12379f69f862
tech



Hello Mike - 

--8<--cut 

MM>> In any case, you DO need to leave the controller BIOS
MM>> enabled, and work from within there. 

MR> You are very likely right about that... 

The bios on the controller is the 'key', I remember that much. 

--8<--cut 

MR> BTW it did format the full capacity with the config.sys
MR> driver loaded though it was split up into a small forest of
MR> 32M volumes A-J. :( 

32 meg partitions is a limitation of earlier (v3.3) MSDOS.
MSDOS v6.22 (or compatible clone DOS) would use 2 gig
partitions up to a max drive size of 8 gig. 

--8<--cut 

MR> Thanks for your kind words. I did the hdc's bios format and
MR> it gave the full drive capacity. The controller docs
MR> specifically mention disabling the bios for dos other than
MR> 3.x etc which has a 32M limit and assigning the whole drive
MR> to a single volume before partitioning with the "other" dos. 

MR> What I think the current problem may be is dos 6.22, when
MR> reading the present 90M active partition, sees a "previous"
MR> 270M value written in it by dos 5.0 and decides the
MR> extended partition can't be more than 180M. That's the only
MR> explanation I can make sense of. I'll let you know if
MR> removing the last active partition restores the full
MR> capacity otherwise I'll have to go back to the hdc's bios
MR> and try again. 

It's been many many years and the memories aren't 'vivid' but I
had similar problems until I found out I had to set the MB bios
to type 1 or 'user' and let the translating controller do it's
work. Any attempt to set the MB bios to anything close to the
actual size of the drive only confused the OS. 

I did have to execute the controller's ROM software for the low
level and possibly for the partitioning too. I can't remember
for certain but it was a very non-standard arrangement that had
me going in circles till I gave in and called for help to the
manufacturer that sold the thing to me (Gateway). 

>
>        ,                                        ,
>      o/      Charles_Angelich  - DOS Ghost       \o       ,
>       __o/
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