Hi everyone,

 

I have a friend who is after a 500MB IDE drive for an old pc and has roped me into searching for it!  :wonder:  I have tried the usual goggling and found one as low as 1.2GB! It has to be 500MB or lower as the old BIOS won't support anything above that. Does anyone has any ideas of where to get one from?! These appear to be very rare now.

 

Thanks in advance

If only you had asked this question last year!!

 

I threw out about a dozen IDE HDDs as small as 180MB, at least 4 of them were 500MB; and one REALLY old MFM 20MB HDD!!

Oh dear - it can't be helped! Technology has moved on so much too, I have been pushed into chucking my stuff over the years by my mother!

I might have one, I'll rummage through my cupboard of crap

 

Can the BIOS be flashed at all to a newer version that'll accept a higher capacity HDD? Can you post the details of the MOBO and BIOS manufacturer and it's revision number?

Thanks Lee

On this old PC, what OS is it running? i ask as W2K has a limitation on HDD size ,but there's a utility that gets round this . Google 48 bit lba registry updat, i can't remember the site details, but one poster from Sweden passed it to me .

Edited 8 October, 201312 yr by VWD

This'll do the job http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Seagate-SV35-2-500-GB-Internal-7200-RPM-3-5-ST3500630AV-PATA-IDE-500GB-/181233718339?pt=UK_Computing_HardDrives_RL&hash=item2a325f1443

Thanks for the posts VWD and Waplord

 

I'm not sure what he is running - probably something old like DOS Windows 3.1 / 95!

 

Sorry it has got to be 500MB WapLord - I suggested a 1.2GB drive to him, the Bios in the pc will only accept up to 500MB! It is certainly a challenge to find something even with the Internet! :think:

On this old PC, what OS is it running? i ask as W2K has a limitation on HDD size ,but there's a utility that gets round this . Google 48 bit lba registry updat, i can't remember the site details, but one poster from Sweden passed it to me .

 

No, just use NTFS which came with that os... Fat16 and Fat32 had the limitations....

Sorry read it as GB, jesus 500mb drive......how old is this pc?

 

 

I'm assuming its going to be some ancient pentium must be 15 years old + ?

 

There used to be a utility called EZ-Drive that would help get around the LBA addressing limitation.

 

 

This guy here has a load of small old HDD's that should do the trick something like a connor 

 

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Solent-Spares/H-D-D-/_i.html?_nkw=MB+hdd+ide&submit=Search&_fsub=3443003017&_sid=1099049097

Could you not just partition a larger drive or as I have seen done on a Vertex based system is use a compactflash card with an IDE adapter.

Could you not just partition a larger drive

not if the BIOS can see it.

Edited my above post to add about CF cards

I thought partitioning usually did the trick in those cases though you might need to do it on another machine first. SATA-IDE connector would let you do that.

 

[Edit] J-H-C! 500Mb! My first PC bought in 1996 had a 2Gb hard drive. I think I still have it in my Mum's attic.

 

What on earth are you trying to fix?

Edited 9 October, 201312 yr by Aspman

This

 

and

 

This

Why not just virtualise the PC and remove any requirement for hardware? Did this in my Dads office with a particular PC to enable us to remove the old hardware and free up a workstation. Worked great and much faster!

 

I'm assuming its going to be some ancient pentium must be 15 years old + ?

 

 

 

Im guessing pre-pentium = 386 or 486?

 

I used to have a 20mb drive for an old commodor Vic 20 & and Atari 520 st but the smallest i have now is a maxtor 10gb and a seagate 20gb. Wow showing my age.

Why not just virtualise the PC and remove any requirement for hardware? Did this in my Dads office with a particular PC to enable us to remove the old hardware and free up a workstation. Worked great and much faster!

 

Think you misunderstand the original post. What you suggest is ok for say having multiple OS like xp, vista and 7 on one box but this might be pre windows.

like dos. I think its probably the specific hardware thats important to the op's friend other wise you wouldn't try to resurect the hardware and just emulate. 

Think you misunderstand the original post. What you suggest is ok for say having multiple OS like xp, vista and 7 on one box but this might be pre windows.

like dos. I think its probably the specific hardware thats important to the op's friend other wise you wouldn't try to resurect the hardware and just emulate. 

 

Not necessarily. You can run many types of OS under VMs and so DOS should work as well.

 

In the case of my dads office it was a machine with a particular USB document scanner (without modern drivers) for a piece of software that no longer is supported as the company went out of business. I VMed the XP PC it was running on; used Oracle VirtualBox as the VM software and plugged in the scanner. The new machine is Windows 7 x64 and doesn't know what the scanner is and doesn't care. I get VB to auto attach the device (which comes up as Unknown Device) and voila it is all working perfectly. I also have a backup on their NAS backup drive just incase it corrupts (which it has done once). It can then be shifted around to any machine if the machine it is setup for dies.

 

Now depending on the hardware you could feasibly do something similar to this machine being discussed. If it is a serial or parallel device that is attached it could still work. Nothing to lose by trying it. 

This

 

and

 

This

 

I've done this with Acorn A7000 replaced the IDE HD with an IDE CF adaptor and a 256MB flash card.

I've done this with Acorn A7000 replaced the IDE HD with an IDE CF adaptor and a 256MB flash card.

Those old Archimedes machines were the nuts...best part of 30 years ago lol. 

Many thanks WapLord - how did you find that!? :wonder:

 

Thank you for all of the other replies.

 

I believe it is for a 486 so it is quite old by todays standards. Yes VM Ware might be another option, however it is nice to keep some old pc's going. I still have an old Pentium sat next to me for sentimental reasons!

Many thanks WapLord - how did you find that!? :wonder:

 

Thank you for all of the other replies.

 

I believe it is for a 486 so it is quite old by todays standards. Yes VM Ware might be another option, however it is nice to keep some old pc's going. I still have an old Pentium sat next to me for sentimental reasons!

 

I still have a Pentium Pro 200 somewhere in the loft I think I even overclocked it by changing the multiplier jumpers. It was awesome and still the envy of some of my friends even when they were running P2's.

Try a google for computer fairs, usually listed by area . Better chanceof finding one there than on net .

will keep looking, I found a 40mb yes Mb not GB

 

John