I'd be slightly concerned that creating the partition in the Batman only gave you 8GB. That might mean the BIOS overlay doesn't support larger drives, meaning you need Windows' 32-bit kernel loaded to use the full capacity. Otherwise you could get errors and/or corruption when booting or in DOS mode once you have more than 8 gigs of data loaded. I would suggest running a ScanDisk surface scan in DOS mode to make sure everything's good. If this is a problem you can make the 8GB boot partition on the Batman using the full capacity available in DOS mode, then create a 24GB extended partition from a 32-bit OS for data. That's what I did once. In DOS mode the extra drive letter wasn't present, in Windows it magically appeared.

@@eDoc2020 I got some help to figure this out. The Batman now has one 32GB partition. I only needed to do one small change. I pinned a comment.

ontrack disk manager (dynamic drive overlay) works for me.

You should make a video on how to do it.

@@christophero1969xtide vids are everywhere. been done a thousand times already.....

@@christophero1969 there are resources online how to do it (vogons etc.), it’s not difficult. First, configure XTIDE bios on target machine as normal, write it to EEPROM chip and insert it to NIC bootrom slot. Have everything installed on the target machine and check free UMB area and starting address for bootrom (for example D000) and then configure bootrom in NIC accordingly. For example, 3COM ISA cards have DOS setup program where you enable bootrom and set the memory address. That’s it, probably takes 20 minutes or so if you are familiar with using eeprom programmers and so on.

@@christophero1969 Necroware has an entire series focused on XTIDE. That's a great starting point.

What did you use to patch the BIOS?

@@Epictronics1 One of them, which I remember was BIOS Patcher, but it was only for Award BIOSes.

Thank you

The thought never occurred to me that a "vintage" network was fast enough to run games directly over the network! I'll try it, thanks

@@Epictronics1 At least as a depository for CD-ROM images (to mount with Daemon Tools), for installable software, and as a way to move around a 'large amount' of files without USB, is good enough. For the rest, it will depend on the speed of the NIC and if the game itself can be run on a samba share. In the late 90's, during my first year at the university, the computers used novell netware (mostly without hard disks). Sometimes we manage to run DOS games on our personal shares. The real limitation was the free base memory (it was near 500 KB, and sometimes less thant that, if I remember correctly).

@@Epictronics1 Even a 10 MBit/s connection is about the speed of an 8x CD drive yup! (and of course many times faster for random seeks)

@@seritools Great, I'll try it out

I encountered stuttering when running Tomb Raider games from network using Daemon Tools on Windows 98, possibly something to do with the audio streaming. Running the same from a hard-to-read CD resulted in longer loading times but no stutters during gameplay. The same network setup worked perfectly with Windows 2000 but unfortunately there are not D3D-capable Voodoo drivers for the NT family.

Thanks. Definitely worth a try. This software combination is great. It's kinda sad that we threw away our original hardware. I wish I still had my old gear. good luck with the Compaq

As configured this overlay heaves the drive with a standard format, you can see it is perfectly readable in the Windows XP system.

Thanks. I totally agree. The best time to grow up! I was extremely lucky as a kid to get a Commodore 64 back in 1985. It's been all fun and games sins then, and still is!

@@Epictronics1awesome! Please keep up the great work, your content is very satisfying to watch and you have a great personality! Thank you for the hard work and the time it takes to record and share with us.

@@anthonyblacker8471 Thanks :)

You're lucky then. Great machines :)

That doesn't work. The limit is a BIOS limit. No amount of partition trickery can bypass it. Partition size is a limit of the DOS. If larger partitions are required simply use a later DOS version. Sure you can create multiple partitions but added up you'll still only be able to access 500MB total. The way past that then was to use SCSI. The way past it now is to use a XTIDE or SCSI.

Indeed, it would be interesting to see if there is a performance difference

Thanks!

Were you able to create larger partitions this way?

@@Epictronics1Only to the limits of the OS. DOS and the first Windows 95 were fat16 and could only partition to a maximum of 2 gig. I've had up to 24 hard drive letters fully recognized in DOS, though.

I installed OSR2.5 in the video. Maybe I can resize the partitions in Windows

I'll try that, thanks

@@Epictronics1 No, thank you for all the excellent content! As a long time retro computing enthusiast, I always enjoy watching and learning!

Check out the pinned post

I don't have one to try, unfortunately.

I installed OSR2.5 in the video

@@Epictronics1 My bad :) On to Windows 98SE!

Yes, but I'll double-check to make sure it's enabled

Yeah ... I would've figured this board would be late enough to support larger drives. I have a Packard Bell and a Gateway both based on Intel's reference design. I don't remember 100%, but I would've assumed both had drives larger than 500MB.

@@nickwallette6201 I double checked. Btw. I eventually managed to get one 32GB partition. Check out the pinned comment

@@Epictronics1 I did, but I didn't quite understand what you were getting at. Are you saying that you could see up to 8GB w/o drive overlay software, after turning on LBA support? (That sounds about right for this board.)

@@nickwallette6201 Not quite. LBA was on. The EZ-drive automatic install seems to be limited to 4x2GB partitions.

Yes, maybe I can resize the partitions in windows

Totally agree :) I'll use them as long as they are spinning

The challenge is to play all the current games with period-correct hardware and software before the release of the new game

Yeah, the latest BIOS update I could find didn't improve things. Are you saying EZ-drive can do one 8GB partition?

@@Epictronics1 by my experience, EzDrive tries to make bunch of 2GB partitions for you. You really don't need it. If the EzDrive is in bootsector, you can use your "large disk supporting" fdisk (Latest win95, all win98+) and create large partitions on your own with FAT32 and all the other fun. It's only the bootsector that overrides bios routines for disk access, that you need. There is a limit of how many partitions you can create. It probably tried to make huge amount of 2GB partitions on its own and then confused itself with that. :P

@@GigAHerZ64 I didn't know that. I'll try to create one large partition in fdisk. Thanks!

Let us know if it worked .

@@GigAHerZ64 Apparently there isn't a limit on how many you can create. It allocated all the way up to Z and then complained that the alphabet didn't contain enough letters. haha BTW, extended partitions are weird. It's just a normal MBR-style partition map within a partition, but it only contains (up to) two entries: The first is the logical partition contained by that extended partition. The second is a nested extended partition, which itself can contain one logical partition and an optional nested extended partition. And so on, indefinitely. Slots 3 and 4 aren't used. Why not use 1-3 for logical, and 4 for a nested extended? Because 80's Microsoft, I guess. 🤷

Great. I'll give it a try, thanks

The BIOS limit was 500MB. EZ-drive increased it to 2GB. I'll try OnTrack to see if I can get it beyond 2GB, thanks

Wouldnt you need the FAT32 patch for Windows 95? Win98 was first to support it, if I remember correctly. So U would need to install Win95 on a FAT16 partition anyway or you wouldnt be even able to apply the fat32 patch.

Windows 95 B (OSR 2 / 2.1) and Windows 95 C (OSR 2.5) support FAT32. There's no way to add support to Windows 95 original and Windows 95 A.

@@Thomsonicus I'll do some tests. Maybe OnTrack or Partition Magic can partition the drive to FAT32

​​@@Epictronics1 I know later versions of ez-drive supported at least 8.4g, as I used to use it with my 486 that had a 2gb BIOS limit. I want to say it was v9.06. Anyways, it may depend on which version of win95's boot disc you're letting it look at too. If that boot disk is pre fat32 then ez-drive expects you're going to install a version of windows that only supports up to fat16 and partitions accordingly. Be sure you're giving it an osr2 or 2.5 boot disk with fat32 support when it asks for a setup disk. Heck, even a win98 boot disk would work for that purpose. You should be able to use the full volume of the drive too. Incidentally, if you're ever to try Linux, I know with a version new enough to support large disks, all you need to do is see enough of the drive to fit your bootloader, grub or Lilo and /boot. It's common just to select a 512mb drive size in bios. Once Linux goes to boot, it'll redetect the drive's actual size and disregard the BIOS selected size. No ez-drive needed. Likewise, when using ez-drive, it's just easier to tell the bios it's a 512mb drive. Ez-drive will detect the real size. I was running one of the fedoras on my 486 as a file/web/ftp server on a 120gb for a while until the 10Mbit Isa nic started slowing me down. The PC itself kept up fine. If course I was running a pentium overdrive 83mhz, to take advantage of the 586 architecture repos, and 64MB ram. I'd probably have ran it longer if I could've found a 100Mbit nic at the time. At least until I switched to Gigabit Ethernet.

The thought occurred to me, but then there was this new gorgeous case I couldn't resist...

@@Epictronics1 Oh, ok - Now you have me wondering. Will it have 5.25" bays or won't it? What about 3.5"? Hmm...

@@communalnoodle1356 That was the original thought, proper floppy drives. Unfortunately, this case doesn't have any bays. I'll probably do another build for file transfer to older systems

@@Epictronics1 yeah it's not common now to find cases with drive bays. I've actually just started assembling a system that's new enough for windows 11, but in a roughly 10 year old case so it has the bays. It's my "work bench" PC, and my main desktop is now seperate. I wonder if there would be a market for someone to build a new style case but with 5.25 and 3.5 bays?

@@communalnoodle1356 I have actually reused my 10-year-old case several times for the drivebays. But this new case, I couldn't resist :) I have everything but the display now. I'll probably start recording late next week

It does. The limit is in the BIOS of the MOBO

@@Epictronics1 oh I thought you said the bios limit was 500 and the software got around it. odd.

@@awilliams1701 Yes, the software got it up to 4x2GB. perhaps there is a way to do even better. I'll do some more tests

@@Epictronics1 Have you checked to see if IDE LBA Translations is enabled in the BIOS as it is disabled by default. When enabled, supports Logical Block Addressing to allow full utilization of drives larger than 528 MB.

I just made it work with a 32GB partition! I wrote the steps in a pinned comment.

@@Epictronics1 thank you! Might be useful someday