Got a Super Socket 7 motherboard, HDD not detected

Windows7User2010

Hello there, everyone.
I recently got an Abit AB-TX5 Super Socket 7 off of eBay, has 256MB SDRAM PC-133, AMD K6-2/350 processor, Lite-On DVD RW LH-18A1P ATAPI DVD Burner, Maxtor 6Y080L0 80GB Hard Drive, 520W ATX PSU hooked up to an ATX to P8/P9/P10 converter, SB Vibra 16xv PnP ISA Sound, nVidia GeForce MX 4000 PCI Video, ESS Maestro-2 ES1968S PCI Sound Card, RealTek RTL8139s Ethernet, and all of that good stuff, and, apparently, after I installed the Hard Drive, it wouldn't get detected with the hard drive LBA size set to the full 80GB, and only gets deteced at 32GB (By using OnTrack Disk Manager), and after I installed Windows 98SE on it, the hard drive doesn't get detected until I power cycle the computer.

Here's the following BIOS Info:
Type: Award Modular BIOS v4.51PG
Version: 12/03/1998-i430tx-w83977-2a59ia1fc-gn

The chipset on this motherboard is an Intel i430TX. I even tried to do a BIOS update, and nothing. I might try again. The version of the BIOS is a TX5BGN, but one part says no upgrade needed... Note: GN = Green, which this motherboard supports both the AT style and ATX PSUs, even has a 16-pin USB header, which is surprising. Is there another BIOS that's out there?

Lupinthe3rd

Probalby no BIOS made for that board will ever support an 80Gig hard drive. You'll have to install a disk overlay to use it correctly.

Windows7User2010

Lupinthe3rd wrote:

Probalby no BIOS made for that board will ever support an 80Gig hard drive. You'll have to install a disk overlay to use it correctly.

I did that, but still wouldn't get detected at warm boot, only cold boot. I just installed a patched BIOS on my system, which is a beta version that supports up to 128GB, and it works with no problems.

Lupinthe3rd

I did say probably. Good to hear it works now.

DeepFriedCookies

Funny, I put a 30GB drive in my old DOS 486 with Maxtor's hard drive software. Formatted it FAT32 with DOS 7, and it runs every DOS game known to man. x3

Windows7User2010

DeepFriedCookies wrote:

Funny, I put a 30GB drive in my old DOS 486 with Maxtor's hard drive software. Formatted it FAT32 with DOS 7, and it runs every DOS game known to man. x3

Nice. I used Ontrack Disk Manager v10.46, but the hard drive tool requires, if I'm correct, only Western Digital Drives. Is your 30GB Hard Drive a Maxtor/Seagate? I have an 80GB Hard Drive (Maxtor 6Y080L0) in my Super Socket 7 computer, and runs with no problems. If I use the hard drive software (disk management), when I type in the command dir in DOS-Mode, even in Windows 98SE DOS Box (Command Prompt). Nowadays on the Pentium-class motherboard, I use just FDISK since my motherboard supports booting from a CD-ROM. I might get my Shuttle HOT-433 v4.0 motherboard fixed since one ISA slot stopped working, and so did my Sound Blaster Vibra 16xv ISA Sound Card :( My PCI cards still work, except my spare Video Card died, the processor(s) still work, and so does the memory. My 486 board has other problems: the Keyboard port is not producing enough power, and the PS/2 port header doesn't work since I tried to make a home made one (do not do what I did since you will fry a motherboard component). The plus sides of having a Super Socket 7 motherboard are SDRAM 168-pin memory modules (some motherboard manufactures installed SIMM 72-pin memory slots as well, for example, my Abit TX5 board supports that type), ATX power connections (some boards, like the DFI P5BV3+, all revisions, have a jumper setting*, my board has a BIOS setting, but if I left the power type to P8/P9, with my 520W ATX PSU hooked up to the ATX power, it still powers on with no problems), performance is another key factor, even for DOS, Windows 9x, NT, 2000, XP**, USB support since Intel and Via chipsets were popular, and still are to this day, works with modern PCI cards, like Gigabit Ethernet, Video Cards, Sound, etc, and faster processors (some boards use DIP switches to use a specific processor, my board detects every processor since there is no DIP switch and the BIOS has a CPU Soft Menu (set the CPU speed to 266MHz to User Defined) and has the voltage settings [low; high])

DeepFriedCookies

Yeah, the drive was a maxtor. This system is ages behind yours too. It has ISA, no ethernet (I finally got the card but I haven't installed it yet) and uses either 72-pin or 36-pin simms.

Windows7User2010

DeepFriedCookies wrote:

Yeah, the drive was a maxtor. This system is ages behind yours too. It has ISA, no ethernet (I finally got the card but I haven't installed it yet) and uses either 72-pin or 36-pin simms.

I had a motherboard, an HSing Tech M912 v1.7 motherboard that had 7 ISA slots and 3 VLB slots (Superseded by PCI), 2 SIMM-72 memory slots, and 4 SIMM-30 memory slots, too. The VLB slots served as a 32-bit expansion for cards, like sound cards, video cards, multi I/O cards, and so on.

nikkigreg1974

I have 6 socket 7 computers. Two are compaq and the rest are no name computers. The one compaq is a super 7 computer which has a amd k6-2 cpu running at 433mhz and the one no name computer is a super 7 amd computer too running at 350mhz. When i got the one compaq it had windows 95 and the other compaq had windows 98. I do get them out once in a while just to play with them. not much u can do with them.

Windows7User2010

nikkigreg1974 wrote:

I have 6 socket 7 computers. Two are compaq and the rest are no name computers. The one compaq is a super 7 computer which has a amd k6-2 cpu running at 433mhz and the one no name computer is a super 7 amd computer too running at 350mhz. When i got the one compaq it had windows 95 and the other compaq had windows 98. I do get them out once in a while just to play with them. not much u can do with them.

True. You cannot put FireFox, Chrome, or other browsers (except Internet Explorer), some programs, and Windows XP, or higher (same for linux) on a Pentium-based PC since they want Pentium 2 or faster-based machines. Windows 2000 runs OK (slow when using IE 6), but the other OSes (DOS [MS-DOS, FreeDOS, Dr-DOS], Windows for Workgroups 3.11, NT 3.5X/4.0, Windows 95, 98/98SE, even ME, and lightweight linux runs pretty good and fast). Some games, like Railroad Tycoon II will run on a Super Socket 7 with no problems.

DeepFriedCookies

Windows XP will run on Pentium class if it has MMX.

gdea73

lol Maxtor. Maxtor blows sack.
Quantum is where it's at. Fireballs were cool.

Socket 7 PCs are great, gotta love K6 stuff. Almost as fun as a "Samuel-II" VIA C3. You'd be surprised what you can do without cx8_cmov! [/sarcasm]

Windows7User2010

An update on the computer:
Same hardware, except I am now using CF to IDE adapters (two of them to be precise) an old 1GB CF Card (MS-DOS 7.10), 4GB CF (Windows 98SE is currently installed, might put Windows 2000 Pro or Windows XP* on it), ESS Maestro-2 ES1968S sound card didn't work well with MS-DOS 7.10 since one of my games would not detect the sound card (might reinstall it), installed the Sound Blaster PCI 128 Sound Card, and installed the drivers on Windows 98se and copied all of the programs and the appropriate files into my MS-DOS 7.10 drive into DOSDRV and edited the autoexec.bat and config.sys files appropriately, and works like a charm, and the drivers came with a Roland MT-32 MIDI emulator. The problem is after a reset, the default MIDI goes to the general MIDI, not the MT-32 when I run APMIXER, and apparently, APMIXER doesn't save the MIDI changes, only the volume... But, if I make a new file called MT-32.bat under the local drive this is what it'll have the following:

mt-32.bat
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
@ECHO OFF
LH D:\DOSDRV\APMIXER /A:1 /C:100 /S:127 /W:127
LH D:\DOSDRV\MT32.EXE /ON

Autoexec.bat
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...CODE GOES HERE...
CALL MT-32.BAT
...REST OF CODE...

config.sys
DEVICE=C:\DOS71\HIMEM.SYS /testmem:on
DEVICE=C:\DOS71\EMM386.exe 4096 NOVCPI

Now this machine has two OSes: MS-DOS 7.10 on the 4GB CF Card (less than 2GB), Windows NT 4.0 (rest of the CF card), both of them are running under a FAT16 File System type, and the 2GB CF card is the data for both Windows NT 4.0 and MS-DOS 7.10 for the sound card.

If anyone needs working drivers for a Sound Blaster PCI 128 sound card and for under MS-DOS, I'm going to upload samples of the Autoexec.bat in a file called autoexec.txt, as well as a sample of the config.sys, again in a file called config.txt, as well as the drivers and games and utilities.
Please see this topic: Sound Blaster PCI 128 drivers for MS-DOS