Hi all guy´s. I have an old Texas Instruments Travelmate 4000. The original 209 Mb hard disk becomed faulty. The trouble is that machine hasn´t autodetection of the HD, in place of it, it has a table in the BIOS with about a dozen of fixed CHS disk parameters. I have a 1GB HD that I buyed when I still didn´t know such limitations. So, do anybody know if is there any software available to change the CHS parameters in the disk, and make it compatible with any one of that BIOS table?, if possible, loading any tsr that permit the acces to the integrity of the disk. Recent versions of Western Digital´s Disk Manager (that works fine in other machines) don´t have the choice of set the CHS data to the HD. Very thanks. Best regards. If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.

You need a bios or drive overlay. You should be able to find the overlay software on the drive manufacturer's site. If not, post back the drive model number and we'll see what we can find. Connect the 1 gig drive and select a drive type in cmos/bios setup. The type you select may not matter but probably the largest one is best. You're doing that so the bios knows a hard drive is there. Another method is to check to see if the drive's jumper configuration has a 'cylinder limiting jumper'. Setting that jumper on a 1 gig will cause the bios to see it probably with a C/H/S of 1024/16/63--about 500 meg. Then if the bios shows that drive type, use it. Then boot up with a floppy disk containing the overlay installation software and install it. After that you'll have access the entire 1 gig. When you boot up normally after that you'll get a message something like 'Press CTRL for boot options'. That's telling you the overlay has loaded and it's giving you the option to boot from a floppy disk. Otherwise it boots from the hard drive. That boot option is necessary because the overlay loads from the hard drive. If you boot directly from a floppy disk the overlay doesn't load and you won't have access to the hard drive data. So when booting from a floppy disk, don't put it in the drive until you get the boot option message.

I reread your posting where you said you were having problems with WD's Disk Manager. Drive manufacturer's haven't used disk manager for several years but they probably did when your drive came out. If you have an older WD disk manager and you have a WD drive then it should work as disk manager contains an overlay. Perhaps the problem is you're not setting a drive type in cmos/bios setup first? Or if you're using the WD installation disk that currently comes with new drives, it's possible your drive is too small for their utility.

EZDrive9.03 Drive Overlay Software does not read BIOS parameters, unfortunately using Drive Overlay'S can effect direct port access under MS-DOS. I may have a copy somewhere.... This was found using the search function: http://www.computing.net/answers/do...

Dave: thanks for your suggestions. I am still using WD´s disk manager, and it works pretty, but in a larger machine(and with Hitachi´s 80 GB hard disks). As I wrote in my settings (at this page), I am using a AMD´s 486 with 80 GB IDE disks, and DOS 7.10, and it works excellent. So I know the mechanic of such stuff. But this case is different, because I need to modify the disk parameters, before loading the TSR, because the AMD´s have HD autodetection, and the Texas doesn´t, as I wrote, this BIOS has a small table with about of a dozen of fixed disks, the larger is 209 Mb. And it is very difficult to find a disk of that characteristics in good status. The current version of Western Digital disk Manager accepts to modify the size of the disk, but by means of the capacity that one want the BIOS may see. I had had an earlier version of that stuff where the CHS data was possible to modify at the disk´s EEPROM, but I lost that copy. I surely must be a lot of tries to change the size of the disk to find the "one" that just matches any of that contained in the Texas´s BIOS table. I wrote an email to Western Digital, but I´m still waiting the answer. Best regards. Osvaldo. Banfield, Buenos Aires, Argentina. If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.

The typical method of installing an overlay on the old non-auto detect machines was to ID the drive as one of the available drive types. As I mentioned above, I'm not sure if the specific type made any difference. They're usually all MFM or RLL types anyway. But now that I think about it, it may have needed to be type 1 or type 2--a 10 or 20 meg drive--as that would be the 'signal' that allowed the overlay to install. But I do know you need to select a drive type otherwise no drive is seen. I'd have to research to see if there's an ideal type to use. I uploaded this generic disk manager a few years ago. You might want to try it: http://members.driverguide.com/driv... When downloading it's best to use the 'view a series of ads' option as registering only serves to limit your downloads. When the ad comes up just click 'no thanks' or whatever takes you to the next one.

I googled a little and it looks like the preferred drive type is either: User definable type with C/H/S of 1024/16/63 or Drive type 1 Since you apparently don't have a user definable type, go ahead and set it to drive type 1 and see if the overlay will install.