Specifications

Little Board/486i Technical Manual
3–4
density floppy drives. That is, you can read and boot from 360K floppies in a 1.2M 5-1/4 inch drive, and
from 720K floppies in a 1.44M 3-1/2 inch drive.
Drive Parameter Setup
Enter the number and type of floppy drives in the system. If the drives connected to the system do not
match the parameters in the configuration memory, POST displays an error message. To eliminate the
error message, set the drive parameters to match your floppy drives.
3.3.3 IDE Hard Disk Drives
The ROM BIOS supports one or two hard disk drives connected to the IDE interface. The BIOS allows
you to mix IDE drives in combination with SCSI hard disk drives.
Physical drives can have one or more logical partitions. You can install up to eight logical drives or drive
partitions. (Older versions of DOS may limit the number of logical drives you can install.)
To configure the system for one or two IDE drives, set the drive parameters with SETUP, as outlined
here:
! Drive Types—The configuration memory contains a default list of parameters that specify the
physical format of each drive. Each type specifies the total number of cylinders, number of heads,
cylinder to begin precompensation, landing zone cylinder number, and the number of sectors per
cylinder. The drive manufacturer supplies these parameters. The list contains “legacy values”,
standard for PCs—a number of older (smaller) drives are defined. Two special drive types, 48 and 49
let you enter drive parameters manually. If no built-in drive type matches your drive, select drive
type 48 or 49 and enter the drive parameters in the fields provided.
! Drive Selection—Besides specifying the physical characteristics of each IDE drive, you also must
specify how they are to be used by the ROM BIOS. Two factors control how they are used, drive
number jumper(s) and the DOS disk map.
1. The IDE drive can be jumpered as a master or slave. Each manufacturer’s drive is different, so
refer to the drive’s technical literature to find out how to jumper your drive. Drives default to
master from the factory, so if you only have one IDE drive in a system it is generally already set
up properly.
2. Use the SETUP Extended SCSI and Hard Disk Configuration menu (SETUP page 3) to enter your
IDE drive(s) in the DOS disk map. Disk 1 in the map will be logged by DOS to be drive C:, Disk
2 as drive D:, and so on. See the description of SETUP page 3 for details.
Once you have set the system’s configuration memory, the IDE drive(s) can be formatted and otherwise
prepared normally. Refer to your operating system and disk drive documentation for specific procedures
and requirements.
3.3.4 Video
Specify the initial video mode. Select Mono, CGA, or EGA/VGA. If your video display card is VGA,
super VGA, or any other high resolution standard, specify EGA/VGA no matter how it is configured to
come up. If you are using the onboard flat panel/CRT video controller, specify EGA/VGA.
3.3.5 DRAM Memory
The ROM BIOS automatically sets the amount of memory during Power-On Self-Test (POST) and stores
the result when you save the configuration values when exiting SETUP. If you change the amount of
memory installed on the board, however, you must run SETUP and do a save when you exit. This updates