Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (
More info?)
Whether or not a motherboard manufacturer or name-brand computer "manufacturer"
updates a BIOS to expand BIOS drive limits is best viewed on a case-by-case or
manufacturer-by-manufacturer basis. In my experience, the BIOS updates which
raised disk drive limits have actually been pretty rare.
The manufacturers of motherboards with poorly written English language
documentation (read that as China, Taiwan, and S. Korea) typically heave
motherboards over the transom onto an unsuspecting public and never want to be
heard from again. BIOS updates for these boards are rare indeed.
The leading manufacturers of motherboards (keeps changing, but Intel designs and
Asus boards have long been among the leaders) need to compete aggressively with
one another, both for the generic white-box business and OEM business with name
brand companies like Dell. Intel still designs nearly all of the
almost-standard form factor boards used by Dell, and Intel issues BIOS updates
when the market demands or when there are egregious technical errors to fix.
Dell takes the Intel BIOS cores for desktops and puts its own look-and-feel
around them. It does the same with the notebook BIOS core provided by its
notebook manufacturer.
Certainly the OP ought to search out a BIOS update for his Latitude CPi system.
My sense of the Latitude CPi motherboards is that they are all the same design
and they use the same BIOS as long as the processor bus speed is the same. From
the standpoint of intelligent cost-effective hardware design, this would be
logical. So the OP's 266MHz, your 366MHz and my client's now-dead 300MHz system
probably share the same design and BIOS. The best way to verify this, of
course, is to search the Dell web site for a BIOS upgrade and see if the 266 and
366 CPi systems have the same BIOS download.
The OP should take comfort in the fact that a 40GB drive works just fine in your
system. Would I go larger than 40GB on a 266MHz system? Probably not. And I
would certainly compare the power consumption between the current drive and any
candidate replacement drive... Ben Myers
On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 21:34:43 GMT, "dg1261" <dg1261nojunk@cs.com> wrote:
>
>> Ben Myers wrote:
>> > Subsequent BIOS barriers were/are 2.1GB (late 486 & early Pentium),
>> > 8.4GB (late Pentium and early Pentium II), 32GB (late Pentium II &
>> > early Pentium III), and 128GB.
>
>"Georges Heinesch" wrote:
>> The Dell Latitude Cpi D266XT is a PII 266 Mhz. Hence, I guess that
>> the 32 GB limit could already create a problem. But how can I find out.
>
>Georges, it should be pointed out that Ben's rough guidelines are meant to
>relate bios limits common when those classes of machines first came out, but
>that doesn't mean a subsequent bios update couldn't have been produced to
>exceed the previous limits. If the original CPiD bios didn't support 8.4GB
>or 32GB, a later flash bios update might have. As Ben said, the only way to
>know for sure is to ask someone who has the same machine and/or bios.
>
>If I had to guess, I'd say your chances for 80GB are good, but you may need
>to make sure you're using the latest bios update. I would think the bios's
>of CPi models are relatively similar to each other, and my CPiA366 has no
>trouble with a 40GB drive and a 2001 bios version (A15).
>
>You may want to visit Dell's forum (http://forums.us.dell.com/) and ask.
>There are a couple guys there that work with a lot of older Dells and seem
>to have a very good idea of what can/cannot be done with various machines.
>
>
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