Someone said:
This is a unique situation. The computer is from around 1992 (a '386) and
is used for a DOS telephone voice mail system. The Chips & Technology
motherboard has only ISA slots.
The 50 MB hard drive is starting to fail, and they don't make them that small
anymore. All the telephone interface cards are ISA, so a contemporary
motherboard won't work. And I don't think they make any ISA controller
cards which might make a larger HD usable.
So, any ideas? Just go to the local recycler for a replacement hard drive?
Thanks.
I made boot (and used for 1y) a 486 system on a 120G drive !
just works so fine.
BIOS/DOS may restrict it to 2 or 32G, never mind, it si ALWAYS possible to
reconfigure the drive geometry using Linux FDISK, and make it match with some preset
of the BIOS. I have done that several times.
Other way is to use the samesoftwares+DOS on a modern computer. DOS 7.0 which comes
with Windows 98 (can be bought in shops in south America, like Brasil and so), will
be able to boot P3 very fine, PCI fitted, when DOS 7 will provide interface to the
telephone cards, unless your software is really crap and does itself access to the
ISA cards, bypassing any concept of drivers.
You can also buy old P3 box fitted with ISA. I have at home 2 useless P3 with 2 ISA
each.
You can also buy brand new P4 which will stand DOS 7, and fit it with an PCI to ISA
bridge extension, which may be hard to find in town center, but are very famous in
some projects (like electronic or so).
Backward compatibility has always been a big lie. Still, if you work your subject
properly, THERE ARE ways to boot dual core P4 or AMD 64 with some DOS (either
Microsoft DOS, or Free DOS), buy ISA bridge, and use modern supplies, memory, fans,
HDDs ...
