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Setting up a CF card in a 5170

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Mark2000

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Feb 21, 2012
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I'm getting my IDE controller in today and I've got my 4GB CF Microdrive and an IDE<->CF adapter sitting here waiting for it. I successfully put AMI bios into the machine and ready to go. I'm just wondering how I should expect to set this up. I'm seeing that only around 500mb of the drive may ever be seen by the bios. Can I partition the drive to get all the space? Do I need to get software to trick the bios and set up the drive? Should I just be happy with 500mb (its an AT after all)?
 
No, the limitation is due to a BIOS interface issue (1024 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors). You might want to try anydrive. (search the forum for it).
 
Found it. Let me know if I'm right about this: The AMI BIOS will do type 47 which will probably allow 520mb. Anydrive seems to do the same thing, but with BIOS that don't allow type 47 (select largest available). As far as the documents tell me Anydrive only does up to 520mb also, so it may not be useful in this case.
 
Well, if you use ANYDRIVE, the BIOS interface is replaced at boot time, so the BIOS drive type setting doesn't matter. ISTR that you can even use type 1.
 
Oh, I understand. I'm just saying that the Bios type 47 will probably do the same job as Anydrive: only allowing access to 520mb of the 4GB drive.
 
DING-DING-DING-DING---Stone wins a brand new car!!

Mark2000, what OS are you planning to install on it? (Or what version of DOS) If it's just a version of DOS, maybe a smaller capacity CF card will do?
 
DOS lives on!! said:
Mark2000, what OS are you planning to install on it? (Or what version of DOS) If it's just a version of DOS, maybe a smaller capacity CF card will do?
Click to expand...

He could try SCO Xenix in that AT machine (why do I hear myself always talking about Xenix, btw?).
 
Dos Lives On, I'm going to install the highest MS DOS I seem to be able to, 6.22. I'm assuming 7.1 has some 386 only elements. Probably going to try WFW 3.1 at some point. Obviously I'm working with FAT16 only. I could use a smaller CF card, but I bought the 4GB Magicstor recommended by twolazy in the marketplace because it was $5 shipped. I have a 256mb CF card around here somewhere... But 520mb is still bigger.
 
Use that software I linked in a windows environment. It will format a bootable floppy (worked fine in win7 32-bit btw!) . Boot that to create partitions, install the overlay, etc. You will be able to use the entire 4gb then. ;)
 
Ok, I'm having a booting issue. The adapter I got should do fine booting a CF card and I marked the primary partition in fdisk as active. But even after installing DOS 6.22 when it's time to book the drive the computer just sits there. If I use a boot disk I can access the drive just fine, but I can't boot from it. No error messages at all.

I haven't been able to run disk manager because I can't seem to get myself in the proper windows environment. VMWare won't make the disk on my Mac because, apparently, OSX won't allow that level of interaction.
 
By installing DOS 6.22 you don't mean copying the files, right? :) At least not the system files. They must be properly installed by a valid method.
 
I used FDISK to partition, then I activated the partition and installed 6.22 off the bootable setup floppies. I even used sys to put the boot files on the drive when I was done. I couldn't make the DDO work as explained above. OSX won't let my VM of XP create it.

I'm wondering, since a lot of the drive is not being used if the boot sector is part of it and if it has something to do with the way the disk is set up in the bios (type 47 1024/16/63).
 
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