Mail Archives: opendos/2005/06/30/23:56:38
Joe da Silva wrote:
> I'm sure I've seen one or two tools that can check if
> you have an Extended Int 13h BIOS, though I can't recall
> which or where at the present. . . .
I'm not yet able to confirm this about my BIOS in particular,
but I've located Intel's BIOS updates for my machine which I
expect will fix the problem.
Meanwhile Seagate confirms what Joe has said:
BIOS Limitations
http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/bioslmt.html
and also that Ontrack's Dynamic Drive Overlay (DDO) could get
around the problem:
Install hard drive with Disk Manager® from Ontrack Data Recovery
http://www.ontrack.com/diskmanager/comparison.asp
> Well, I've no idea what an "NT BIOS" is supposed to be,
> sounds like some marketing BS to me.
It was one of the lot of 600 leftover Intel AltServer
Platforms in NEC's warehouse, when they changed their
ProServer product line. It came without an OS and I think the
NT compatible BIOS comment was more a suggestion of it's
suitablity as a desktop machine. The BIOS date of 10/31/95
would be more relevant to the presence of Extended Int 13h.
> Well, AFAIK, the above is the situation for DOS, however
> for NT 4+, Linux, and the like, the BIOS is only used
> to start the O/S, so the boot stuff may still need to be
> limited to the first 8G. After loading, these O/S use
> their own capabilities to access the hardware directly,
> so the BIOS capabilities, including any 8G limit, become
> irrelevant. The tricky bit is ensuring the boot stuff
> is accessible via the BIOS to "start the ball rolling".
With DOS questions resolved, I expect I'll try one of the "and
the like" OSes. Thanks for pointing in the right direction.
-- Gary
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