Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!tektronix!tekcrl!tekgvs!keithe
From: keithe@tekgvs.TEK.COM (Keith Ericson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: big disks on PC AT clones
Message-ID: <3402@tekgvs.TEK.COM>
Date: 1 May 88 01:00:29 GMT
References: <21346@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Reply-To: keithe@tekgvs.UUCP (Keith Ericson)
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton,  OR.
Lines: 46

In article <21346@amdcad.AMD.COM> phil@amdcad.AMD.COM (Phil Ngai) writes:
>
>I am interested in the subject of how one can use big disks on PC AT
>clones. In particular there is the Seagate 4096, 80 megabyte, 28 ms,
>available for $699. How will my computer handle it? Does the setup
>command know about its drive type? What do programs like Disk Manager,
>Golden Bow V/Feature, and Speed Stor do for me? Do I need a new BIOS
>ROM chip(s)? Can I have partitions bigger than 32 Mb? 
>
Beginning with MS-DOS 3.3 (and I assume PC-DOS 3.3) you no longer need
these adjunct disk driver routines if the disk you're adding is in the
ROM BIOS disk table. Fdisk constructs one bootable, Normal DOS partition
and one Extended DOS partion. The Extended DOS partition is then divided
(by fdisk) into as many logical drives as you want. (My 284 Mbyte CDC
Wren IV contains drives C: through K:.  C: through J: are each 33+
Megabytes; K: is around 17 Megabytes.)

If your drive is not in the table then you'll need one of the programs
like Disk Manager (Ontrack), SpeedStore (?), or VFeature Deluxe (Golden
Bow Systems). I know more about Disk Manager (DM) and VFeature Deluxe
(VFD) than Speedstore.

The worst problem is when there is no entry in the table that matches
the number of heads in your disk. DM handles this by setting up a small
C: partition - just large enough for the system files, config.sys,
command.com, autoexec.bat, and the disk driver, dmdrvr.bin.  VFD handles
this case better and does not require using a partition for this.

If there is an entry that matches the number of heads you're in better
shape. Both DM and VFD are OK.

Both VFD and SpeedStore have the capability of making your large disk into a
single (large) partition. VFD can even span one partition over multiple disk
drives. (Why?)

VFD has this lousy copy protection, however, that I absolutely detest. I
play around with far too many computers, drives, users, offices,
locations, whatever, to be stuck with worrying about uninstalling some
software before I take the machine apart. I've quit using - and
recommending - VFD soley because of this difficulty.

The copies of DM I've received have come with the drives - we buy almost
exclusively from Eltech Research in Milpitas CA. They have always
shipped DM with the 40-Megabyte-and-over drives.

keith (more opinions available; I'm just too tired to keep typing) ericson