On the 18/0696  08:00, Bob waffled to Dieter..

 Hello Bob,
 
 DM> If not, you can get a VLB that supports large HDD's - it
 DM> "patches" in to the HDD calls and substitutes its own code. Or
 DM> someat similar.
 BL> Is this the infamous disk mangler?
 
 DM> No - disk mangler is different. It's a software rather than a
 DM> hardware/firmware implementation.

 BL> I shudder at the idea of relying on software to access the disc with
 BL> the software on it.
 
 In it's time, it worked remarkably well. I had installed it ion
 several PC's, and none ever caused me any grief.

 BL> But my BIOS knows about LBA, so where does that leave me? Do I
 BL> need a special VLB board or just an ordinary one.
 
 DM> Ordinary IDE card should do fine.

 BL> I need the one for four drives so I can run the CD separately. I
 BL> thought I needed a VLB card for that.
 
 Not necessarily, although the bulk of the 4-HDD controllers seem
 to be VLB based.

 I'm basically in the same boat as you, viz the CD ROM drive.
 Currently I've been using a yum-cha audio card, with the audio
 bits disabled, to access the CD ROM. But it seems to conflict
 occasionally with OS/2 and perhaps the MediaVision PAS card,
 leaving the system unstable.

 DM> Just remember, the LBA and standard geometry are not
 DM> compatible.

 BL> Now I'm confused again. Brenton said LBA only comes into effect over
 BL> 1024 heads.

 Sectors :-)

 BL> Can't I enable LBA for the big drive but access the small
 BL> one non-LBA? I back up to the small drive.
 
 Yes, you can do that - LBA is implemented on a per-drive basis

 Some of the newer BIOS's also sport a setting called LARGe, in
 addition to LBA and standard modes. I have no idea if this is an
 alternative method of accessing the entire HDD space. Maybe Rod
 would know.

 BL> I would not have believed it was possible to store 400Mb!
 
 DM> Considering a "suite" can take that much and more, it's hardly
 DM> surprising these days.

 BL> I haven't loaded Winb95 or Delphi 2 yet, either...

 Win95 and it's apps are messy. They don't install on the the
 "data" partition properly, preferring to dump all their DLL's etc
 into the Win95 partition, which I had made only 125megs large,
 and now I have only 5 megs left, and that was after I shifted
 about 20megs of help files.

 Give the partition at least 200 megs, to be safe.

 BL> It's silly. When I bought AutoCad it was $5,000 and huge... 2 Mb!

 Only a utility would be that small these days. The price of
 progress is 25cents per meg.

 Dieter
 

... Open mouth, insert foot, echo internationally.
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12
@EOT:

---