BIOS UPGRADE For Award Modular v4.51.pg 1

[jdunderhill]

Im just installing a Maxtor Diamond Max 16 but the BIOS can only see 32 gigs of it!

It is a Pentium II system wiv a 350 Mhz Processor

- I wondered whether there is a specific Maxtor drive overlay program I could use, Maxblast doesn't have it!

- If not is there a BIOS upgrade available? details as follows...

BIOS ID : 2A69KM4AC
BIOS Date: 06/16/98
BIOS Signon: 06/16/98-i440bx-w977-2A69KM4AC-00
BIOS Type: Award Modular v4.51.pg
Super I/O: Winbond 977TF Rev 0 found at port 3F0H
OEM Signon: W6119MS V 2.1

Thanks alot for any help

Jamie

 

[SESaskDFC]

Howdy:

You should have gotten a MaxBlast utility cd with your hdd. You can use it to format the drive.. it should allow the entire hdd to be seen.

There is a problem though with the Win9x OS's being able to "see" anything over 38 GB's though (FAT32 limitation)..

Murray

 

[Snickle]

32GB is a common limit in BIOSes more than 2 years old. The BIOS upgrade usually comes from the motherboard manufacturer. Haven't heard of Win98 having a problem with large drives, have a 40GB on my wife's 1GHz Celeron computer.

If you can't get a BIOS flash upgrade from the motherboard manufacturer and don't want to change the board, try

http://www.unicore.com

for a new BIOS/CMOS module, may be cheaper than a new board.

MaxBlast, DataLifeguard, Ontrack, etc., have a drive overlay that 'lies' to the computer about what the drive actually is, in turn giving access to the full drive.

 

[jdunderhill]

I used an extra jumper to limit the size of the Hard Drive coz the BIOS couldn't even detect it but with the size reduction it can.

Im using it as the Master drive in the system, and plan to split it up into partitiions, I thought that by reducing the size of the HDD I could use drive overlay software.

Where could I get a flash upgrade?, then I could use FDISK to make partitiions etc

Thanks

 

[Snickle]

The BIOS flash upgrade usually comes from the manufacturer of the motherboard, mainly because they can modify it to fit their hardware. You'll have to check their website.

In your case it appears to be a MicroStar MS-6121 board with an Intel 440BX chipset for the Pentium II.

You should be able to find what you need here in the Slot 1 list:

http://www.msi.com.tw/program/support/bios/bos/spt_bos_list.php?kind=1&CHIP=Archives&ID=4

which leads to here:

http://www.msi.com.tw/program/support/bios/bos/spt_bos_detail.php?UID=248&NAME=MS-6121

There will be instructions on how to use the upgrade.

http://www.msi.com.tw/program/support/bios/bos/spt_bos_list.php

 

[jdunderhill]

Thanks for the reply, I will give that a go tommorow, I awarded you a star, although you were very close, it turned out to be a MS6119!, I got the flash program to update it

Thanks very much

Jamie

 

[ANFPS26]

Win98 does have problems with drives over 64MB. Here is the fix for it:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q263044

Please come back and let us know if your
problem is fixed and what fixed it!!

 

[ANFPS26]

Make that "Gigabyte"! Please come back and let us know if your
problem is fixed and what fixed it!!

 

[Snickle]

You're welcome, Jamie, glad to help.