# Old motherboard BIOS + 80 GB hard disk



## amitkr (Jan 17, 2005)

Hi,

I have a 550 MHz Pentium III computer , with a 40 GB hard drive . I have to replace the hard drive (80 GB or more), but I was wondering whether the motherboard bios will handle greater than 40 gb or not. 

Can this be resolved by doing a bios update....or somethin... 

BTW i don't know the manufacturer of the motherboard

Thanx


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## Valtelino (Sep 4, 2004)

*bios*



amitkr said:


> Hi,
> BTW i don't know the manufacturer of the motherboard
> Thanx


Then you're screwed, dude! LOL JK.
Can you tell us what comes up on the bios screen when you boot it up? 
If it's a clone / white box (not a brand name- Delll/IBM/Compaq/HP/etc) then there will be a big long series of letters & numbers at the bottom of the screen. This is the bios string. With that number, we can tell you what make & model the mainboard is. From there we can determine if there's a bios upgrade to support 80GB, and walk you thru the flash (if your bios version is earlier).
If you're having trouble getting the number before it goes to the next stage of post, the trick is to unplug the keyboard, then boot it up. It will halt with an error message. Write down the number/letter series, then TURN IT OFF before reconnecting keyboard.
(Now, I'm using this old-fashioned method because I'm assuming the old drive is dead)


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## amitkr (Jan 17, 2005)

Thanx for giving some hope.... 

Right now am away from home... will reach there after a couple of hours...

Will put the ami version no. and other things here tomorrow...

Thanx a lot


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## amitkr (Jan 17, 2005)

Hi,

I used bios wizard hxxp://www.unicore.com/bioswiz/index2.html

to get my BIOS details... I beleive this will get me some help

Here are the details



> BIOS CAPABILITIES TEST REPORT
> ===============================
> 
> Generated by: BIOS Wizard 2.10
> ...


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## amitkr (Jan 17, 2005)

Take a look at my motherboard

Tomato T810


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## Valtelino (Sep 4, 2004)

http://www.zida.com/eng/support/bios.htm

There appears to be a couple of versions of a T810. 
And, the other issue is- Theres bios upgrades for Version 1.xx & 2.xx, so you'll need to look on your POST screen (near the top, usually) for the current bios version.
My other MAJOR concern is, the bios chip looks like it's soldered to the mainboard, not in a socket. If the flash upgrade fails, it's a boat anchor. 
No way to recover it.


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## amitkr (Jan 17, 2005)

> My other MAJOR concern is, the bios chip looks like it's soldered to the mainboard, not in a socket. If the flash upgrade fails, it's a boat anchor.


No it's not soldered... it's in the socket....

Mine motherboard model is... T810B-S


No version no. required... this file is dated 17.11.2000 which is quite old... do you think it will take care of my problem..

Thanx a lot for ur time


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## MD_Willington (Jan 11, 2005)

True you can flash the bios, but you could also get an addon PCI IDE card, the IC's on the addon card will handle the sizing of the HDD.

MD


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## johnwill (Sep 26, 2002)

FYI, you should have no problem with disks up to 137gigs, late 1999 is when most of the BIOS writers upgraded to that level. Late 2002 is when LBA-48 was put into most versions to support disks larger than 137gigs.


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## amitkr (Jan 17, 2005)

Last night I borrowed my friends 80 GB hard disk and tried on my mobo...

In the bios setup I selected auto detect hard disks..

the 80 GB hard disk was connected as the secondary slave...when it's turn came the bios detected this..

Please see attached image

at this point in the setup nothing was responding... I mean i can't do nothing... though the num lock key and ctrl+alt+delete was responding... I did a ctrl+alt+delete to restart the computer...

There is no known 65 GB BIOS Barrier (IMO) .. I bios date is 10/10/00... Please help me with this...

Is there any tool like bios patcher(this is for award bios) for AMI BIOS...

Thanx

I wish I could find a link like this for AMI bios....

This link does mentions the 65535 MB barrier....



> http://www.ryston.cz/petr/bios/ga586hx_mod.html


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## johnwill (Sep 26, 2002)

That's pretty wierd. I've never seen a 65gig barrier either, except old versions of FDISK. I don't know what's going on here. Perhaps the path of least resistance is to pick up an IDE add-on controller, their BIOS will support full size drives.


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## amitkr (Jan 17, 2005)

johnwill said:


> That's pretty wierd. I've never seen a 65gig barrier either, except old versions of FDISK. I don't know what's going on here. Perhaps the path of least resistance is to pick up an IDE add-on controller, their BIOS will support full size drives.



It's not a barrier... I think it's an AMI bug...I beleive the data structure they use to store the drive size may be an unsigned integer which can hold a maximum value of 65535... thats why the bios is hanging when calculating the size of the hdd... 

Last night I din't tried to detect the hard disk in bios... ALL hdd options auto and i started the system... I booted using a 10 gb hard disk ,the 80 gb was connected as secondary.... system booted perfectly... and win xp detected all the partitions in that 80 gb hdd.... So no problem..

I just had to make sure that the bios can boot from a large hard disk...

Thanx for all ur time


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## johnwill (Sep 26, 2002)

All's well that ends well! :wave:


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