largest HDD for Pentium I, 120MHz ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter RS
  • Start date Start date
R

RS

I am trying to help friends who cannot afford much. Their current machine
has a 1GB HDD. I am not sure of the chipset or BIOS, so perhaps no one can
really answer this question without that info. I understand that most HDD
makers probably have "overlay" programs available for downloading. I recall
that HDD's used to come with such programs already on them ... but that was
some years ago.

In any case, is it likely or unlikely that anything larger than 10GB could
be addressed by Win98SE running on this computer ?

Thanks !

-RS-
 
RS said:
I am trying to help friends who cannot afford much. Their current machine
has a 1GB HDD. I am not sure of the chipset or BIOS, so perhaps no one can
really answer this question without that info. I understand that most HDD
makers probably have "overlay" programs available for downloading. I recall
that HDD's used to come with such programs already on them ... but that was
some years ago.

In any case, is it likely or unlikely that anything larger than 10GB could
be addressed by Win98SE running on this computer ?

Thanks !

-RS-
Click to expand...
More likely 8 GB max but when you partition and format drive you can keep
the partitions less than 8 and it should see all the logical drives.

Larry
 
I am trying to help friends who cannot afford much. Their current machine
has a 1GB HDD. I am not sure of the chipset or BIOS, so perhaps no one can
really answer this question without that info. I understand that most HDD
makers probably have "overlay" programs available for downloading. I recall
that HDD's used to come with such programs already on them ... but that was
some years ago.

In any case, is it likely or unlikely that anything larger than 10GB could
be addressed by Win98SE running on this computer ?

Thanks !

-RS-
Click to expand...
Download and use AIDA32,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/diag.html
You can then research information on the system.
As it's an old system you will hit hardware limitations as per,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/hard.html
however most hard drive makers have software called DDOs(Dymanic Disk
Overlay) programs that may be able to allow you to use bigger drivers
and is freely available from the hard drive maker's site/s hence
AIDA32.
HTH :)



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OK, but what about the overlay programs that I mentioned ? Would the use of
them change what you say about the 8GB limit ??

-RS-
 
There's an alternative to drive overlay software: get a PCI IDE controller
card. That would allow the drive to work properly under DOS; I doubt that
the overlay software would.

I'm not using it at the moment, but I had a Promise Ultra100TX2 card for a
couple of years.
(http://www.promise.com/marketing/datasheet/file/1_U100TX2_en.pdf ) It has
its own BIOS, and can support IDE drives of any currently available size.
(Win98se pre-dates LBA48 drives, so I doubt that you could use drives larger
than 137GB with it, but I doubt that's an issue.) www.newegg.com has the
card for $30, but I've seen them for less. (I once saw some sold under the
Maxtor name at Staples. They were under clearance at about $17 US each.)

I admit that I the oldest machine I ran the card in was a PIII, but it may
be compatible with older systems.

It may not be worthwhile to spend even $30 on a 120 MHz Pentium machine,
though. I suspect that newer machines than that are discarded as too old to
maintain.

Bob Knowlden

Address altered. Replace nkbob with bobkn.
 
Howdy!

RS said:
I am trying to help friends who cannot afford much. Their current machine
has a 1GB HDD. I am not sure of the chipset or BIOS, so perhaps no one can
really answer this question without that info. I understand that most HDD
makers probably have "overlay" programs available for downloading. I recall
that HDD's used to come with such programs already on them ... but that was
some years ago.
Click to expand...

Not enough info. But, worst case, is to pick up a PCI IDE host
adapter (such as the Promise Ultra 100/TX2 or Ultra 133/TX2) and use that,
which will let you use as large a drive as you want to.
In any case, is it likely or unlikely that anything larger than 10GB could
be addressed by Win98SE running on this computer ?
Click to expand...

If 10G can be used, then 16G can be, and most likely 32G. 40G
drives usually have a "Cylinder Limit" jumper that makes them 32G.

RwP
 
There's an alternative to drive overlay software: get a PCI IDE controller
card. That would allow the drive to work properly under DOS; I doubt that
the overlay software would.
Click to expand...


Agreed and I always use newegg when I am building systems...but, you
can goto pricewatch.com and look for an I/O controller (EIDE) and you
can find them for as little as $7 (not including s/h). They have the
Pomise for $23.
-
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Curtis Newton
(e-mail address removed)
http://surf.to/cnewton
ICQ: 4899169
Anti-Spam filter in place--
<delete remove-this. to respond to email>
 
RS said:
OK, but what about the overlay programs that I mentioned ? Would the use of
them change what you say about the 8GB limit ??

-RS-
Click to expand...
It didn't on my daughters computer. But then I'm not a guru either. Her
bios limited her machine to 8 GB size. Took an old 10GB formated on another
machine with 2 partitions then installed in her's It then recognized two
drives one 8 and one 2 gb. Been working fine now for 3 years. Her machine
is an old P166 and does not support dma so is quite slow in comparison to
the rest of the machines i have around.

Larry
 
Sorry I just remembered that the machine I was working on was even earlier
version forget the actual but more like P66?or less Do remeber it required
edo memory for upgrade. Needed that to upgrade it to Windows ME at the time.
 
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