Is there a maximum hardrive size for a 486sx? In Bios, in w95?

[robbert]

Is there a maximum hardrive size for a 486sx? In Bios, in w95?
540 MB's????

newbie here

I remember something about 8.4 gig on a w98 machine in the older machines

Thanks

 

[LXi]

8.4 limit on Win95 or older machines. And a 2GB file size limit on FAT16. I could be wrong.

 

[eraser]

Win95 will not see a drive partition larger than 2.0 gb. Some older machines bios's will not recognize drives larger than 540MB. You can install a simple program that comes with the drive to fool the bios into seeing the full size of the drive. If you did not get this software go to the manufactures website and try to find this software for your specific drive model. This software is a bios translating software. Different companies call it different things.

If you have a 10 gig dirve and going to install win95 then the only way that I know of is to create five 2 gig partitions using the FDISK command. Windows95, at least the retail version used the fat16 file system so it will not see a partition larger than 2 gig.

Eraser.

 

[Prodigy^]

just so you know, Windows95 OSR2 supports larger drives, I used all of a 10 Gb drive with no problems. Just make sure you've got the latest BIOS update for your motherboard (check with prod.'s website)

 

[PowerJoe]

No no no

BIOS
Most 486 BIOSs are limited to ~500MB. Some can do more - depends on the BIOS. Most Pentium BIOSs are limiteg to ~8GB. Try FDISKing your drive - the size it reports is the size the BIOS sees. If your drive is not fully supported, use a drive overlay program (EZ-Drive for WD, Disk Manager for Seagate, MaxBlast for Maxtor...) - can be downloaded from HD mfg. site.

Windows
Windows 95 original only supports FAT16, which limits you to 2GB per partition. IF you have it and a 10GB HD, you'll have to make 5 partition. Win95OSR2 and Win98 can also do FAT32, whose limitation is much higher (higher that any current HD's size), so you partition any way you want.

-PJ

 

[diablonhn]

I think that if you add in a controller card in one of those isa slots, then you would be able to bypass the bios limitations....