rloew

Device Drivers such as IOS.VXD and ESDI_506.PDR use 64-Bit Sector Arguments. The Interrupt 13 Extensions (DOS) also use 64-Bit Sector Numbers. The existing ESDI_506.PDR files, including LLXX's version and my High Capacity Disk Patch, ignore the upper 32 Bits. I created versions of my High Capacity Disk Patch and BOOTMAN Overlay to use the additional 16 Bits supported by the 48-Bit LBA Protocol. The IO.SYS and VFAT.VXD Filesystem Drivers use 32 Bits. I altered the way Logical Sector Numbers are mapped to Physical Sector Numbers. This allowed me to create Partitions of up to 2TB starting above the 2TB limit. 24 Partitions can be defined to provide a total space of 48TB. It may be possible to redo Cluster mapping. If so, the size of a single Partition could be increased to at least 32TB using 256 Sectors per Cluster. I have already developed Patches for IO.SYS and VFAT.VXD that support 256 Sectors per Cluster.

I tested Fast Defrag 2.3.1 (reports 2.3) with my Patch to see if the problem was memory or the MaxPhysPage workaround. I did not get error messages but the Cleaning Command would not display it's wait message and would never complete when there was too much memory. Between 1280MB and 1664MB it would work once. With 1664MB or more RAM, it would never work. This indicates that Fast Defrag has a problem handling large amounts of RAM. The other two Programs have problems when used as a workaround. These problems do not exist when using my Patch instead of a workaround. The problems are not related to the amount of memory. My Patch enables all RAM to be used so MaxPhysPage is not needed. This eliminates the issue with MSCONFIG.EXE Since the Patch enables all RAM to be used, there is no reason to use XMSDSK for Swap since better performance would be obtained by disabling Swap entirely.

That might have been OK if I had a lot of business customers. So far all of my customers have been home users. Maybe, but then there would be no point in developing Windows 9x Patches. I could work on the 2TB limit in Windows XP and Vista instead.

SATA uses nearly the same commands as PATA so it is subject to the same issues as PATA. Most SATA controllers come with their own drivers so 48-Bit LBA support depeds on the driver used. Being a newer standard, it is more likely that a SATA driver would support 48-Bit LBA but there are no guarantees expecially with older drivers. Some motherboards with SATA built into their chipsets are compatable with the ESDI_506.PDR driver. If ESDI_506.PDR is used then there will be no support for 48-Bit LBA. In addition, the MSHDC.INF file will incorrectly configure some of these SATA drivers causing problems especially when IDE and SATA drives are used together. In anticipation of the 2TB limit being reached, I have developed true 48 Bit versions of my Patches and a couple of workarounds to enable Windows 98 to utilize up to 52TB.

I haven't experimented with it so I don't know if the power management handler causes any problems. In normal operation it should have no effect. It might make a difference when suspending or hibernating. Of course it is larger and uses slightly more resources. It is an update. All changes made between 2222 and 2225 are present.

The difference between the 2225 and 2226 versions is as follows: Several routines were moved from the PCOD Segment to the LCOD Segment so they would be preloaded. A Power Handler is registered that allows the Virtual Power Management Device to flush the Driver.

The ECS GEFORCE 6100SM-M Motherboard is a nVidia MCP61S Based system for the AMD CPU. The manual say it can support up to 16GB of RAM using two slots. I have 2x2GB of RAM installed totalling 4GB. The BIOS has a setting that determines the limit of 32-Bit RAM. Additional RAM is shifted above 4GB into the 64-Bit Address Space. The setting is a 8-Bit HEX value that sets the limit in 16MB increments. The default is C0 which provides 3GB of 32-Bit RAM. With the on-board video disabled, I was able to set the value to E4. This provides 3648MB. 1MB and 64K are reserved by the BIOS leaving just under 3647MB. I was able to run my modified Windows 9X using this setting.

With the proper Patches, Windows 98/SE/ME can run as close to 4GB as your Motherboard will map to the 32-Bit Address Space. Most Motherboards will only map 3GB to the 32-Bit Address Space pushing any additional memory above the 4GB boundary. I found an ECS Motherboard that allowed me to tweak this limit, allowing me to run Windows 98/SE/ME with 3647MB of RAM.