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LBA in mainboard BIOS, DDO

orion24

Experienced Member
Joined
Oct 19, 2011
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251
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Greece
My vintage 386 socket-PC is nearly complete and in a while I want to start writing posts here with it. Now, what I want:

1) Is there a way to edit/modify/hack the mainboard BIOS so that I "add" the LBA support? I'm sure a super-duper hacker would be able to do that, but I looked for it, couldn't find anything for common mortals like myself. Opening the BIOS with a hex-editor, I couldn't understand anything other that the "BIOS text"
2) If not, does anybody have a universal DDO software that will work with my SD-IDE "virtual HDD"? I tried the one from WD, it says it doesn't find a WD drive installed.
 
How big is the drive you're trying to install? I think ANYDRIVE will only allow up to a certain capacity of drives before it won't work. You could also give Ontrack Disk Manager a try if ANYDRIVE doesn't work.
 
The "drive" is an SD card with an SD-IDE adapter. I use 8 GB cards as I had the LBA 8.4GB limitation in mind. Never heard of Anydrive or Ontrack Disk Manager. I'll give them a shot.
 
The "drive" is an SD card with an SD-IDE adapter. I use 8 GB cards as I had the LBA 8.4GB limitation in mind. Never heard of Anydrive or Ontrack Disk Manager. I'll give them a shot.

AnyDrive has a 520mb limit, but Ontrack should do it, the WD tool you tried before was probably a version of Ontrack made to work on WD ROM'd drives, that was common back in the day, I know theres Seagate and Quantum versions just like that too. Ontrack DID make and sell a generic version that should work on ANY drive.

Have you also looked into adding the XT-IDE BIOS to your PC? It can be burned to an EEPROM and installed in any bootable ROM socket, most common being "BOOT ROM" socket of NIC Cards.
 
I was never a fan of OnTrack's DDO. For some reason Microhouse's "EZ-Drive" always seemed to work for me and it wasn't locked to a particular vendor's drives. Even then I used DDOs as a last resort as they make data transfer a pain (non-standard partition layout), I usually stick with LBA option ROMs.
 
AnyDrive has a 520mb limit, but Ontrack should do it, the WD tool you tried before was probably a version of Ontrack made to work on WD ROM'd drives, that was common back in the day, I know theres Seagate and Quantum versions just like that too. Ontrack DID make and sell a generic version that should work on ANY drive.
520Mb is supported in this mainboard already. I'll look into this "Ontrack".

Have you also looked into adding the XT-IDE BIOS to your PC? It can be burned to an EEPROM and installed in any bootable ROM socket, most common being "BOOT ROM" socket of NIC Cards.
TBH I haven't looked into this before, as the "XT" name made me think it is for XTs. It sounds quite interesting the way I see it and I'll certainly have a look.

I've got a copy of EZ-Drive v8.01W if you want to try that.
If it is freeware, then I do want to try it, but isn't that for WD drives only?
 
520Mb is supported in this mainboard already. I'll look into this "Ontrack".
Yeah, the point of ANYDRIVE, is for machines that ONLY have hard-coded BIOS drive entries for a FEW sizes, lets you overcome that UP TO the 520mb limit. Does not apply to your machine since its got manual entry or autodetect options, it was more for early 286 era prior to manual entry or some rare manufacturer-hobbled machines that tried to lock you into certain drive types.

TBH I haven't looked into this before, as the "XT" name made me think it is for XTs. It sounds quite interesting the way I see it and I'll certainly have a look.
It started out as an XT thing with the 8-bit XT-IDE card, however the BIOS has an AT mode that can be used with ANY IDE Controller, and its BIOS overcomes all the way up to 48bit LBA I believe (137gb).
 
FWIW, the latest version of EZ-Drive is 9.04. I believe the main difference is that it supports drives over 8.4GB.
 
If you watch ebay for an SIIG IDE ISA controller card, then you might be happy with the results. They look EXACTLY like this:
rus7rt.jpg


I have one, and it is probably the best IDE ISA controller cards you could wish for. It's about as fool-proof as you can imagine taking any hard drive up to the 8.4gb barrier. Its also VERY FAST! The last one I saw on ebay sold for $40, and I would agree its a bit steep, but if I lost the one I had, i'd replace it at that price.

found one on ebay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/120989826683
 
If you watch ebay for an SIIG IDE ISA controller card, then you might be happy with the results. They look EXACTLY like this:
rus7rt.jpg


I have one, and it is probably the best IDE ISA controller cards you could wish for. It's about as fool-proof as you can imagine taking any hard drive up to the 8.4gb barrier. Its also VERY FAST! The last one I saw on ebay sold for $40, and I would agree its a bit steep, but if I lost the one I had, i'd replace it at that price.

I have this very card in my 486. Its a nice board and works fine with my Compact Flash cards. They also made a VLB version that pops up from time to time on ebay.
 
If you watch ebay for an SIIG IDE ISA controller card, then you might be happy with the results.

I have one, and it is probably the best IDE ISA controller cards you could wish for. It's about as fool-proof as you can imagine taking any hard drive up to the 8.4gb barrier. Its also VERY FAST! The last one I saw on ebay sold for $40, and I would agree its a bit steep, but if I lost the one I had, i'd replace it at that price

Well how fast can it be on the ISA BUS? This 386 board does have VLB slots and I have a few VLD IDE controllers with dual IDE and support at least up to PIO MODE 3. They do support LBA 8.4, but support is only enabled if the mainboard BIOS supports it as well.

Does this ISA controller "overcome" the mainboard limitation of not supporting LBA?
 
Well how fast can it be on the ISA BUS? This 386 board does have VLB slots and I have a few VLD IDE controllers with dual IDE and support at least up to PIO MODE 3. They do support LBA 8.4, but support is only enabled if the mainboard BIOS supports it as well.

Does this ISA controller "overcome" the mainboard limitation of not supporting LBA?

This doesn't make sense. There's no reason a harddrive controller would need LBA support in the main BIOS unless it has no BIOS of it's own. Do they have option ROMs? (Usually looks like the chip with the "Enhanced BIOS" label in the above pictures)

If you have VLB slots and cards then I suggest you use one of those instead of any ISA controller.
 
This doesn't make sense. There's no reason a harddrive controller would need LBA support in the main BIOS unless it has no BIOS of it's own. Do they have option ROMs? (Usually looks like the chip with the "Enhanced BIOS" label in the above pictures)

If you have VLB slots and cards then I suggest you use one of those instead of any ISA controller.

At the moment I have 2 VLB IDE controllers (another 3 on the way). One is with a BIOS and one without. The one that does have a BIOS, has an option saying support HDD>528MB and another one saying about Int 13h (System BIOS, ROM BIOS, move to RAM). Whatever settings I use, the mainboard BIOS detects the HDD in normal mode and fdisk does not detect any "LBA" abilities to enable large disk support. Do I do something wrong maybe? Or is it that the VLB with the BIOS does not actually support LBA but only "Large" mode?

*edit* I'm king of looking into that XTIDE Universal BIOS thing. I wonder if flashing the XTIDE BIOS in the VLB IDE controller will make it work. I'll give it a shot when I have time
 
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At the moment I have 2 VLB IDE controllers (another 3 on the way). One is with a BIOS and one without. The one that does have a BIOS, has an option saying support HDD>528MB and another one saying about Int 13h (System BIOS, ROM BIOS, move to RAM). Whatever settings I use, the mainboard BIOS detects the HDD in normal mode and fdisk does not detect any "LBA" abilities to enable large disk support. Do I do something wrong maybe? Or is it that the VLB with the BIOS does not actually support LBA but only "Large" mode?

*edit* I'm king of looking into that XTIDE Universal BIOS thing. I wonder if flashing the XTIDE BIOS in the VLB IDE controller will make it work. I'll give it a shot when I have time

I wouldn't think that the BIOS on your VLB card modifies the BIOS in the system, if anything I would think it takes over for the hard drive portion, try and see what happens if you leave the HD as NONE in the system BIOS, then see if the VLB card takes over and detect the hard disk with LBA support? I know that's how modern HD controllers with separate BIOS work now a days, they don't modify built in HD support, they have their own separate support.
 
I wouldn't think that the BIOS on your VLB card modifies the BIOS in the system, if anything I would think it takes over for the hard drive portion, try and see what happens if you leave the HD as NONE in the system BIOS, then see if the VLB card takes over and detect the hard disk with LBA support? I know that's how modern HD controllers with separate BIOS work now a days, they don't modify built in HD support, they have their own separate support.

Yeah but modern mainboard BIOS have the option for booting from such an add-in card. If I leave drive C as none, will it be able to boot from C? I'll try what you said. If it works and booting is the only issue, I might just leave a 512MB card for C and let D be the 8GB one, or move it to the secondary IDE
 
Yeah but modern mainboard BIOS have the option for booting from such an add-in card. If I leave drive C as none, will it be able to boot from C? I'll try what you said. If it works and booting is the only issue, I might just leave a 512MB card for C and let D be the 8GB one, or move it to the secondary IDE
On modern boards that option just lets you select which one is the FIRST boot device, BIOS's going back to XTs allowed booting via an option ROM card, just usually as the last option (after trying onboard HD, floppy, and later CD).

I guess I hadn't realized you had multiple drives, you could just put both on the VLB card, and set both to NONE in system BIOS, Then the VLB card should boot whichever is Master first.
 
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