Fdisk 120Gb HD IDE stops before partition stage appears

I have a Supermicro P6SBA motherboard purchased circa 1998 and
original bios R2.1 . Some while ago I purchased and successfully
fdisked etc a 60Gb Seagate. Now I have a Seagate Barracuda 120Gb but
fdisking it and after going Y and hit enter to the large disc support
option, all I get is A:\>, even after 5 mins or so. It doesnt show the
partitioning stage that comes next. Tried both cable select and
master settings with it on end of ATA cable IDE1. OS is win98se.

Is this trying to tell me the mboard can't support 120Gb. ?

I have heard of flashing the bios, dont know what it means or whats
involved. My fear is I do this, it still doesn't work, but then also
other progs etc that are in my ghost copy of my c drive also won't
work and I can't face a total rebuild and struggle.

I am hoping to get a better pc once I know the Msoft mouse issue under
win2000-XP is solved, but that could be soon or months away, so need
to be operational NOW. !

My dying IBM Deskstar I remember using a software tool to drop its dma
to 66, (or was it 33 ?), w...hatever to match the mboard. Could it be
this, I don't think so as thats a speed data transfer thing, at least
the deskstar worked under 66 or 100.

So why does fdisk stop before partition stage shows, I know there's a
hotfix for the win98se 64Gb limit, where fdisk reports say 6Gb for a
70Gb, i.e. the difference, but the download says only for that
specific problem, my fdisk, and I have tried a few now, doesnt even
get that far !

Steve

Sorry to sound mean, but what year is this? Why are you still using
something as arcane and outdated as fdisk? The motherboard and the OS
both support 120 GB drives. Just boot into windows, and partition and
format it there.
In addition, what Msoft Mouse issue are you referring to?
The DMA 33/100 thing will not make anything not work. The only problem
you'll see is that your potentially quite fast drive will run much
slower than it's capable.
I don't know why fdisk doesn't work. If I recall correctly, there is
some fix for that, but why bother, just use a modern utility and set it
up that way. Fdisk is a dinosaur....

Ed

envirographics wrote:
 > I have a Supermicro P6SBA motherboard purchased circa 1998 and
 > original bios R2.1 . Some while ago I purchased and successfully
 > fdisked etc a 60Gb Seagate. Now I have a Seagate Barracuda 120Gb but
 > fdisking it and after going Y and hit enter to the large disc support
 > option, all I get is A:\>, even after 5 mins or so. It doesnt show the
 > partitioning stage that comes next. Tried both cable select and
 > master settings with it on end of ATA cable IDE1. OS is win98se.
 >
 > Is this trying to tell me the mboard can't support 120Gb. ?
 >
 > I have heard of flashing the bios, dont know what it means or whats
 > involved. My fear is I do this, it still doesn't work, but then also
 > other progs etc that are in my ghost copy of my c drive also won't
 > work and I can't face a total rebuild and struggle.
 >
 > I am hoping to get a better pc once I know the Msoft mouse issue under
 > win2000-XP is solved, but that could be soon or months away, so need
 > to be operational NOW. !
 >
 > My dying IBM Deskstar I remember using a software tool to drop its dma
 > to 66, (or was it 33 ?), w...hatever to match the mboard. Could it be
 > this, I don't think so as thats a speed data transfer thing, at least
 > the deskstar worked under 66 or 100.
 >
 > So why does fdisk stop before partition stage shows, I know there's a
 > hotfix for the win98se 64Gb limit, where fdisk reports say 6Gb for a
 > 70Gb, i.e. the difference, but the download says only for that
 > specific problem, my fdisk, and I have tried a few now, doesnt even
 > get that far !
 >
 > Steve<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->