OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
I agree on the in theory part. Unfortunately, there were all kinds of exciting issues that prevented that theory from becoming reality at times.
1. Many BIOS's will lock the computer solid if a drive larger than the supported capacity is used. This scenario would require either a BIOS update or a controller card to facilitate the use of the new drive.
2. The drive itself must support the Int13 extension in order to be accessed in this manner.
3. There were various hacks and workarounds for drive size limitations due to the transition in accessing modes that took place through the mid to late 90's. One of these was a Phoenix BIOS issue.
4. The situation you are getting at with your 160GB/137GB scenario is precisely the point I'm trying to make. There is a transition that does/should take place. If the same CD with the same brand and capacity of drive shows differently depending on the motherboard/controller it is used upon, one would assume that it has to be a BIOS or controller issue.
Part of the issue with large drive support; especially drives above 137GB WAS BIOS support. Maxtor's solution at the time was to ship the drives for a while with PCI controller cards!
5. Due to some of the "hacks" used by BIOS manufacturers, coupled with drives during the 8GB "era", the possibility of getting a "large" drive coupled with a motherboard with a goofy BIOS that caused the drive to present itself to the OS as having only 240 heads for example (this was a real issue, and the drive would show as being a bit smaller than 8GB) could very easily lend itself to being unreadable when the drive was accessed in the proper manner.
6. Then throw things like drive overlay software into the mix and you have a recipe for some very interesting scenarios
Think for example, that you have an SiS controller that is being accessed via the Generic IDE driver in Windows 95 or Windows 98. The end user or the builder never bothered to install the actual drivers for the controller, so it never operated in 32-bit protected mode. This means that all calls were put through the BIOS.
Now, say the drive geometry in the BIOS was set to something other than LBA, LARGE for example. And the drive in question does not support the INT13 extensions.
Pulling that drive and putting it in a computer which then accesses the drive via LBA by default results in a drive with an unreadable, or corrupt filesystem. And since the drive does not support the extensions, it has to be accessed through the BIOS.
That is likely the scenario I've encountered. It is not common. But it has happened a few times and the fix has always been to set the new system to LARGE in the BIOS. Which then makes the drive readable by the OS.
I have not had to deal with this in quite some time, but the occurrence did happen enough times to leave a lasting memory.
1. Many BIOS's will lock the computer solid if a drive larger than the supported capacity is used. This scenario would require either a BIOS update or a controller card to facilitate the use of the new drive.
2. The drive itself must support the Int13 extension in order to be accessed in this manner.
3. There were various hacks and workarounds for drive size limitations due to the transition in accessing modes that took place through the mid to late 90's. One of these was a Phoenix BIOS issue.
4. The situation you are getting at with your 160GB/137GB scenario is precisely the point I'm trying to make. There is a transition that does/should take place. If the same CD with the same brand and capacity of drive shows differently depending on the motherboard/controller it is used upon, one would assume that it has to be a BIOS or controller issue.
Part of the issue with large drive support; especially drives above 137GB WAS BIOS support. Maxtor's solution at the time was to ship the drives for a while with PCI controller cards!
5. Due to some of the "hacks" used by BIOS manufacturers, coupled with drives during the 8GB "era", the possibility of getting a "large" drive coupled with a motherboard with a goofy BIOS that caused the drive to present itself to the OS as having only 240 heads for example (this was a real issue, and the drive would show as being a bit smaller than 8GB) could very easily lend itself to being unreadable when the drive was accessed in the proper manner.
6. Then throw things like drive overlay software into the mix and you have a recipe for some very interesting scenarios
Think for example, that you have an SiS controller that is being accessed via the Generic IDE driver in Windows 95 or Windows 98. The end user or the builder never bothered to install the actual drivers for the controller, so it never operated in 32-bit protected mode. This means that all calls were put through the BIOS.
Now, say the drive geometry in the BIOS was set to something other than LBA, LARGE for example. And the drive in question does not support the INT13 extensions.
Pulling that drive and putting it in a computer which then accesses the drive via LBA by default results in a drive with an unreadable, or corrupt filesystem. And since the drive does not support the extensions, it has to be accessed through the BIOS.
That is likely the scenario I've encountered. It is not common. But it has happened a few times and the fix has always been to set the new system to LARGE in the BIOS. Which then makes the drive readable by the OS.
I have not had to deal with this in quite some time, but the occurrence did happen enough times to leave a lasting memory.
