On 20 May 99, at 17:09, Kathy Gorman wrote:

> I just built a new computer with a 503+ and put in a six-month old Maxtor
> 5.7. I first fdisked and formatted the drive. While the BIOS (I used IDE HDD
> Auto Detection) seemed to recognize the drive, on the boot screen it
> reported it as 528. I thought this was odd, but Windows98 seemed to also see
> it correctly. Not until I installed Norton Utilities did I realize that
> there was a BIG problem.
>
> I ended up calling Maxtor and talked with a helpful tech you told me that
> the BIOS was not recognizing LBA (even though it said it did). By going to
> the BIOS  Standard CMOS Setup screen, and changing the drive to "auto" in
> the "type" and "mode" columns, it was correctly recognized at bootup (it
> does a drive recognizing bit) and all the problems are solved.
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: PCBUILD - Personal Computer Hardware discussion List
> > [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Mark Rode
> > Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 1999 2:10 PM
> >
> > I have a six month old Maxtor ULTRA EIDE drive installed on the primary of
> > a FIC 503 + ....a Mitsumi CD Burner is installed on the secondary as a
> > master with a Teac CD reader installed as a slave.
> >
> > At Boot the BIOS correctly shows the drive as CHS, UDMA 2, 5763MB.

  I have a VA-503+.  I have an 8.4GB Maxtor which I use with it; I have
previously used a 5GB Maxtor with it, but am now using a Seagate 8.4 GB as
the other hard drive.  I do not use the "Auto" settings for the hard drives
(only for the CD drives on the secondary channel).
  I HAVE NEVER HAD THIS PROBLEM.

  The thing that leaps out at me, besides the apparent failure of FDISK etc
to "recognize LBA", is Mark's use of the term "CHS"....
  "CHS" is similar in concept to LBA, but different in implementation
details.  I believe it's what you get if you tell the CMOS to recognize the
drives and pick the non-defualt "Large" option instead of the "LBA" option
offered as default.
  It's my theory that this is what each of you has done, and that Win 9x has
turned out not to consider CHS an acceptible substitute for LBA.  [Which
would, perhaps, count as a defect in Windows, or possibly in the VA-503+'s
implementation of CHS.  But my experience suggests that picking LBA -- or
Auto, which isn't what I use because it will probably slow the boot process
slightly -- is the trivial workaround.]


David G

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