ive got an 4,3 gig quantum fireball se hd as a spare one. im building my dad a 486 dx4 100 system so i thought i could use the old hd, but when i started up the comp. the hd wouldnt work, when i put in the 500mb hd which i got with the sytem it started normally.
Do i have to change some things in the bios or is it impossible to use a newer hd in a old 486 sytem?
Old systems have partitionlimits. DOS-based systems have 2Gig limit/partition. And some old BIOSes donīt support big drives. Other thing that might be incompatible is DMA.
Standard IDE controllers (which is most likely to be the type of IDE controller present in a 486 based system) cannot handle harddrives larger than 548mb (or somewhere around that size). For that you need an Enhanced IDE controller, EIDE for short. I put in an ISA EIDE controller in mine(Promise of course which could support up to two 8.4gb drives.
Dual 8.4gb drives would be pretty cool to have when everyone else was using max 500mb I only had two 280mb disks in mine(DX2/66 32mb)though :/ used the EIDE controller for my 8x CDrom.
If you can find an old ISA or PCI EIDE controller (assuming the motherboard is one of the few that has PCI slots) for a decent price, that's the way to go.
What you need to do is to partition it with DISK MANAGER (by ONTRACK Data International, Inc.) You can get that software from the Harddisk Manufacturer Website (for example, DiscWizard (TM) from Seagate Technology, Inc.)
You [b]can[b] use it man! I mean the Harddisk and so the CDR. I managed to set a Quantum 10 GB to my cousin 486 before, using a Maxtor Easy Drive software (ezdrive). What you need to do is to download the software from your harddisk manufacturer and partition it using that software. The software will make the 486 recognise harddisk greater than 512 MB
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which could support up to two 8.4gb drives. 
I only had two 280mb disks in mine(DX2/66 32mb)though :/ used the EIDE controller for my 8x CDrom.
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