486 with big drive problem

[chipdip]

I was recently asked to configure a 486 for stability and internet use. When brought to me this machine was running win95 with lots of stuff they did not want.

A 486dx4-120 with 32 megs of ram and a 1.5 gig Fujitsu drive. Before formatting and installing 98 I noted the hardware and other particulars that would need to be identified in the new installation if not detected automatically such as modem, sound, video etc.

I suspected this drive would be supported with some form of bios software to overcome the 540 meg 486 limitation. I tried to locate the software title that was in use when the machine was running 95 but did not find any. I decided to ghost and use my copy of ez-bios if necessary.

I ghosted his drive to a slave that would be used to hold the image file and the drive ghosting went well. I figured I could reinstate the image file if the new install went wrong for any reason.

I formatted the C drive and then tried to test the ghost file by reinstating the original installation but this failed because if imagefile corruption. I guess the numerical gymnastics played by the bios emulator did not go over well with the ghosting procedure.

Now that my briges were completely burned I had to succeed
the new installation. I am now plagued by application errors no matter what os I try to install and whether I use EZ-bios or enable large disk support in fdisk. I have tried installing to C drive using different CD-roms, Hard Drives but still the errors pop-up that prevent the operation.

I took the Fujitsu drive over to my pentium and started the install there right up to the point where windows is about to restart and complete the configuration. I took the Fujitsu back to the 486 to let it finish the install using that machines harware as reference for the final stages.

It seems to be working but slower than I have seen normally on 486 100 mhz and I don't trust the stability of this latest setup.

My basic question is what was the bio emulator that was running when the machine was originally brought to me and why doesn't ez-bios work here. I have not modified the cmos settings except when giving new drive parameters ( this computer does not detect hard drives automatically.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[DrDemento]

I have seen this before in older systems. What IDE controller is in use. I have recently worked on an Pentium class Acer with a No name controller in it. I had to track down the software from the IDE controllers web site to make it see a larger than 540MB drive. If you can let me know what controller, I may be able to tell you what bios emulator to use.

 

[chipdip]

I have the controller in front of me and it is a vesa local bus type periferal with dual IDE output ( pri and sec ). It has close to 20 various jumpers and the 3-169pin chips are labeled " Winbond W83759AF, W83787F, W83758F ".

PTI-265W/260W V0 and FCC ID KDDPTI265W

So far I have used EZ-Drive, Seagate Discwizard, and Ontrack's Diskgo. All of them recognize and format the drive but they all give the same warning about a third party software redirecting the MBR before starting to format. Even though the format utilities report that the drive is ready to boot, it does not. The computer boots immediately to a floppy prompt without hesitating a moment to look for a connected drive. The CMOS has the correct drive parameters.

Thank-you very much DRDemento for the fast assistance, it is very important that I get this computer back up and running. The software you are suggesting was probably part of the old configuration that I wiped out.

 

[NZWar]

You will not be able to use the Seagate disk manager on a fujistu drive. Does the bios have an lba support in it? on some 486's this is actually an option andf therefore the computer does actually support the 1.5gb natively. Try using the fujistu boot manager

 

[chipdip]

I believe there is a LBA enabled in this computer but I have not altered these bios settings from when everything was originally in working order. Just the hard drive params.

I know this Fujitsu drive is healthy because I set it to master on my pentium class computer and successfully installed windows and it was humming along nicely.

Even the keyboard of this 486 started blinking all it's LEDs
signalling an electronic malfunction. The replacement keyboard is working well.

Thanks NZWar, I will try it.

 

[NZWar]

Hopefully the fujitsu drive manager works. Technically you do not need it if the bios supports LBA.