430VX chipset HDD probs

I'm having probs with installing a new HDD for a friend on an old board with intel 430VX chipset

HDD is a new 20Gb Maxtor and I'm pretty sure the chipset wont support drives that large. It will recognize the drive in the bios when set to auto but gives I/O error message when trying to access the drive. Is there any way to get around this? Manual settings possibly?

I have installed large drives on older socket 7 systems with no problems. The first thing I would do is make sure you have the most up to date BIOS for the board. I had an Asus P55t2p4 that I bought as new old stock on ebay. I was running it with a K6-2+, and it had the original BIOS from 1996! It called the CPU a 66 MHz,(it was running at 500) and it could only recognize 8 gigs of the 30 on the drive. Once I updated the BIOS, no problem, it recognized all 30 gigs.
Oh yeah, I forgot to ask, is it ATA 66 or 100? I know from experience that the 66's work fine with ATA 33 controllers, but I'm not sure about ATA 100's backwards compatability. Someone else may have to answer that one. Hey everyone, does ATA100 work with ATA33 without a controller card?

Its an Intel stock board unfortunately with no bios updates available

Also I've heard the K62+ has an unlocked multiplier. Do you know if this is correct?

No BIOS updates available? Bummer! Can you tell me what you mean by a "stock board"?. That is something I've never heard before. But by no means do I know it all!
The K6-2 series from 400 MHz on had CXT, which meant that they would recognize the clock multiplier setting of 2 on the board as 6. This allows them to run at 400 on many boards that have a 66MHz bus speed, and a board multiplier of 2 or 2.5. This was true of the K6-2+ as well. Whether you can change the multiplier on the older slower K6-2's,(333's etc) All I can say is I think so. But they aren't great overclockers, so you probably won't get too far.

repo man11 said:

No BIOS updates available? Bummer! Can you tell me what you mean by a "stock board"?. That is something I've never heard before. But by no means do I know it all!

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The mobo was manufactured by Intel for OEM system builders. generally a low cost solution with very little upgrade options. Commonly used in Dell, Gateway etc machince

repo man11 said:

The K6-2 series from 400 MHz on had CXT, which meant that they would recognize the clock multiplier setting of 2 on the board as 6. This allows them to run at 400 on many boards that have a 66MHz bus speed, and a board multiplier of 2 or 2.5. This was true of the K6-2+ as well. Whether you can change the multiplier on the older slower K6-2's,(333's etc) All I can say is I think so. But they aren't great overclockers, so you probably won't get too far.

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Thats pretty sweet...I didn't know that. I have an old SOYO board collecting dust that has settings up to 75FSB so I could probly OC one of those K62+ chips a bit for another SETI box

Oh, I thought that might be what you meant, but I wasn't sure.
Yes, that would be a good choice. You might check, some of those older boards also had an unofficial bus speed of 83 MHz, which would give you the capability of running it at 500.
I recently helped out a friend at work. He had a Packard Bell that ran at 200 MHz. And that is after I upgraded it from 90! I had an old AT case, and I was recently given a computer that had a P133 on a Biostar board. I upgraded the BIOS, and tried it out, and it ran a K6-2+ 475 I have at 450. It wouldn't boot up with the bus set to 83 MHz. I had him buy a K6-2+ 450 from Tiger Direct for $35.00, and I took it and his old computer, and built one good machine for him. One of the guys in my A+ certification class had a spare 8 gig drive he sold me for $20.00, and I passed this on to my friend. His old machine was a pizza box , so no room for a CD burner. Now he has room, about 8 times the harddrive space, and a much faster machine. He doesn't care about games, so it's perfect for him.