8100 48-bit LBA support

Question

Hi,   I've seen a number of messages on this board stating that the Dimension 8100 Bios A07 adds 48-bit LBA support and that this is present in A07 and newer bioses.  I'm not sure that this is actually true and wanted to ask for input from Dell personel on this issue.  The reason I ask is that I have bios XP2 (also tried A09) and was not able to boot into WinXPSP2 with a Maxtor drive setup as a single 200 Gb partition.  If I used the Intel drivers, that support 48-bit for bioses that don't, then I could boot into it fine.  I also set the EnableBigLBA bits in the registry using the tool from Maxtor.  Even with this setup working, I couldn't see the drive with Spinrite, booting from DOS, unless I used udma.sys that provided the 48-bit access.  Also, a separate test (48bitlbachk.exe) of the bios stated that it wasn't 48-bit compliant.  So, I could run a separate 200 Gb disk with the intel drivers and the enablebiglba bits set.  I tried setting 2 partitions, and this didn't work without the Intel driver.  So, it looks like the 8100 bioses to date are NOT 48-bit compliant as far as I can tell.  I finally bypassed all of this by getting a PCI card for ATA133/RAID that was 48-bit compliant (don't set the lba bit in windows or this setup won't boot).   My ultimate question is this:  Is Dell looking at this to straighten out the problem?  We need a true 48-bit compliant bios for the 8100.  With a few simple upgrades, this machine is still fast enough for everyday use and even does fine on my son's games (even Doom3), so even though it's > 4 years old, it's not time to pull the plug on hardware and software support.  It's still a great machine!!!   Thanks.   Regards, Mark

Majestic · Answer

'...... wanted to ask for input from Dell personel on this issue.'   Unfortunately the Dell forums are a User to User venue.  Although Dell Moderators monitor the forums and will occasionally contribute to a discussion, this isn't the best venue to insure direct contact with a Dell representative.  For direct contact I would recommend e-mail or the chat feature of Dell Support.   'Is Dell looking at this to straighten out the problem?'   Considering the age of the system, I wouldn't hold my breath.  The BIOS folks at Dell have moved on to working on BIOS versions for the newer Dell models out there.  Seldom, if never, do the BIOS folks go back and patch up or release a newer BIOS version for an out of production model.  If they did there is a couple of newer models than yours that could use a re-working of the BIOS to correct problems found in the later BIOS updates.    'We need a true 48-bit compliant bios for the 8100.'   From my time spent in the forums here, yours is the first problem I can recall with the 8100 model, BIOS version XP2 and large hard drives.  There are quite a few postings in the Dimension - Hard Drive forum reporting problems with the Maxtor drives and to avoid purchasing them.  Possibly your problem is unique to the Maxtor drive.

NYMarkM · Answer

Hi Majestic,

Thanks for the prompt response. I did solve the problem with the addon card. It also will work with 2 partitions or with the Intel Application Accelerator drivers, so I'm pretty much covered. I'll leave as is. Maybe in a year or so, I'll use this as the excuse to upgrade to a newer system :)

Thanks.

Regards,

Mark

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