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From: rap@la.excelan.com (Robert A. Pease)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Maximum hard disk capacity
Message-ID: <1991Apr4.230824.23481@novell.com>
Date: 6 Apr 91 09:19:38 GMT
Sender: news@novell.com (
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The News Manager)
Nntp-Posting-Host: la
Reply-To: rap@la.UUCP (Robert A. Pease)
Organization: Novell -- San Jose, Ca.
Date: Thu, 4 Apr 1991 23:08:24 GMT

I just looked at the BIOS reference and confirmed that the values for
cylinders, heads and sectors are limited to the following ranges;

Cylinders = 0 - 1023
Heads     = 0 - 15
Sectors   = 0 - 31

If I do my math right, this means that there are a total of 16384
sectors that the BIOS can address (1024 * 16 * 32 = 16384).  At 512 Kb
per sector, the maximum size HDU that the BIOS can get to is 262 Mb.

Now I know that you can put 300 Mb or 600 Mb hard disks on your
computer, but how does this work as far as addressability at the BIOS
level?
rap.

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Robert A. Pease, Novell Inc.
Internet: rap@novell.COM