Help me find a Mobo that fits my needs!

[madjap]

Okay....


I'm in need of putting together a cheap PC to use as an imaging station for TiVos and DirecTiVos. Since everything for this is run off of a Bootable CD and executed with linux, I don't need anything fast (CPU).

Can anyone recommend a mobo that I can do this with? I need it to see big IDE drives (>250GB). I figure if I can find a mobo that'll do this with a slower Athlon, Duron, Sempron, or celeron (they rhyme!), I'd be singin'!

Please, someone, give me some insight. Places like Newegg or ZZF don't list IDE drive size capability for the mobos, and neither do the manufacturers.


TIA


JAP

 

[Fern]

AFAIK the mobo doesn't really have any impact on the size of HDDs. It's your operating system.

Fern

 

[madjap]

Originally posted by: Fern
AFAIK the mobo doesn't really have any impact on the size of HDDs. It's your operating system.

Fern

Is that right? I thought the BIOS on the mobo has to be able so see the full size of the drive, then the OS has to also be able to see it.

You may be right.....I may be crazy!

Anyone want to chime in on this one?

 

[Slowlearner]

Yes, if your bios cant see the drives properly, its very doubtful your OS would. So step 1 make sure your bios can handle large drives (see notes on the bios version at manufacturer's website), and step 2 make sure your OS can handle large drives, e.g. SP1 took care of this for Windows XP, plus there are registry tweaks required sometimes. For Linux distros please check with their particular forums.

 

[aloser]

It's both, the mobo/bios AND os, that dictate your 'maximum' hard drive space. Win98 won't recognize anything over 36 gigs no matter what bios you have, and XP won't recognize anything overly large on an older motherboard with an 'outdated' bios. You can, however, get updates for many older motherboards here if you want to use an old computer you already have.

 

[Zap]

What you are needing is support for 48 bit LBA. Windows 2K with latest service pack can do it with a registry fix. Windows XP with service pack 1 or later supports it. Either can support it with a PCI add-in controller (because of the drivers). Don't know about Linux, but any distro based on fairly current core version should support it. If the motherboard was manufactured in the past three years, will probably support it. Any made in the past 2 years are pretty much guaranteed to support it.

 

[Fern]

Win98 won't recognize anything over 36 gigs no matter what bios you have

Sure it does. I've got 60gigs on myt HDD and 98se recognizes all of it fine,

 

[Zap]

I think aloser was thinking of Win95 prior to whichever OSR added FAT32.