Re: DTC EIDE BIOS CARD - Allows older PC's to use large drives! (fwd)

["Adam Williams" <awilliam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > Need your advice on "DTC EIDE BIOS CARD - Allows older PC's to use large
> > drives!"
> >
> > Got some e-mail from the "Closeout Specials from Dalco" e-mail list I am
on.
> > The item below interests me.  Do you know anything about it?  In
particular,
> > is DTC a brand or a type?  Any idea what the max. limit hard drive it would
> > support?  I'm figuring this card would max out at 8GB, which is more than
> > plenty for me.  I've got 4 486/486dx AMI BIOS 1991/1992 motherboards with
> > all ISA slots I want the card to go in.  How does it work?  Does it disable
> > the existing BIOS?   Is the card OS independent?  In particular, will it
> > work fine with RedHat/OpenLinux/Slackware Linux and Net/Free/Open BSD? I
> > guess all these questions I can ask the sales people.
> >
> > The biggest question is if that is a good price?  I'm gonna assume it is a
> > good price.  I wonder if this card has adventages over replacing the BIOS
> > chip on the motherboard.  Does this card have any other features, like hard
> > drive controller, or do I have to continue using my existing hard drive
> > controller card?  Does it provide PnP support like an outright BIOS upgrade
> > would?

I doubt you would need them for a Linux only system,  once Linux boots it never
uses the bios again.  You just need to pass the real geometry to lilo.  But
they would probably work,  I used an EIDE controller in a 486 for a long time.
 You might want to think about an actual controller verses a BIOS upgrade card,
 since the newer controllers are faster and support more PIO modes.  Another
thought would be to get used non-E IDE hard drives.