XTs and large hard disks

[9000 VAX]

On 8/29/05, Wolfe, Julian <ISC277 at clcillinois.edu> wrote:
> Hi everyone!
> 
> I have an old Portable PC that I put a 2MB memory card in, along with an EGA
> card, sound card, and some other stuff.  I'm doing my best to max it out.
> Anyway, I'm having some trouble with hard disks.  I have two hard disk
> controllers: a Seagate ST02 SCSI/Floppy controller, and a Juko Labs D16-X

ST02 uses NCR 53C90A I think. I think maybe the seagate bios only
support 6 byte commands, thus limit the disk size to 1GB. It is not
53C90A's fault. It is not easy to find a bootable 8 bit SCSI card. I
once had two. one was HB_A8 card, the other I forgot the brand. I
could not recall how big the disk sizes they supported.

> IDE controller.  Now both of these cards work okay, except they recognize
> some strange sizes for the disks.  The only disk that seems to show up
> correctly is a Quantum LP105S...the others I tried, all bigger than a gig,
> are either not recognized, or recognized with the wrong size.  This is also
> the case with the IDE controller - everything is recognized at 10MB.  I
> purchased an LBA PRO card for my machine hoping to overcome the large disk
> size problem, but all it does is freeze the machine...however, if I remove
> the 8088 and replace it with a NEC V20, I get the banner for the hard disk
> drive card, and THEN the machine freezes.
> 
> So my questions are:
> 1. Does anyone know a good solution for putting a large drive in an XT,
> while still leaving it an XT?
> 2. Should I leave the V20 in?  I've heard it has compatibility issues with
> some programs, but I'm not solid on my information.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Julian
> 
> 
>