On 9/1/1998 Howard Papke wrote:
>
>On the subject HD I have been able to get only 504 MB. . . .
>I have tried FDISK and FORMAT, both find only 504MB. Same results on
>486sx and 486dx.
>Specs: cyl 2340, hd 16, sect 63, 1.2gb
>Any suggestions??


Howard:

On PCs with older (non-enhanced) BIOS' there was no
support for Logical Block Addressing (LBA). Older PCs
without LBA support cannot recognize more than 1024
cylinders on a hard drive. LBA is a "hardware" translation
method which masks the actual physical parameters of
the drive and provides the operating system with a LBA
number which corresponds to a particular cylinder, head,
sector of a hard drive.

For me, the best fix is to upgrade the motherboard when
feasible. You not only upgrade the BIOS, but the chipset,
CPU options, I/O, bus expansion capability, controllers,
the bus, etc. as well. $40 (486-PCI) to $80 (Pentium
Socket 7) and up. Perhaps you can find a suitable board
in the donation bin.

My next choice would be the smart IDE controller card which
has translation capability. $40 to $80.

I would skip the BIOS upgrade option if there is a cost
involved (usually $35-$70). Sometimes you can get a flash
BIOS upgrade, but that form of BIOS postdates LBA so this
may not be a likely option. Better to get a new motherboard
or smart IDE card for the money. You can migrate the new
(or old) hardware to another machine. A paid BIOS upgrade
provides no residual value. If you go this route, verify the
new BIOS is matched specifically to your motherboard.

The software translation method is not preferred when using
Win95 or higher. Works fine with DOS but you have to be
careful with the disk utilities you use and make sure you
have boot floppies with the translation overlay on it so the
boot disk will recognize the hard drive.

Finally, I have used 1.2 GB hard drives as plain old 504 MB
drives at College. Not really too much of a waste since a
1.2 GB drive is only worth about $50 new these days. I
recall paying $200 for 512MB drives not too long ago. Since
you got the drive for free, there's no great loss due to under-
utilization.

HTH.

John Chin

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