3 ms·
This is a nitpick, but early PC BIOS with C/H/S addressing could address up to 504 MB (1024 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors) just fine. There was nothing stoppi
by einr 3y ago
This is a nitpick, but early PC BIOS with C/H/S addressing could address up to 504 MB (1024 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors) just fine. There was nothing stopping you from using a 32 MB drive, like the article implies.
What you did often run in to is that early BIOSes would only support fixed disk types, and not arbitrary C/H/S values. In some cases this would prevent you from using the full capacity of your hard drive when upgrading. 32 MB was a common early size, though, and would generally be covered by the standard disk types.
- h2odragon 3y ago32MB was a DOS limitation, i think. FAT12/FAT16 filesystem perhaps? DOS 3.0 days iirc.
- jaclaz 3y agoDos before 3.0 used FAT12, limited to 16 MB, DOS 3.0 introduced FAT16 (though in a reduced 14 bit version) that extended size to 32 MB, DOS 4.0 had "real" 16 bit FAT16: https://hardwaresecrets.com/hard-disk-drives-capacity-limits/ https://hardwaresecrets.com/hard-disk-drives-capacity-limits... These were limits to the partition/volume size, however.