upgrading 486s BIOS

[pfarrar at learningco.com]

     Leslie,
     
     I have had mixed results with a SIIG BIOS card I bought.
     
     On a 33Mhz 486 - I was able to install a 1 Gig drive.  Later I tried 
     the same card in a P60 for a 5 Gig drive, but couldn't use my CDROM 
     anymore (Strange).  Not only couldn't the BIOS locate it, but Linux 
     couldn't.  More recently I acquired a P90, which wouldn't recognize 
     the 5 gig drive - and so, wouldn't boot without a floppy.  I installed 
     the finicky BIOS card and now every thing works.
     
     So I guess it's hit or miss, but it's not outside of the realm of 
     possibilities.
     
     Peter
     
     P.S. what does that mean, "Linux cannot be installed via a secondary 
     BIOS"?


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: upgrading 486s BIOS
Author:  Leslie Owen Everett <leverett at massart.edu> at InterNet
Date:    11/22/99 10:00 PM


Perhaps someone reading the list has resolved this already,
     
Recently I inherited ten working DELL 486/MEs with: 66 MHz, 325MB hard drives, 
and 32
MB RAM. Eventually I plan to use them to build a Beowulf system. I installed a 
6.0 GB
hard drive on one of them with SuSE Linux 6.0, it works fine and is now my 
primary
Linux box.
     
I partially installed Red Hat Linux  6.0 on another 486. The installation was 
incomplete needing 770 MB or so.  I decided to upgrade with a 8.4 GB drive, and 
had to
upgrade the Phoenix Ltd. BIOS. The BIOS can't see the 8.4 GB hard drive. I 
bought a
"DTC Ultima EIDE port and BIOS upgrade card" (for older computers if BIOS does 
not
support HDD greater than 500 MB) and plugged it into an ATI slot. I couldn't 
partition
"/dev/had", only starting at "/dev/hdc". The new BIOS more or less recognizes 
the
large ATA drive and reports this, but the machine defaults to the Phoenix Ltd. 
BIOS.
It advises checking the jumpers, I tried, switching the drive from Master 
(default) to
Slave, with the same results, can't access it.
     
I installed Red Hat 6.0 on this machine and it worked fine, except I was unable 
to
access "/dev/had", or "LILO" , so I had to boot Linux from a floppy. I read in 
"Linux
secrets" Linux cannot be installed via a secondary BIOS. My question is: Has 
anyone
successfully installed Linux after upgrading the BIOS on a 486? Short of going 
ahead
and replacing the motherboard, this might be an exercise in futility, but I'm 
not
convinced yet.
Thanks in advance for any information,
     
- Leslie Everett
     
     
-
Subcription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with 
"subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" on the first line of the 
message body to discuss-request at blu.org (Subject line is ignored).
-------------- next part --------------
Received: from ns.learningco.com ([198.112.0.7]) by mail.learningco.com with
SMTP
  (IMA Internet Exchange 3.12) id 00004DF5; Mon, 22 Nov 1999 14:40:37 -0500
Received: by ns.learningco.com; id OAA16976; Mon, 22 Nov 1999 14:42:58 -0500
(EST)
Received: from unknown(207.31.228.20) by ns.learningco.com via smap (V4.2)
	id xma014665; Mon, 22 Nov 99 14:34:12 -0500
Received: (from majordom at localhost)
	by tarnhelm.blu.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id NAA29544
	for discuss-outgoing; Mon, 22 Nov 1999 13:45:28 -0500
Received: from dolly.massart.edu (dolly.massart.edu [209.6.44.7])
	by tarnhelm.blu.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id NAA29541;
	Mon, 22 Nov 1999 13:45:26 -0500
Received: from massart.edu (pandora31.massart.edu [172.22.101.144])
          by dolly.massart.edu (8.8.5/8.8.4) with ESMTP
	  id NAA21100; Mon, 22 Nov 1999 13:45:26 -0500
Message-ID: <383A0367.80C1A92E at massart.edu>
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1999 22:00:59 -0500
From: Leslie Owen Everett <leverett at massart.edu>
Reply-To: leverett at massart.edu
Organization: massart
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 (Macintosh; I; PPC)
X-Accept-Language: en
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: discuss at Blu.Org
CC: discuss-digest at Blu.Org
Subject: Re: upgrading 486s BIOS
References: <199911181458.JAA11518 at tarnhelm.blu.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854";
x-mac-creator="4D4F5353"
Sender: owner-discuss at blu.org
Precedence: bulk
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
X-MIME-Autoconverted: from 8bit to quoted-printable by tarnhelm.blu.org id
NAB29544