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Enable48BitLBA | Break the 137Gb barrier!

LLXX

By LLXX
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Eck

Eck

Posted
Posted

Thanks Drugwash. I have tried over there. The SiS5598 SPAX-M board only uses HP Bios's and the Intel SE440BX isn't on any list I've noticed. I've got the last Intel Bios on it now. So I think that unless I order one of those $30 jobs from another site I can't seem to remember now I'm stuck with the manufacturer's releases.

The site I'm talking about makes their own custom Bios's for just about any board made. I just can't remember the name right now. It's late in the day. Even if I did remember I think that if the Wim bios site hasn't made one (which is just an updated manufacturer's bios) then I'd rather just use what I've got. I really don't need full 48LBA, USB 2.0 etc. on these old things.

I just was interested to find out why the bios said one thing but the system didn't seem to care, and uses the larger hard drives fine as far as I can tell.

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LLXX

LLXX

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Posted (edited)
Thank you for making it possible, LLXX! Great work! :yes: I've got one question though - I've read everything here but I'm only more confused about it: I'm using Win98SE 4.10.2222 A, my original .pdr was v.2222; should I use your 1.0 (2222) or 1.1 (2225) version? Is 2225 your newer version of the 2222 or is it your patch of Microsoft's newer 2225 version? Am I making some terrible mistake using the patched v.2225 instead of my old v.2222 .pdr ?

Thanks,

Max

If everything was fine with .2222, use the patched .2222. The newer versions are for systems that don't work with the original 2222 version.

The version numbers just refer to M$'s original file versions. The 2225 is a patched 2225, etc.

Edited by LLXX
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Petr

Petr

Posted
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Thanks Drugwash. I have tried over there. The SiS5598 SPAX-M board only uses HP Bios's and the Intel SE440BX isn't on any list I've noticed. I've got the last Intel Bios on it now. So I think that unless I order one of those $30 jobs from another site I can't seem to remember now I'm stuck with the manufacturer's releases.

The site I'm talking about makes their own custom Bios's for just about any board made. I just can't remember the name right now. It's late in the day. Even if I did remember I think that if the Wim bios site hasn't made one (which is just an updated manufacturer's bios) then I'd rather just use what I've got. I really don't need full 48LBA, USB 2.0 etc. on these old things.

I just was interested to find out why the bios said one thing but the system didn't seem to care, and uses the larger hard drives fine as far as I can tell.

There are several sites with patched Award BIOSes that had the 32 GiB and/or 64 GiB bug, for bug description see http://www.ryston.cz/petr/bios/award.html . And an example of such site is http://wims.rainbow-software.org/

AFAIK Intel uses customized AMI BIOSes, HP I don't know, so these patches are not for you.

Great information including the Bios Patcher is at http://rom.by/ - unfortunately the English version is not so updated.

Regarding the paid BIOS upgrades, maybe this is the site: http://www.unicore.com/biosupgrades/upgradenow.cfm

Petr

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Eck

Eck

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Yes that is the site for the paid bios's I was talking about. I'm just not sure I have a bios problem or not. These computers work with 80GB hard drives. It's just that the Bios page only shows up to 64 GB.

I really don't know if there's anything wrong or not. I do know that I've continued to use format from the 98SE Windows Startup floppy and that shows the wrong amount on larger drives yet formats with no problem's. When it's done it shows the correct amount. That's a cosmetic flaw acknowledged by Microsoft in a KB article.

I'm thinking what I'm seeing in these Bios's is the same type of thing. After all, if Windows winds up seeing the whole thing what could be wrong?

I have read most of the available descriptions of the various limits. So far nothing I've read has even mentioned that a Bios could show a smaller amount of space than is actually there, yet all tools used will see and use the whole thing.

It just seems a bit weird that no one has even mentioned encountering this. As far as I can tell, I can use up to the 137GB limit on 9x (with the standard ESDI driver) with a regular IDE hard drive on these computers even though the Bios will read 64GB.

Not that I would. I don't have a need for 137GB of space on that old of a computer. But 80GB is nice to put my mp3's on there. They take up about 18GB. And I like putting full encylopedia's too, so I don't need to insert cd's.

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  • 3 weeks later...
Marius '95

Marius '95

Posted
Posted

Thank you for making it possible, LLXX! Great work! :yes: I've got one question though - I've read everything here but I'm only more confused about it: I'm using Win98SE 4.10.2222 A, my original .pdr was v.2222; should I use your 1.0 (2222) or 1.1 (2225) version? Is 2225 your newer version of the 2222 or is it your patch of Microsoft's newer 2225 version? Am I making some terrible mistake using the patched v.2225 instead of my old v.2222 .pdr ?

Thanks,

Max

If everything was fine with .2222, use the patched .2222. The newer versions are for systems that don't work with the original 2222 version.

The version numbers just refer to M$'s original file versions. The 2225 is a patched 2225, etc.

How about a new driver? A complete replacement for Micro$oft file. Faster, smaller, written in assembler? I'm sure there are a lot of improvements to make, especially in speed.

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LLXX

LLXX

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That was my original goal, but it's a bit too much, and I couldn't figure out how to assemble the driver correctly. M$'s is already written in Asm, and although not maximally optimised, it's quite a bit better than some of the other drivers they've written...

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Petr

Petr

Posted
Posted (edited)

Most IDE drivers (if not all) show real name of the IDE HDD in the device manager, just the default Windows driver shows just TYPE47 or TYPE80. Would be possible to add this feature to this driver?

Petr

Edited by Petr
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RainyShadow

RainyShadow

Posted
Posted (edited)

For Award BIOS problems use BIOS Patcher on a BIOS update from your mobo manufacturer (never use a BIOS dump, it could ruin your system). Unfortunately the site is down from some time ago, here is the cache from the Internet archive.

I've uploaded the required files to rapidshare. Unzip all files to the same folder, put a BIOS image there, patch it with BP-4_23.EXE (use a DOS prompt and select the apporiate parameters), restart to clean DOS session and flash the patched rom-image to your BIOS. For flashing use the version of AwdFlash suggested by your mobo manufacturer.

These are the files:

http://rapidshare.de/files/33482674/BIOS_Patcher_v4.23.zip

http://rapidshare.de/files/33482675/cbrom_v2.07.zip

http://rapidshare.de/files/33482676/LHA_v2.55.zip

http://rapidshare.de/files/33482677/real_microcodes.zip

P.S.

There may be a newer version of the patcher. The 4.23 version was suggested for Award Bios v6.00 when i last visited the site and that's what i use on my systems.

UPDATE:

http://k6-2.narod.ru/ seems to be the new site. Still most links pointing to the old (non-working) domain.

Edited by RainyShadow
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nomatrix

nomatrix

Posted
Posted (edited)

I never had problems using 120 GB on Win 98 SE alias 4.00.2222 a.

2 months ago i bought a new 300 GB HDD. I copied all my AVI-stuff recorded from TV on it and got lost after storing more then 137 GB.

I was searching for drivers to use my new HDD. The shop assistant who sold this HDD told me i have to use Win XP or Linux to use this HDD.

I have to shout out a big thanks to everyone who developed this esdi_506.pdr. It works. I'm planning to buy a second 300 GB HDD soon. because of you ...

Win 98 rulez

Edited by nomatrix
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emanymmud

emanymmud

Posted
Posted

Hello all,

First of all, thanks for making this patch!

I have installed it on my win98se machine using http://www.mdgx.com/files/48BITLBA.EXE and will be testing it on a 250GB drive.

There seems to be a strange side-effect though:

Using a knoppix cd (to get around the 8GB limit of the standard win98se fdisk) I created two primary partitions, the first of close to 200GB, the second using the rest. With the standard ESDI_506.PDR windows recognised both correctly but of course messed up once data is written over the 128GB limit.

With the patched version there seems to be no data mutilation (so far) but the second partition shows up twice in the explorer. The first instance E: (which is the drive letter I'd expect) appears to be unformatted. The second instance gets G: (in between the SCSI cdrom drive F: and the IDE dvd-burner H:). That one is formatted correctly and shows the proper drive label.

I can format E: without breaking data on G:. Writing data to both E and G will mess things up of course.

Has anyone ever seen this effect before? Better still, is there a known solution?

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emanymmud

emanymmud

Posted
Posted (edited)
I think that's just your partition table messed up, or you used a different version of the PDR than the one you originally had.

Use the Free FDISK instead.

The setup I used indeed installed the patch for 4.10.2225. I went back to the one from 4.10.2222F.zip attached to the first post in this topic. No improvement there.

Ran Free FDISK, which showed the two primary partitions I had made (though claiming the drive is less than 9GB and claiming that both partitions each used 100% of the disk capacity).

I deleted the second partition, rebooted and then tried to create it again but free fdisk claimed that there was no space left on the drive.

Deleted teh first partition as well, still no luck creating new partitions of decent size with free fdisk (or other partition tools that should be able to do it under windows).

Can you tell me where I can get your latest/greatest version of the patch. The attachment from the first post might be outdated by now.

Thanx for any help you can give!

In the mean time I'm gonna check whether the patch I have now at least fixes the data corruption problem when using just a single 250GB partition.......to be continued :)

Edited by emanymmud
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