably
be someone in the far-east, and then
language indeed becomes a problem.
And its always been a problem with english.
We have heaps of the chinese in our countrys,
often flogging computer hardware, many of whom
are very difficult indeed to understand in english.
My feelings exactly
Yeah, FAR too often you are obviously dealing with some
monkey reading from its script who is extremely close indeed
to a programmed system and it can be impossible to get it
to actually put its tiny little brain into gear and actually think
about the question asked. They most just try to work out
which of the scripted answers fits the question asked.
But to make this long story short.
You are correct that 48 bit addressing is
a seperate issue from ATA100/ATA133
So the original was just plain wrong. Thats all I ever said.
I have no problem admitting that I was wrong there.
That's why I went through the trouble of finding out
what was going on with all those standards.
But you see; just stating that 48bit LBA is seperate
from ATA133 as you did, doesn't really help people,
I didnt even try to answer the original question,
I JUST chose to comment on the very poor answer
that Paul gave, so the individual who asked the
original question wouldnt take it as gospel.
The only valid answer to the original question is to see
what Epox has done 48bit LBA support wise with the
particular bios used on that particular motherboard and
to check if thats been added if it wasnt there originally.
I couldnt be bothered to check that myself in case
someone else who had tried a large drive on that
particular motherboard had tried that already.
I would likely have checked the epox site
later if he hadnt had any useful replys.
when they have to make do with hardware
manufacturers that only list ATA133 on their devices.
You dont have to make do with that, you can also
check what epox has done bios updates wise too.
When I did my search on those standards
I also checked some hardware specs.
I knew that was pointless. What matters is whats
been done in the bios for that motherboard.
And they often just don't list 48bit
LBA in the specs of their devices.
Sure, but can do in the sense of naming
the drive size with bios updates.
In this case it was a PCI IDE controller.
In those cases it's good to know what
you can expect when they just list ATA133.
Pity you cant.
So for people that have made it this far in the thread it should
now be clear how to check if large disks are supported:
- Look for 48bit LBA in the specs
Its hardly ever mentioned there.
- if that is not mentioned look for bios
updates that add support for 48bit LBA
And that usually states it in terms of drive sizes when it is mentioned.
- if that is not mentioned as well you can expect
that it is supported in ATA33 and ATA66 devices,
Presumably you mean not supported. You cant
'expect' that, particularly with one of the better
motherboard manufacturers like Epox.
and have a high chance of support in ATA133.
In fact all you are really saying is that the later the
motherboard, the more likely it is to have 48bit LBA support.
No news at all to anyone with a clue.
- if you have a ATA100 device, you are out of
luck, because you need to contact the helpdesk ;-)
Nope |-)
