This is not entirely accurate.  On a 486 motherboard with no on-board IDE
it is possible to have a BIOS that can handle 2 gig drives, and an IDE
controller adapter that has no secondary channel, like the Promise 20230.
 You will have support in CMOS for Primary channel master and slave, and
the Secondary channel will be greyed out or simply inoperative.

The first thing is to read your manual for mention of LBA support.  If that
doesn't help go back into CMOS, and check standard setup.  The line for
Primary channel master should have settings for cylinders, tracks and heads
and if it has a mode, can you change it to LBA or LARGE?  If it doesn't,
exit this screen and look under BIOS Features setup for a line that says
LBA.
If you don't have support for LBA (and, on newer boards, LARGE) you are
stuck at 540 meg for BIOS.  You can get around that using On-track software
(comes with the disk) or buying a new controller card, or upgrading the
BIOS.

----------
From:   Donald Gaither-U52943[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Monday, February 23, 1998 10:04 AM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        Re: [PCBUILD] help!...with Phoenix Bios

HI,
        An easy way to check is to start the BIOS.  Go to where you
define the hard drives.  If your bios will accept four hard drives, it
will accept over 528.  If it only as spots for two, then it can't.   I
always use this method when having to upgrade a computer at work.

Donald Gaither

> ,
> I recently upgraded an older Packard Bell Multi-Media PC and I want to
> replace the 400Mg HD with a larger one but I don't know how large of a
> drive
> the bios will recognize.
>