Gateway 80486-DX2/50 Revival

[TechGeek]

Originally Posted by Topcat

If you want to make a bigger drive behave on this, you can use an overlay; like Ontrack Disk Manager; with DOS or NT it would be fine up to 2gb @ the point of the install. With NT4, you could go even bigger but the install partition can't be any larger than 2gb. Once installed, you can partition the rest from within the OS. I've used this on stuff as far back as 386's that pretty much had zilch for HDD support.

Disk managers are a no-go. Multiple bugs in the system BIOS that combine to impose a hard 528MB limit.

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by TechGeek

Disk managers are a no-go. Multiple bugs in the system BIOS that combine to impose a hard 528MB limit.

You've done something wrong then.....

[stj]

do you have a network card with a socket for an eprom on it??
if you do then i can point you to an eprom that gives you an LBA48 ATA driver extension!!

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Originally Posted by TechGeek

Temporary hard disk. Due to BIOS bugs, it doesn't work properly in this system. In fact, no hard disk above 528MB will work with this system.

Sound Blaster Vibra/16 card.

haha, i like your antique 486 system already, because it has two components made in singapore, the wd hard disk and the creative sound blaster sound card. seems singapore was quite the IT manufacturing factory back during the day, then it all went away to other countries. same boat as u guys in the US but since this is not the vip room, i wont comment further.

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by ChaosLegionnaire

haha, i like your antique 486 system already, because it has two components made in singapore, the wd hard disk and the creative sound blaster sound card. seems singapore was quite the IT manufacturing factory back during the day, then it all went away to other countries. same boat as u guys in the US but since this is not the vip room, i wont comment further.

I've also seen a lot of tech that era with 'made in usa' on it as well; quite common then....but not now....but I'll leave it at that.

[eccerr0r]

The Weitek was not a 487 or a 486, that was something different. It's not a "performance penalty" rather it's simply slower due to the lower clock rate than the higher clocked 486DX2 or 486DX4.

[TechGeek]

Originally Posted by Topcat

You've done something wrong then.....

Nope, it's a pair of bugs in the system BIOS that interact in a bad way.

Bug #1- BIOS reverts hard disk configuration to auto-detection on boot, cold or warm.
Bug #2- BIOS tries to implement CHS translation for >528MB hard disks, but doesn't implement it fully and the end result is spectacular corruption of whatever you write to the disk, not to mention that whatever you read from the disk also ends up getting thoroughly trashed if you wrote it to the disk before transplanting it into the 486 system.

So either I'll need a sub-528MB hard disk (in the works) or an add-in BIOS that completely bypasses the (critically broken) INT13h routines when a >528MB hard disk is installed.

Originally Posted by stj

do you have a network card with a socket for an eprom on it??
if you do then i can point you to an eprom that gives you an LBA48 ATA driver extension!!

I do, but it's that ISA clone-of-a-clone card that causes DOS to hang up. I'll need an actually decent network card to make that happen.

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by TechGeek

Nope, it's a pair of bugs in the system BIOS that interact in a bad way.

Bug #1- BIOS reverts hard disk configuration to auto-detection on boot, cold or warm.
Bug #2- BIOS tries to implement CHS translation for >528MB hard disks, but doesn't implement it fully and the end result is spectacular corruption of whatever you write to the disk, not to mention that whatever you read from the disk also ends up getting thoroughly trashed if you wrote it to the disk before transplanting it into the 486 system.

So either I'll need a sub-528MB hard disk (in the works) or an add-in BIOS that completely bypasses the (critically broken) INT13h routines when a >528MB hard disk is installed.

That's not making a whole lot of sense in relation to eachother. Did you replace the batt with something/anything that will make it retain memory (bug1)?

Bug2 would be technically negated by bug1, and that sounds like more of an issue with the IO controller. Try a different one? If these are known bugs, probably a BIOS update out there somewhere for it....

I wouldn't waste any time trying to hunt down a sub-528mb HDD; especially one that's actually GOOD.... Just get a 512mb CF card with an IDE adapter....and done.

[TechGeek]

Originally Posted by Topcat

That's not making a whole lot of sense in relation to eachother. Did you replace the batt with something/anything that will make it retain memory (bug1)?

Bug2 would be technically negated by bug1, and that sounds like more of an issue with the IO controller. Try a different one? If these are known bugs, probably a BIOS update out there somewhere for it....

I wouldn't waste any time trying to hunt down a sub-528mb HDD; especially one that's actually GOOD.... Just get a 512mb CF card with an IDE adapter....and done.

Tried with external battery power, no change. The BIOS sees it as an IDE drive and forcibly resets it to auto-detection. Unfortunately, the BIOS also has halfway-implemented CHS translation. Ontrack Disk Manager actually fails to install due to the bugged BIOS, either with "Failed to install because of a severe error condition!" or a warning message saying that "This System's BIOS Does Not Fully Support Translation!"


There are newer BIOSes available, but I haven't found a flash utility that I feel comfortable running against it, and I don't have an (E)EPROM programmer.

[stj]

Originally Posted by TechGeek

I do, but it's that ISA clone-of-a-clone card that causes DOS to hang up. I'll need an actually decent network card to make that happen.

what dos?
did you try freedos?

what chip is on the card? i can probably find the correct driver

[TechGeek]

Originally Posted by stj

what dos?
did you try freedos?

what chip is on the card? i can probably find the correct driver

MS-DOS 7 (hangs when loading ASPI drivers with the card installed). Can't determine the chip installed on it. (It's got this label on it that I can't remove. I could try to find the mfg. by looking up the MAC address.)

[stj]

your supposed to install the chip driver first.

[Dan81]

Originally Posted by TechGeek

Tried with external battery power, no change. The BIOS sees it as an IDE drive and forcibly resets it to auto-detection. Unfortunately, the BIOS also has halfway-implemented CHS translation. Ontrack Disk Manager actually fails to install due to the bugged BIOS, either with "Failed to install because of a severe error condition!" or a warning message saying that "This System's BIOS Does Not Fully Support Translation!"


There are newer BIOSes available, but I haven't found a flash utility that I feel comfortable running against it, and I don't have an (E)EPROM programmer.

Tried Uniflash or Flashrom? I have used those on quite a number of mainboards (granted, most were 430VX/TX, VIA 580VPX and newer) and they usually work. Flashrom has quite a higher rate of good flashes - I've had cases where Uniflash didn't want to play nice.

[TechGeek]

Originally Posted by Dan81

Tried Uniflash or Flashrom? I have used those on quite a number of mainboards (granted, most were 430VX/TX, VIA 580VPX and newer) and they usually work. Flashrom has quite a higher rate of good flashes - I've had cases where Uniflash didn't want to play nice.

Uniflash said that their software is intended only for PCI-era chipsets. I have not looked at Flashrom yet.
EDIT: Flashrom doesn't appear to have any mention of ISA chipsets, so I'm ruling on the safe side (not compatible).

[eccerr0r]

ugh...can't read my old cd-r's anymore... sigh. bitrot...

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by eccerr0r

ugh...can't read my old cd-r's anymore... sigh. bitrot...

That's why about 15yrs ago I copied all their data to the NAS..... Many CDR's written back in the 90's packed with blissful things don't read anymore... I can reproduce them if I have to. Yea, I know....too little too late in your case....but I saw that coming (bitrot)!!

[stj]

i find that shit cdr's that modern drives cant read are often still readable on *decent*(SCSI) drives like Plextor and Toshiba, probably NEC too but i dont have any to try.

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by stj

i find that shit cdr's that modern drives cant read are often still readable on *decent*(SCSI) drives like Plextor and Toshiba, probably NEC too but i dont have any to try.

This is true to some degree, I have plenty of old world scsi plextor's here....but even those wouldn't read some of my old dark blue 650mb Verbatim 90's era CD-R's....but some would, but struggled. Glad I made the archive!

[TechGeek]

I've got an early-'00s Plextor IDE CD burner that works like a champ. I reserve it for systems that I trust to not blow everything attached to their power supply to high heaven.

[eccerr0r]

Yay was able to extract win95 from the failed CDRs and got a basic install on my 486dx4/75 on a 512M CF card. At 16MB RAM, don't think I'd want anything newer.

Now need to find drivers...