486 large HD support

[Chevyboy]

Does anyone know how you can tell if a 486 can support larger HD than.. say 512mb? I'm going to build a Linux box and I need a larger drive for it, but not sure if the computer will support larger drives or not. How to tell?

Thanks, all

 

[Nothinman]

Put it in and see?

As long as the IDE controller isn't b0rked Linux should see the right size of the hard disk even if the BIOS doesn't, for example I have a P133 that wouldn't see a 8G drive I have properly, but boot off the SCSI and Linux probes the IDE controller and gets the right size no problem.

You may need to boot off a flopppy, but it should work.

 

[Peter007]

The only real way to tell for sure is to find out the motherbaord maker,

I believe there is website out there that reveal the motherboard maker/model# by the SERIAL @ the bottom of the post.

My experience of modern 486 MB is that most don't go beyond recognized 512mb or 1G if your lucky

Lucy for you, the UDMA 66/100 controller is so cheap

 

[cirrus1]

Using some special utilities you might be able to get around 2gb out of it. But it's far from optimal

 

[Chevyboy]

Ok here's my problem I've got a 3.2gb Quantum Fireball HD and I installed it, but the 486 seems to only reconize it as 125mb. I bought the HD used and the guy I bought it from said that he formatted it, but I wanted to make sure. It was partitioned and it liiked like to me that the puter did see it as a 3.2gb HD. So I thought I would format it just to make sure it was clean. I couldn't formatt.... maybe wrong command... anyway I deleted the partition and then rebooted. After I rebooted that's when the puter saw the drive as 125mb. If I format in my main puter and then put it back in the 486 do you think puter will see it as 3.2gb then? Any input would help me out alot.


Thanks,
Chevyboy

 

[Nothinman]

If I format in my main puter and then put it back in the 486 do you think puter will see it as 3.2gb then? Any input would help me out alot.

No, the partition table is irrelevant to the drives geometry, the 486 BIOS can't handle that large a drive. If you can't find an updated BIOS, you can either load a drive overlay on it, which themselves cause problems usually, or boot from a different device like a floppy.