UDMA compatibility question

[Azzkiller]

I have an older IBM computer with the ALi M1542/M1543 system chipset. Its running a K62 266mhz processor and 128megs of ram. Im pretty sure the chipset supports UDMA 33. I want to put a 60 gig UDMA 100 hard disk in and use it as a fileserver. Will the chipset support this large of a disk? Thanks.

[Dissolved]

Originally posted by Azzkiller
I have an older IBM computer with the ALi M1542/M1543 system chipset. Its running a K62 266mhz processor and 128megs of ram. Im pretty sure the chipset supports UDMA 33. I want to put a 60 gig UDMA 100 hard disk in and use it as a fileserver. Will the chipset support this large of a disk? Thanks.

from ym knowage, it may... depending on the cpu/OS its running..

you could also get a ata100 card if teh chipset didnt support the drive.. hmmm

[It_The_Cow]

If you format the drive coorectly, it will support that much space. It will not, however, support ATA100. The performance of the drive will go down to ATA33

[Azzkiller]

Originally posted by It_The_Cow
If you format the drive coorectly, it will support that much space. It will not, however, support ATA100. The performance of the drive will go down to ATA33

What do you mean by formatting the drive correctly? Also, I am aware that the performance will be limited to ATA33. It shouldnt be too big of a deal. Also, if this wont work, im in some big trouble, because there is only one pci slot on this crappy computer, and it is reserved for the NIC.

[Bmxpunk86pl]

u might need to update ur bios though

[It_The_Cow]

Sorry fo the late response. If you use FDISK from a Win98 boot disk, you'll have the option to support or not support drives over 2gb. If you diable it, you'll format using FAT16, I think. If you enable it, you'll use FAT32. You may want to look into NTFS as well, if available

[eobard]

When I had my 20gig UDMA 100 in my K6-2 system (MVP3 chipset) it had no problem accessing the full 20gig but the drive ran slower, about half the speed actually, of my UDMA 33 4gig. I had to use Maxtor's drive configuration utilities to configure it to run at UDMA 33. Apparently before that the UDMA 100 and UDMA 33 timings were very incompatible.

Just something to keep in mind.

[repo man11]

I ran my 30 gig Maxtor (ATA66) with an Asus P55t2p4 board. This board dated from 1996, used EDO 72 pin simm's, no AGP. It worked great. When I first bought it, it was new old stock, and still had the original BIOS. This was only able to recognize 4 gigs. Once I updated the BIOS, it ran great, no problem at all.