Riddle me this, Batman! (Need an ISA IDE controller)

[yukichigai]

Okay, to get to the point I'm trying to get a Gateway 2000 system up and running. I bought a new hard drive for it but apparantly the existing onboard controller doesn't like hard drives larger than 504 megs. (When I ran fdisk that was what it swore the maximum drive size was) I tried creating individual 503 meg partitions on another computer but now the G2000 won't even boot from the hard drive. I'm guessing I need a new controller card, but I'm unsure what cards that old would be capable of handling the 2.5 gig HD I have. I found a few on eBay....

Number 1
Number 2
Number 3
A search with more

Anyway, need some advice here for my pet project.

P.S. There's also some kind of existing controller card with no ports in the computer. At first I thought the two cards went together but now I think the large portless card is actually an internal ISA HD of some sort. Not sure what to do with it exactly.

 

[earthman]

Any card like that should work, if its ISA and supports the size of drive you have. You may have to set the BIOS to recognize the add-in controller, if thats even possible on that machine. Some old systems like that used internal cards like ISA controllers, though they usually have atttachments for the cables.

 

[yukichigai]

Originally posted by: earthman
Any card like that should work, if its ISA and supports the size of drive you have.

You just answered my question by restating the question I asked.

 

[1966]

You could always use overlay software to have the use of all your hd.

go to the hd maker's website & download their overlay software.

 

[yukichigai]

Umm... what's overlay software exactly? I mean beyond "something that will make it work."

 

[1966]

Originally posted by: yukichigai
Umm... what's overlay software exactly? I mean beyond "something that will make it work."

who makes your hd ?

 

[Hyperfocal]

Overlay software....

Maxtor Maxblast

Western Digital Data lifeguard tools

Seagate diskwizard

Your drive should have come with a disk with the appropriate overlay software. EZdrive used to be the most common -- both WD and Maxtor used branded versions of EZdrive.

 

[Buk]

you can try GDISK. Faster than fdisk..............

 

[yukichigai]

It's a Seagate I think. Something Caviar anyway. Thanks for the help.

 

[jdogg707]

a caviar drive would be Western Digital

 

[selene]

u r in luck.. I bought a bios card for a friend and he gave it back and I think i may have it.. its a 8bit isa bios card no ide port on it but it'll allow ur pc to go over certain limit. Let me make sure i still have it and if I do ill send it to u

 

[selene]

Card found..

this is what I got

DTC bios card

and I have the gold star card on ebay also.

Was saving the dtc card for diagnostic but never used it..

u can have both if you wanted for 3.95 usps shipping.

 

[zephyrprime]

I don't think any ISA card was ever made that could support a drive as large as you are trying to use. The last computers that only had isa slots were old 386's. Back then the largest hard drives were ~300MB.

I can confirm the existance of internal IDE drives mounted on controller cards back then.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I think at least Promise made ISA cards that could handle up to 2 GB (2.1?), IIRC that was the next barrier after 504 and the BIOS limit on my 1995-era p1 motherboard. After 8 years my memory's a little hazy on this though

A 2.5 GB might have compatibility jumpers to force it down to the older spec, like some 40 GB drives have 32 GB jumpers. If so Google or WD might find the right jumpering.

(ed) d'oh I might be thinking of Promise VLB controllers though, from the 486 era when 520 MB drives appeared.

 

[selene]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime
I don't think any ISA card was ever made that could support a drive as large as you are trying to use. The last computers that only had isa slots were old 386's. Back then the largest hard drives were ~300MB.

I can confirm the existance of internal IDE drives mounted on controller cards back then.

I used the dtc card for a friend a 486 sx/25 with a 8gb drive. It was using the old AMI bios with the ugly colors. I'm 100% sure it'll work for drives under 8.4 gb and nothing over that ..

internal drive mounted on card were made by quantum started with 20 megger and double 40.. HardCard and HardCard II.. most of the imitation ones were made for tandy 1000s but these were mfm/rll drives, the ide ones were later made for like tandy 1000 rl/tl/sl type of machine

 

[yukichigai]

FYI this is a Gateway 2000, 486DX2/66. The on-card HD seems to have some manner of copy protection program on it, but I'm not sure whether it's just been installed there or if that's the point of the drive.

I'd like to get something like EZ Drive, but the problem is that the WD program I was linked to is larger than a floppy. Since I'm trying to install this on a drive the computer can't recognize ATM then this kind of defeats the entire exercise. Does anybody know where you can get EZ Drive?

 

[Ladybug7709]

putting 2.5GB's on a 486Dx2/66? you have might have better luck finding an old isa SCSI card and an old 50 pin SCSI 1.2 or 2.4GB drive. skip the whole IDE route all together. I think you also dont need overlay if you do this too.

 

[yukichigai]

Nevermind, found an old MaxBlast disk kicking around here. Got EZ-Bios installed and it's working great. I just wish I hadn't done a bunch of 504 meg partitions. (though I did find a few bad sectors I left unallocated)

 

[1966]

Originally posted by: yukichigai
Nevermind, found an old MaxBlast disk kicking around here. Got EZ-Bios installed and it's working great. I just wish I hadn't done a bunch of 504 meg partitions. (though I did find a few bad sectors I left unallocated)

That's exactly what I told you to do last week.