dls@wuee1.wustl.edu (Donald L. Snyder) (06/20/89)
I seek info about upgrading BIOS chips on an early model IBM-PC/AT so
two hard disks can be supported. Any experiences in doing this are of
interest. What chips? Where can they be obtained?
send replies to: dls@saturn.wustl.eduHoward.Spindel@busker.FIDONET.ORG (Howard Spindel) (06/22/89)
> From: dls@wuee1.wustl.edu (Donald L. Snyder) > Date: 20 Jun 89 13:52:20 GMT > Organization: Washington University, St. Louis, MO > Message-ID: <312@wuee1.wustl.edu> > Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc > > > I seek info about upgrading BIOS chips on an early model IBM-PC/AT so > two hard disks can be supported. Any experiences in doing this are of > interest. What chips? Where can they be obtained? I went round and round on this iss a while ago. The end result was that genuine IBM chips are not available. Someone let me try the chips from a newer model AT 339 but those don't work either - something in the chips detects that the machine is the wrong kind and the machine won't boot. The two choices available to you are to replace the BIOS with a clone BIOS (Phoenix, Award, etc.) or to get a program like SpeedStor or DiskManager to control your disks. I chose the SpeedStor solution and it works very well, especially since even if you got a BIOS upgrade there is no guarantee that the parameters of the hard disks you want to use would be stored in the BIOS tables. Speedstor allows you to manually enter number of cylinders, number of heads, etc. if necessary. Be also warned that early models of the AT used a disk controller (WD1002 I think) which does not support hard disks with more than 1024 cylinders. Since I bought a 1224 cylinder Maxtor drive I also had to swap my hard disk controller for the newer WD controller. With SpeedStor and my new controller my system is perfectly reliable. I run both the Maxtor AT-160 drive and a Seagate ST251-1 mounted internally. -- Howard Spindel - via FidoNet node 1:105/14 UUCP: ...!{uunet!oresoft, tektronix!reed}!busker!Howard.Spindel ARPA: Howard.Spindel@busker.FIDONET.ORG