So...good news. Was able to get those areas that needed to be fixed/resoldered fixed, and I've now got AT keyboard and USB ports without any bodge. 😀

So, in process of getting everything up and running with Windows 98. Only issues I've run into so far is I can't seem to get the rig to see any more than 8 GB of the Compact Flash drive. I'm not sure if it's the BIOS or FDISK, but it is what it is...

Good to hear. It was quite the challenge.

Probably bios.
https://www.rom.by/articles/BP/index_english.htm

Well, unfortunately, our efforts might have come to an end. I ran BIOS Patcher on the base 810DTC.BIN BIOS and then tried to use that and it seems to have borked the machine. Basically get a few beeps at the beginning, then another few beeps and then nothing. No video, etc. Tried 2 different GPU's, and tried the onboard Video port. I tried that 'hold the minus key' and remove keyboard trick to have the BIOS run without the patcher, but still nothing.

It did sound like the floppy drive was initializing, so I did try to stick in a boot desk with an autoexec.bat that would run awdflash and /Py the original BIOS, but doesn't seem to be doing anything. I'll keep tinkering, but the board may be kaput.

Hmm.
Not good.
But the floppy is a good sign.
Try the award recovery process.

https://www.bios-mods.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=316

That worked to get back to the original BIOS, woot! Thanks. I'll keep that floppy handy. 😀

So, I tried to do the patch again, and once again, seem stuck at 8 GB in FDISK, even though BIOS is showing a larger drive. Here's some screens of the process. First three are the actual BIOS Patch Process and the the Flash to the new patched BIOS.

Then this next pair shows what the BIOS sees when I auto recognize the HDD (32GB CF), and the the BIOS boot screen after that.

So, it appears the BIOS is seeing a capacity of 32021MB on the drive and appeared to be working, but it's not. Few issues / questions are coming up.

1) I'm not sure the patcher is actually working. It did say it couldn't find that big HDD fix, and I'm not seeing that 'Rom.by' pop up message in the BIOS on boot I've seen other people get in videos.
2) Anytime I go to FDISK (using a Win98SE Boot Disk), it will not make a Primary DOS partition any larger than 8032MB.
3) If I try a larger CF drive, the largest I can get the BIOS to auto detect is 33824MB. So say a 64 GB Compact flash is only going up to 33GB

Any thoughts?

Windows 98 SE unable to write more than 8GB to hard drive?

http://am.net/lib/tools/Microsoft/Win98/263044USA8.EXE

Ah, sweet, I'll dig up that newer version of FDISK/FORMAT. Though I'm thinking 32 is going to be the largest I can go since it doesn't look like my BIOS will go much larger than that, even patched.

Try 2 partitions. Might work

Yeah, I might. Still trying to track down the updated FDISK/FORMAT. Most links I'm finding are pointing me to Archive.org (which is down...) or giving me the upgrade/patch from MS, which only extracts under a working W98 install. Whee... 😀

Try opening with winrar or 7zip.
They can usually read compressed exes

Yeah. I was able to grab it. Not sure why, but still only creating 8GB DOS partitions. Maybe it really is some weird limit in the BIOS, even though it's showing the full drive. I may try Gparted, but wondering if that'll cause other headaches.

Ah well, after a few hours messing with this, I've tried FDISK versions from the Win98SE Boot Disk, the 'Updated' Win98SE from the patch, WinME Boot Disk, as well trying to setup a partition in GParted, and the 'SuperFDisk' app. None of them will give me a partition beyond 8032 MB, even though the BIOS theoretically sees all 32GB on the Compact Flash. Guess I'll just have to live with an 8 GB partition on a 32 GB CF drive.

Honestly, back in the day I would have been ecstatic to have an 8 GB drive on my Win98 machine. 😀

You can always have a crack at it later.

Eg, dump current rom and compare to "unmodified" to check it is, and try out the /m option on the patcher

Yeah, I've tried that, and tried using both pre patched BIOS and patched BIOS. It's all good though. Tired of fighting with it for now and will probably just run with 8GB. If I run out of space, then I can always worry about it.

Appreciate all the help!

The fact that I have a 32GB Compact Flash drive, but can only seem to create an 8GB partition has been bugging me, so I've been messing around with things. Digging a bit more, I _think_ I might just have a board/BIOS that has LBA support so can display the correct info about the drive, but doesn't actually have the extended INT 13h code. I ran through the debug process over here and came back with a BX=000, and also tried using Ranish Partition Manager to see what I can dig up, and that is only showing 8GB useable on that drive.

Anyone else ran into that before? A board/BIOS that has 'LBA' but really doesn't have the INT 13h code to actually display / use anything beyond the 8GB barrier?

Found this?
https://www.wimsbios.com/biosupdates/azza/6A69MP8F#gsc.tab=0

First, is it newer than yours?

Yeah, I found that page back when I first started, but maybe I'm oblivious, but I didn't actually see anywhere to download that actual BIOS there. I did find some other pages for other boards that had a link to the BIOS listed on the page, but it seemed like that was more a reference without an actual .bin file. Am I missing a link or way to download it on that page?

That BIOS date listed is 'newer' than the 810DTC version (that's dated Jan 2001) I have on it now, but I don't know for certain what was originally on this board since it was that crazy modded BIOS on the board when I got it. I did find a workaround by using On Track DDO, so I can at least do that if I want to use the full drive.

https://web.archive.org/web/20030412022104/ww … .asp?Page=bios2

Found it.
Not sure if it's what you're looking for though.
Might need to post it on one of the biosmod forums
Or summon one of the lba guys here like @chkcpu Re: Any way to add large HDD support to 440BX BIOS?

myne wrote on 2024-10-15, 04:42:

https://web.archive.org/web/20030412022104/ww … .asp?Page=bios2

Found it.
Not sure if it's what you're looking for though.

Dang. Nice find. I couldn't actually find anything under Azza's own site before, and emails to them basically got the response that they didn't have anything anymore. Unfortunately, they only have the latest 810DTC (which is on RetroWeb and I have) and nothing for the DTA. I'll see what else I can dig up.

Hi MeatballB,

I’m a bit late to the party, but at your request I’m joining with my view on this 810DTC BIOS issue.

For starters, I have a hard time believing that this 8GB partition limit is a BIOS issue.
The Int 13h extensions, required to break the 8GB barrier, started to appear in mid 1997 and I’ve never seen an 1998 or later BIOS without it. In addition, the 32GB and 64GB limit bugs in the Award BIOS were fixed in September 1999, so your January 2001 BIOS should be free of those limitations and support IDE drives up to 128GiB.

I read that you already tried to detect the Int13h extensions via Debug commands, but I like you to try again with my EXTBIOS tool.
I wrote EXTBIOS way back in 2000 to show Int 13h extension details from the BIOS in plain english, and it is still available on my "The BIOS IDE Harddisk Limitations" page at:
http://www.steunebrink.info/bioslim.htm
This DOS tool comes with a TXT-file that explains its use.

EXTBIOS supports command-line switches and with the /V switch (verbose mode) you get extra details when the Int 13h extensions are detected.
Note that an IDE drive must be connected and setup in the BIOS, otherwise EXTBIOS won’t be able to show you anything.

Please run EXTBIOS with the non-patched BIOS and when you now see that the Int 13h extensions are supported, you know you don’t need the “BIOS Patcher” BIOS and the 8GB issue is caused by something else.

This “something else” can very well be the CF card you used. Do you have an HDD or SSD you can try to see if this solves the 8GB issue?

Just my 2 cents…
Cheers, Jan