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OS2 hard drive size issues again......

Started by millese, 2009.12.30, 22:19:26

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millese

A year ago I was able to fix my equipment with the help of all the amazing people that contribute to this forum. Well, I am back again with a very similar issue. I had another drive fail this time it was system that was running 1.6G hard drives not the 4-6 range I was dealing with last time. When I put my 40G drive in the the DANIS driver I got a hard drive error and couldn't even get to the point where the OS2 would take over to use the driver. The last time you all helped me my bios recognized the HD as a 40G. This time no matter what size I put in anything above 4.1G registers as 4.1G. I think this older computer may have some legacy issues that are holding me up. Does anyone know what I can do here. The computer is a 7587 IBM industrial computer running SUREPATH bios. The onlly thing I see when the bios page comes up is "IBM 586 single board computer version 1.36, and a surepath logo in the bottom right. In the bios itself there is a date of 8/26/87. Any help would be much appreciated.

ivan

Two things:  Is it possible to upgrade the bios? Second, what does the bios setup screen show for the hard drive?

I have one old machine in which I had to set the C,H,S values for the hard drive - maybe you will have to do the same.

millese

I tried to contact IBM and Google and Yahoo searched all day for a bios upgrade for this system with no luck. If you know of any resources for that, I would much appreciate that.

The bios is very basic under Devices and ports

Radek

This look like a too old iron. The comp seems to recognize only the LBA mode (the 4 GB limit). Int 13X seems to be completely missing. Guessing from the BIOS date, the HD management can be some old fashioned one, as it was on XT's and AT's. Moreover, because it is a branded model with an exotic BIOS, there can be problems with special port usage and special protocols used inside the comp. I fear you will expreience hard times with this comp.

DANIS driver expects a more recent standard. It seems not to be able to communicate your HD at all. If you can attach 2 HDs to the comp, then try the following:

(1) Master: some small drive operable by the comp.
(2) Slave: the 40 GB drive.

Try to start the installation and see what will say FDISK. Possible results:

(1) Immediate crash again: The comp uses some internal protocol for communicating with HD, which is completely inconsistent with the HD driver. The end, most likely.
(2) FDISK shows only the master but not the slave. There is a small chance to do something by experimenting with the HD driver parameters. Not a big chance.
(3) FDISK shows both disks. Not expected :D but if you'll be able to partition and format the big disk then you can always use the small disk for the operating system (2 GB are more than enough for eCS) and the big disk for your data.

millese

Thanks, I'll give this a try and post back.

millese

#1 it is....
As soon as I hook up the larger drive as a slave the system kacks and says it cant read disk 2, then it also is unable to see the os2 partition in the boot manager as well, only the dos 7 partition shows up. At the dos prompt I have only C: the dos partition and D: the Os2 partition nothing from the second disk. In the bios it shows the 1.6G drive and shows the 40 gig as 4.1G. Is something I can overcome by hooking the larger drive up as a slave on a machine that does not have this bios limitation and partitioning the drive into sub 2 gig partitions or is this cylinders and heads kind of issue?

ivan

There is nothing you can do.  It is a cylinder, heads problem and unless you can update the bios you will only be able to use 4 GB drive (LBA mode as Radek said).

Even if you managed to get another bios (something like free bios springs to mind) you might still be up against a hardware problem in that the controller chip set is limited in what it can do.

There might be another way to try and use a larger hard disk - that is to use a plug in controller card - note I said MIGHT work.  It equally might not work, you have very old iron there.

Radek

It is rather #2. The message at startup tells you that your BIOS is unusable as far as the big HD is concerned. But you can still start from the small one. Therefore, you must install on the small disk and use the big one as your data disk - well, if you'll be able to put the big HD in work at all.

That's because you have to start from somewhere. Daniela's driver must be read in from somewhere first and then it can take over control of your HDs. Your operating system must be on a HD operable by your comp. It is enough if your BIOS is able to read sectors on your HD physically, the BIOS need not understand formatting.

Therefore, the small HD must be a master and the big one must be a slave. You will always get the error message "cannot operate hard disc 2" when you power up your comp but ignore it.

Now the HD driver. A long way is ahead you and it can end with a complete fiasco  ;D

You will need to experiment with the HD driver parameters. The parameters can be set up when the installation starts. The parameters will be something like

/A:0 /U:0 /LBA /A:0 /U:1 /!BIOS [other params]

supposing that the small HD is operated in LBA mode. The big one must not use BIOS for operating, the driver must do everything itself. It can. Therefore:

(1) print out the DANIS driver readme and read it carefully.
(2) repeat until losing all hope
- start eCS installation from the CD, select custom installation
- set HD driver params
- select custom install
- see whether the FDISK is able to read the big HD

Once you succeed, install on the small HD.