IBM PC 300GL and 20GB Seagate

  • Thread starter Thread starter Martin
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M

Martin

I want to get a 20GB 5400rpm IDE hard drive working in a friend's pc.

His pc is an anitiquated IBM PC 300GL - it has a Pentium 233MMX cpu and 32MB
RAM.
From the 300GL's manual i see that it uses the Intel Triton-VX chipset and
has a 'standard' two IDE channels type of setup.
It runs Windows 98 and had two 2GB hard drives on primary IDE channel and a
CD-RW on secondary IDE channel as master.
It now has the 20GB drive on primary slave and only ~8.4GB of it is
detected - no surprises there!

So of course my question is to anyone with a knowledge of 'Drive Overlay
Software'..
Can i bypass the BIOS limit with drive overlay software and have access to
the full 20GB of discspace - either as a single 20GB partition or as a
number of smaller partitions?

From some research i found the Seagate DiscWizard Starter Edition utility
which 'seemed' to claim that it could (and would) install it's own drive
overlay software from a DOS boot.
Unfortunately it only detected the same ~8.4GB of discspace and a few
reboots using the various settings still gave me no more than ~8.4GB of
discspace.
Link: http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html

And a quote from the help page:
http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/howto/use_dwse.html
'If a Dynamic Drive Overlay (DDO) is required, DiscWizard Starter Edition
will give very important instructions for booting to the computer. You will
be given an option and instructions for creating an Ontrack Boot Diskette
(requires a floppy with the OS on it). You will then be prompted to remove
the diskette from Drive A: and press RESET or CTRL-ALT-DEL to reboot.'
But i didn't get this option to make a floppy and install drive overlay -
was this because i missed it in the options or because drive overlay was not
detected by the utility to be installable?

Hoping someone can inspire my next move to get all 20GB detected.

Thanks.

Martin.
 
Martin said:
I want to get a 20GB 5400rpm IDE hard drive working in a friend's pc.

His pc is an anitiquated IBM PC 300GL - it has a Pentium 233MMX cpu
and 32MB RAM. From the 300GL's manual i see that it uses the Intel
Triton-VX chipset and has a 'standard' two IDE channels type of setup.
It runs Windows 98 and had two 2GB hard drives on primary IDE channel
and a CD-RW on secondary IDE channel as master. It now has the 20GB
drive on primary slave and only ~8.4GB of it is detected - no
surprises there!

So of course my question is to anyone with a knowledge of 'Drive
Overlay Software'.. Can i bypass the BIOS limit with drive overlay
software and have access to the full 20GB of discspace - either as a
single 20GB partition or as a number of smaller partitions?
Click to expand...
.... snip ...

Avoid such overlay software - it makes the drive non-portable, so
you can't pull it and install it in another machine for recover,
backup, whatever. You can either live with the detected size, or
install an ISA (or PCI) card that supplies the missing bios
abilities (costs around 30 to 40 dollars), or look for an updated
complete bios (dangerous in some ways).
 
You don't need a controller card - you just need the bios update. The sort
of thing I mentioned simply installs that update for the disk drives at
boot time. You don't have to change anything - the existing controller
continues to access the drive.
Click to expand...

If that card costs $30-40, I'd say go with a controller. You should be
able to pickup a used Promise ATA66 or better for ~$20 shipped. There are
alot of extra controllers out there as many new drives come packaged with
them. Not only will you utilize the full capacity of the drive but you
will also get noticably different performance.

CBfalconer, I am curious, do you have links to cards like you mentioned,
because I don't think I've ever seen such a product. Sounds like a BIOS
overlay on a card.

~Jeremy
____________________________________________________________________
Please remove your windows partition when replying by email
 
CBFalconer said:
... snip ...

Avoid such overlay software - it makes the drive non-portable, so
you can't pull it and install it in another machine for recover,
backup, whatever. You can either live with the detected size, or
install an ISA (or PCI) card that supplies the missing bios
abilities (costs around 30 to 40 dollars), or look for an updated
complete bios (dangerous in some ways).
Click to expand...

I see...
If i get the drive overlay installed and then the pc fails, i won't be able
to recreate the setup on a different pc to recover the drive's data?
Doesn't sound very promising.

Maybe i'll have a look in the local pc shop - try to find a cheap (maybe
used) controller card.

Thanks for the reply.

Martin.
 
Martin said:
I see...
If i get the drive overlay installed and then the pc fails, i won't
be able to recreate the setup on a different pc to recover the
drive's data? Doesn't sound very promising.

Maybe i'll have a look in the local pc shop - try to find a cheap
(maybe used) controller card.
Click to expand...

You don't need a controller card - you just need the bios update.
The sort of thing I mentioned simply installs that update for the
disk drives at boot time. You don't have to change anything - the
existing controller continues to access the drive.
 
jeremy said:
.... snip ...

CBfalconer, I am curious, do you have links to cards like you
mentioned, because I don't think I've ever seen such a product.
Sounds like a BIOS overlay on a card.
Click to expand...

Exactly. I have one in this 486 system to allow using a 130G
drive. But I am damned if I can remember the firm name, URL, etc.
and I can't lay my hands on the paper. All the card has is a PROM
and an address dip switch. Without it the bios won't handle over
4G, and over 8G causes boot time lock-up.
 
CBFalconer said:
Exactly. I have one in this 486 system to allow using a 130G
drive. But I am damned if I can remember the firm name, URL, etc.
and I can't lay my hands on the paper. All the card has is a PROM
and an address dip switch. Without it the bios won't handle over
4G, and over 8G causes boot time lock-up.
Click to expand...

..


Micro Firmware's ATA PRO FLASH card: http://www.firmware.com/
 
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