Tyan Trinity 400 (S1854) Motherboard

Does anyone know the maximum hard drive size supported by this
motherboard? (Award BIOS Plug & Play, 4.51PG)
Thanks.
--
tb

tb wrote:
> Does anyone know the maximum hard drive size supported by this
> motherboard? (Award BIOS Plug & Play, 4.51PG)
> Thanks.

The transition to 48 bit LBA support (>137GB) was around 2003.
This motherboard and its BIOS releases are from the year 2000.

http://tyan.com/archive/support/html/b_s1854.html

That means there are a couple possibilities - 64GB limit or 128GB
limit.

To see a web page archived from that era, you can use this page.
I didn't find your motherboard here, but by reviewing this
page, you can see the range of capacity limits on motherboards
back then.

http://web.archive.org/web/200905230...ink/k6plus.htm

My 440BX based motherboard, received BIOS updates for a number
of years, and one thing I got, was the ability to use a 120GB
drive. But, I also put a Promise Ultra card in that system,
to get faster disk transfers (limited by PCI bus).

*******

A better question is, what solutions can be found for the problem.

If you purchase a PCI ATA controller card, with a couple ribbon
cable interfaces on it, that can handle larger drives. For
example, a Promise Ultra133 TX2 card, might work.

When the motherboard boots, it loads the BIOS chip on the PCI
card, which contains an Extended INT 0x13 routine. And that
BIOS routine handles disk access during boot. So you can even
boot from a large drive that way.

There is still the issue of the motherboard BIOS, and whether it
handles a plugged in PCI card properly. Back in the 440BX era,
there were a few issues with PCI cards that didn't work right, and
the BIOS seemed to play a part in it. If the BIOS didn't recognize
the "class" of the card (like not knowing what a USB2 card was,
or a Wifi card), it might choose to ignore the card, or simply
not finish POST.

Paul

On 7/27/2011 9:05 PM, Paul wrote:
>
> The transition to 48 bit LBA support (>137GB) was around 2003.
> This motherboard and its BIOS releases are from the year 2000.
>
> http://tyan.com/archive/support/html/b_s1854.html
>
> That means there are a couple possibilities - 64GB limit or 128GB
> limit.
>

I currently have an 80GB internal hard drive installed, so I'd say that
the odds of my motherboard being able to handle 128GB are very good...

> To see a web page archived from that era, you can use this page.
> I didn't find your motherboard here, but by reviewing this
> page, you can see the range of capacity limits on motherboards
> back then.
>
> http://web.archive.org/web/200905230...ink/k6plus.htm
>
>
> My 440BX based motherboard, received BIOS updates for a number
> of years, and one thing I got, was the ability to use a 120GB
> drive. But, I also put a Promise Ultra card in that system,
> to get faster disk transfers (limited by PCI bus).
>
> *******
>
> A better question is, what solutions can be found for the problem.
>
> If you purchase a PCI ATA controller card, with a couple ribbon
> cable interfaces on it, that can handle larger drives. For
> example, a Promise Ultra133 TX2 card, might work.
>
> When the motherboard boots, it loads the BIOS chip on the PCI
> card, which contains an Extended INT 0x13 routine. And that
> BIOS routine handles disk access during boot. So you can even
> boot from a large drive that way.
>
> There is still the issue of the motherboard BIOS, and whether it
> handles a plugged in PCI card properly. Back in the 440BX era,
> there were a few issues with PCI cards that didn't work right, and
> the BIOS seemed to play a part in it. If the BIOS didn't recognize
> the "class" of the card (like not knowing what a USB2 card was,
> or a Wifi card), it might choose to ignore the card, or simply
> not finish POST.
>
> Paul

Interesting. I suppose I could also purchase a PCI _SATA_ controller
and switch to SATA hard drives --maybe even of the SSD kind!. What do
you think?

Or I might just try the conservative route and purchase a 128GB IDE/PATA
hard drive and see what happens when I boot up...

Thanks, Paul, for all your help.
--
tb

tb wrote:

>
> Interesting. I suppose I could also purchase a PCI _SATA_ controller
> and switch to SATA hard drives --maybe even of the SSD kind!. What do
> you think?
>
> Or I might just try the conservative route and purchase a 128GB IDE/PATA
> hard drive and see what happens when I boot up...
>
> Thanks, Paul, for all your help.

The PCI bus is a speed limitation. That's what generally
prevents the motherboard from being heroic.

Depending on the PCI burst size, you have around 110-120MB/sec
to work with. So if I were to connect my Seagate 500GB SATA
drive, the one that transfers at 125MB/sec near the beginning
of the disk, the PCI bus would prevent the full speed from
being available.

You can try various card types if you want, but don't be
surprised if about 50% of them don't work. If you install
a card that existed in that era, the odds are better it
will work. That's about all I can suggest.

Paul