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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: keropi on February 03, 2007, 01:24:29 AM
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I decided "sacrifice" a part of my 40GB amiga HD, as a dedicated goldengate partition... so I made DH4 , a 1.9GB partition. The goldengate bios-setup like thingie finds it at the correct size (1980MB) but fdisk of both MS-DOS 6.22 and PC-DOS 7.1 (IBM flavor) find it as 370MB and makes it a 370MB c: drive! installing dos there works, but where is the rest 1,6GB? I made it intentionally under 2GB so I don't pass the FAT16 2GB limit...
why is that? GoldenGate "BIOS" reports the correct size!
I even tried to split it to 2 partitions, c: and d: , 1GB and 980MB.... it appeard on FDISK as 15 nad 40? MB???! tottaly worng!
I am using OS3,9 with the default FFS, and a csppc, the goldengate works OK with it...
any info? :-? :-? :angry:
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I think the maximum amount you can use is 512 Mb. This is a limitation of all PC BIOSes that did not use the logical block addressing. On various actual PC machines, various BIOS updates raised this limit initially to 2 gb, then 8 then 36 and so on... but that's just symbolic of how the whole PC world works. You can't update your GG's BIOS so you will be stuck with 512.
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What about using a product like Ontrack Disk Manager? Although, it might be hard to find a copy these days.
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alenppc wrote:
...that's just symbolic of how the whole PC world works.
Yep, think small, be short sighted, and just fudge over the problems later on! Hence the whole 640Kb memory problems, IDE limits, fixed drive letters, etc, etc, etc... Junk! :-D
- Ali
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ah, yes now I remember....
I was confued with pentim based machines, where the initial BIOS limit was 36GB....
still, I made 2 partitions of 446MB each... they come up in fdisk as 392 and 364 mb .... :crazy: :crazy: :crazy:
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I created the partitions on the first 4GB of the amiga HD.
the max partition size visible from both GoldenGate and FDISK is ~450MB...
2 partitions (C and D) of 446MB each, work perfect :-D :-D :-D
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The usual size limitations imposed by bad BIOS/API code are: 512 MB, 8 GB, 128 GB. Some BIOSes fall over at different sizes.
A very good article on this, the causes and the fixes:
http://homepages.tesco.net./~J.deBoynePollard/FGA/os2-disc-and-volume-size-limits.html
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taking in ming that the GG's are old cards, the limits make sense....
anyway, I tested it, and it runs better than my real 386sx/20 , but still cannot reach 486sx perfomance, I tried with Wolfenstein3D , better than 386sx but still not smooth 60fps action... a real 486sx/25 plays it full frame.
also I am using it with the ATI VGA-Stereo/FX vga+sound ISA combo card, it works perfect! I have a fairly fast 1MB svga (ATI All-In-Wonder 28800 chipset) and a soundblaster/adlib compatible card that uses no drivers , works a treat! :-D
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alenppc wrote:
On various actual PC machines, various BIOS updates raised this limit initially to 2 gb, then 8 then 36 and so on... but that's just symbolic of how the whole PC world works.
Um, yeah... And the Amiga was never limited to <4.3GB drives, or 2MB of unexpandable chip mem, etc...
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;-) There is also a software utility called (IIRC) E-Z BIOS, which will substitute its own code, thus allowing larger hard drives to be mounted than your PC's BIOS would otherwise allow. My copy came bundled with my Western Digital hard drive, so their website's support section might have it available for download. I don't see why it couldn't work with emulators, too.