[lug] big disk limitations

[Calvin Dodge]

On Thu, Oct 18, 2001 at 01:21:11PM -0600, Holshouser, David wrote:
> I've got a 16GB hdd on an old machine (p200).
> I had to flash the bios to get that seen.
> Has anyone seen limitations (like the 2gb and 8gb limitations of yester
> year) that would keep a 60gb or 100gb disk from working on this machine?

"Bless you - it all depends ..."

I've put 40 gig drives on a couple of computers - a P-133 system with a 430TX chipset, and a Celeron 366 system (Micronics C-300 - 440LX chipset).

The P-133 saw just the first 8 gigs.  No problem - I just make sure the boot partition fit within that part of the drive, and the kernel saw the whole thing.

Meanwhile - no matter what I told the BIOS about the drive's size - the C-300 would simply hang at the disk recognition stage of the second BIOS boot screen.  The only way I could get it to work was to tell the BIOS that NO drives were attached, and to start the system from a boot floppy.

I saw the same behavior with a Tyan S1592 (Via MP3, IIRC) motherboard.

Meanwhile, a couple of 4-year-old boards (FIC and Biostar - CPUs around 166 MHz) couldn't see 10 gig drives at all - after flashing the BIOS, they could see the first 8 gigs.

So ... YMMV. If I was a betting man, I'd bet that your P200 will behave like our P-133 - it will see enough of the drive for booting purposes.

At the worst, you may have to boot from the floppy drive. But once the kernel is in charge, you should be set for up to a 130 gig (or so) drive.

Calvin

-- 
Calvin Dodge
Certified Linux Bigot (tm)
http://www.caldodge.fpcc.net