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Date:	Wed, 20 Feb 2002 00:22:02 PST7
From:	"Steven Levine" <steve53@earthlink.net >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: Any limitation on hard drive size ?

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In <3C7326AE.2C0@peterskye.com>, on 02/19/02
at 08:32 PM, Peter Skye said:

>Steven, buddy, good pal, PC and OS/2 guru, lunchmate, recipient of the
>Duckhunter Of The Year Award . . .

This is usually an indication that communication between Skye and Levine
is on the ropes.

>This thread is about booting into the first 8 GB and then having access
>to the entire drive after the drivers finally load.

That's a rather indirect paraphase of:

-- Are there any drive size limitations for machines running Warp 4 FP
10? I'm using the latest idedasd.exe plus daniS506.add.

-- Any considerations for the motherboard connection or BIOS?

which was your original question.

>You said the booter-upper needs to use the same drive geometry that the
>motherboard BIOS uses. I said I used LBA. You said that wasn't
>sufficient because LBA wasn't used by my W4FP10.

I said LBA wasn't used during booting.

>So what? While the booter-upper is running, it uses the motherboard BIOS
>for disk access and thus couldn't care less what the drive "geometry" is
>-- it just asks for data and the BIOS supplies it.

It does too care. Think about how file locations are stored in directory
entries and then consider the transformation of this number into something
the BIOS understands.

>After the booter-upper completes, there's an OS/2 driver running -- and I
>already said that I'm using the latest idedasd.exe collection (plus
>DANIS506.ADD).

So?

>And then you say "but then there's auto mode". Auto mode is simply "auto
>detection", at least over here. I don't have to use it, but if I tell my
>motherboard BIOS to use "AUTO" then it runs some kinda check on the drive
>and figures out what my settings would be if I did them manually.

Depends on the drive and BIOS. Do you recall John's box that required
manual setup because auto gave the wrong answers.

>Whazzat got to do with my drivers? The info passed by the motherboard
>BIOS to the OS (any OS) in some kinda control block in low memory is

If you say so.

>And your statement "As long as all the values agree" still has me
>confused. Before the Warp 4 drivers load there's only _one_ set of
>values, those in the motherboard BIOS. After the drivers load we then

and the values in the boot records.

>expect to use the entire drive (160 GB or whatever it is) and the age of
>the BIOS shouldn't make any difference at all since we aren't using the

Sure it does. Read what Daniela has to say.

>IBMINT13.I13 driver (which I _think_ uses the motherboard BIOS for disk
>access so, if used, you have the 8 GB restriction).

I suspect you mean the 1K cylinder limitation which can be much less that
8GB.

>So, if my W4FP10+idedasd+danis506 does _not_ use the LBA "geometry" which

What you have uses both LBA and CHS addressing. Because it used the right
thing at the right time, you can access the full capacity of your drives.
To my way of thinking there is no such thing as LBA "geometry."

>What exactly is the disk access capability in the WSeB-MCP-eCS version of

These versions can use the Int13 extensions so they can boot OS/2 from
anywhere on the drive as long as the BIOS supports the Int13 extensions.

BTW, is mistyped. It's OS2BOOT not OSLDR. OS2BOOT has the low-level disk
IO routines that implement the HPFS mini-IFS.

>to learn what size drives I can use (see the superunambiguous title of

That was answered long ago. Refer back to the quote from Daniela's
readme.

>I know that. The booter-upper uses the motherboard BIOS, thus it can't
>load anything that's past the 8 GB point.

Wrong. Your booter upper can't. Anyone running a newish BIOS and
WSeB/MCP/eCS can.

>In other words, why won't an "old" BIOS work with big drives since,
>except for booting, the BIOS isn't used?

Not all, just some, won't work. YMMV and you will find out when you
install the drive.

>That's SCSI -- still a viable option and not too BIOS-dependent. My ESDI
>controller, on the other hand, requires (as I recall) a 45-minute setup
>scan of the 150 MB drive to verify sector integrity and write the sector
>addresses.

The Segate ST-02 adapter had a BIOS entry to do a low-level format it too
took a considerable amount of time. The interleave was a setup option.

>Maybe if I go through my old boxes I can find an MFM drive. :)))

That should make an even better doorstop. :-)

Steven

--
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"Steven Levine" MR2/ICE 2.31a #10183 Warp4/FP15/14.085_W4
www.scoug.com irc.webbnet.org #scoug (Wed 7pm PST)
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