What hard drive capacity will a UMC UM4981-AIO support?

[debs3759]

It's been so long since I worked with a 486 system that I can't remember much about HDD support.

I have bought a UM4981-AIO Rev 1.0 on eBay, with AMD 5x86-133, VLB graphics card I wanted and sound card (that I won't need, but it's a bonus). I have a 528MB drive for testing old graphics cards that only have Windows 3.x support, but need an idea of the largest size drive that will work with LBA on this board for Win 95 and later OS.

The manual can be seen at http://www.elhvb.com/mobokive/archive/Systemax/Manuals/vlb/UM4981_Rev_2.PDF (can't find a Rev 1 manual)

The chipset is UMC 8498F

Any advice appreciated if anybody still knows about such stuff. No point buying 2 or 3 2GB drives (for different OS) if a 40 GB drive will work

[CPUShack]

like will be 2GB max, a 40gb will work, just will only see 2GB of it (you can make multiple 2GB partitions however)

[debs3759]

That's what I suspected. Hope it's not too difficult finding drives that small May have to post a wtb thread if I don't find them on eBay

[Glory_Cloud]

PM me as I get smaller IDE hard drives that I format and
make bootable to DOS. I should get a list of what I have
pulled together for everyone to peruse.

[debs3759]

Cool

[misace]

You don´t need little drives. You can set the max. capacity of the HDD via HPA command. It works with all drives, BIOSes and OS. I´m using MHDD utility for that.

http://hddguru.com/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/

[debs3759]

Looks like a useful tool for some things, thanks. I won't be using the HPA command to resize drives though unless I have to, I want to try using drives that go with the hardware as much as possible. Thanks to Glory_Cloud it looks like that shouldn't be a big problem

[Qwerty]

There are two possible HDD size limitations for a 486 system - 2.1 GB and 8.4 GB. That's why 2.1 and 8.4 GB hard drives are quite expensive on eBay.

Perhaps you should use a CF card with an IDE adapter instead of a HDD. The 8 GB compact flash cards are extremely cheap and have better performance than an old HDD.

If you want to use FAT16 on the machine then there is another size limitation of 2 GB for partitions. But in this case you can just create 4x 2GB partitions on a 8.4 GB drive.

[Qwerty]

[misace]

HPA is part of ATA command V4. It is in firmware. It works on newer drives from ~2001. I used it many times to boot from old 386 and 486 machines.

[debs3759]

[Qwerty]

[Qwerty]

[amstrad84]

SO, ideal HDD capacity for PC with 486 cpu is cca 270 MB for 6.22 DOS and 420/630 MB for Win95/98, while prefering WD, no Seagate.

[debs3759]

I'll be using a 540 MB drive for DOS/Win 3.11
Will possibly be getting a couple of drives around 1.2 - 1.3 GB that will be good for Win95/98. Will know soon what other similar drives are available.

I will probably follow the suggestions above for 2 GB CF drives to run 2K on it.

I was moving some stuff around earlier and came across a Super Socket 7 board with a K6-2 500 in it. That supports up to 8.4 GB and has an AGP 2x slot (and ISA/PCI slots). I'll probably use CF cards on that as well, same with the S370 board I want to test.

I think all my later boards have SATA so not yet sure whether I'll be using CF or SATA drives (will need to check prices for smaller drives for them). At least I now know I have some decent options for my graphics card testing lab (most people call it a sitting room!).