NT4 48-Bit LBA?

[jaclaz]

I believe to have understood that Nt4 accesses the disk (or the host) like 95-98-Me do: using the interrupts provided by the Bios, instead of having its own functions as W2k began to do. (Or did this change with some SP?)

NO.

NT is named after New Technology EXACTLY because starting from 3.1/3.51 it changed the way it accessed ANY device by using UNLIKE DOS/Win9x/Me a structure based on a "HAL" or "Hardware Abstraction Layer".

I.e. whilst DOS and consequently up to a certain point Win9x/Me "trust" BIOS, NT based operating systems, including NT 4.00 re-scan the system and use specific drivers.

Original NT 4.00 had a limit (for a bootable volume) set at 8 Gb.

Remember that NT 4.00 ONLY understands FAT16 and an EARLY version of NTFS.

The problem is in ATAPI.SYS, here is a rather complete page on the available workarounds:

http://nt4ref.zcm.com.au/bigdisk.htm

IF UNIATA supports the board, good:

http://alter.org.ua/soft/win/uni_ata/

otherwise I guess that you can only use the previous mentioned workaround.

WARNING:

You need at least SP3 to have (partial) compatibility with the Win2K (and later versions of NTFS.

jaclaz

[pointertovoid]

OK then, it's similar to W2k, although somewhat more archaic.

Maybe this helps, with Nt4, if you have an Intel southbridge of the Application Accelerator epoch.

On W2k, I could make an F6 diskette containing the iAA. This doesn't seem to be completely standard, but it allowed me to make a fresh installation and have right from the beginning the Intel driver - very useful to install Win on a Compact Flash Card by writing in Udma instead of Pio, the difference being bigger than with hard drives. In the case of Nt4, the benefit would be an F6 driver that speaks Lba48.

It needs to have already installed the iAA with the right Windows on this precise hardware. Then, iAA creates a folder containing a Txtsetup.oem and all necessary files to be copied to the diskette. I had to correct something in an Inf but forgot what, sorry; probably the Pci identification of the southbridge.

From what I've seen, this folder is created by iAA for each machine and can't be just extracted easily from the installer. But at the second installation, it works.

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How did they translate "Hardware Abstraction Layer" in Italian? In my language, it became a layer made of hardware abstraction (instead of abstraction from the hardware), which doesn't help understand.

[dencorso]

Have you read this carefully before installing UniAta? If not, do try again.

[jaclaz]

How did they translate "Hardware Abstraction Layer" in Italian? In my language, it became a layer made of hardware abstraction (instead of abstraction from the hardware), which doesn't help understand.

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_abstraction_layer

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architettura_Windows_NT

The translation with "Livello di astrazione dell'Hardware" is a bit deceiving.

The thing is not a "level" (livello) it is a layer (strato).

It is a Layer that "insulates" the OS from the actual hardware.

It would sound in Italian something like "strato di separazione hardware", or "hardware separation layer" the good MS guys didn't ever attempt to translate it AFAIK/AFAICR:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/299340/it

Here is a nice scheme:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT

You have to imagine it like a sheet of some insulating material that makes waterproof something that is below, obviously there are "holes" in it (the drivers) connecting what is under (the hardware) with what is over it (the OS).

jaclaz