Hello, Roy.  I overheard you telling Tom Walker about  - -

 RJT> Tom Walker wrote in a message to Wayne Chirnside:


 -> The card I'm looking at is made by Siig and specifically mentions
 -> Win 98 and Linux is supported, 35 bucks.

OUCH!  I wonder about the advisability of investing in a $35 card for a
system with mainboard worth prolly less than $5 in order to jump up from
UDMA33 to UDMA133 capability.  I think I'd be for saving up for
investing in a newer/better/faster mainboard.

 TW>  I have a Siig ATA-100 Card that breaks the BIOS limit also. Since
 TW> it is an older card it only handles 128 Gig and smaller.
 TW> Interestingly it only has Win95/98/98Se/WinNT/Win2000 support.  NO
 TW> Linux

 RJT> That's because linux doesn't _need_ such cards to work with large
 RJT> drives in older systems...

Ah, so Wayne doesn't need to spend $35 on such a card at all, just like
Windows users don't need such cards, as long as they use the HDD Mfgr's
supplied work-around software, (like MaxBlast) - right??

 RJT> You just need to arrange things so that the system sees the drive at
 RJT> all,  and can read some of it,  put the kernel in a small /boot
 RJT> partition at the start of the drive,  and once it boots,  the BIOS is
 RJT> irrelevant.

Just like HDD mfgr's hardware and BIOS -tricking overlay software,
right? I have a few questions - -

1) In what way are Linux software BIOS limitation workarounds superior
to the BIOS limitation workarounds which software like MaxBlast
provides? I know I don't want any more of those BIOS limitation
workaround "HDD overlays" for DOS/Win, and don't think I'd want any of
them If I were to give Linux a try, either.

2) If there is a HDD problem,  HDD can't be properly recognized by
BIOS, and system won't boot, what software do you use to boot into and
do diagnostics and repair to the HDD when you're running LInux?

3) When mainboard BIOS will only support UDMA33,  how fast do
newer/faster UDMA133 drives run under Linux?

- - -  JimH.

... "Bother!" said Pooh, as his system couldn't find his hard drive
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