Hi, Rod.

Thanks for your comments. I guess I'm fortunate that I have to wait a
couple of weeks before I buy this thing, lets me get some info. Can you
elaborate on a couple of the things you said - see comments below.

RS> BG> You can still use large IDE HDs though, a long as you load
RS> BG> the manufacturer's special disk-manager type software, which
RS> BG> lives in the MBR, and allows full access to the entire drive.

RS> FM> Do you recommend this?

RS> Its not a terrific idea if you can avoid it. It can bite you.

OK, how?

RS> FM> Brenton suggested just partitioning it up into
RS> FM> lots of 250k drives and using no extra software.

RS> I thought you didnt have LBA support in the motherboard etc tho ?

Now I'm mystified. No, I don't have LBA support. Does that mean I can't
FDISK it into lots of 250 *meg* drives?

RS> You cant just chop it up to avoid the 1024
RS> cylinder glitch with a drive over 528MB.

Oh? I thought that was a DOS glitch, and if you FDISKed it into little
drives you were home clear... ?

RS> FM> Lives in the MBR? Hmmm, yes that's a nice idea. Presumably
RS> FM> you can then boot, using normal DOS, even off a huge drive.

RS> Yes, thats the idea.

Good.

RS> FM> Does it eat any base-640k memory?

RS> Usually. There are a variety supplied with the different large drives.

How much? (Typically)

RS> I think LBA support is the way to go, much more convenient for a variety
RS> of reasons. If your current motherboard doesnt have that, and you can
RS> just move your cpu and memory to a new one, its not all that expensive
RS> and you will get some other bonuses like 4*IDE support and even CDROM
RS> support in some of the recent ones. Ditto EIDE and serial support on
RS> the motherboard with convenient cmos fiddling. Not that expensive if
RS> you are considering spending $K class money on a drive.

I agree, but I'm not about to do that at the moment. One reason being,
is PCI the future? What do you think?

Regards, FIM.

 * * It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.
@EOT:

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