I own a NEC PC-9821Ce. The hdd is limited to approx. 500MB unfortunately. Therefore I would like to add a second hdd.
The PC9821Ce has one internal 44 pins IDE connector for the hdd. The CD-ROM is connected via SCSI.
Can I connect a second hdd to the 44 pins IDE connector? I would use a dual CF (Master + Slave) adaptor, like this one: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805314106546.html
Is that's possible? How can I access the second hdd in DOS?
If that's not possible, can I access an external SCSI hdd in DOS?
I would appreciate any help. Thank you
Could you partition a larger drive into smaller ones? I have done this with a 4gb CF card on a PC-9801BX3 - no need for another drive controller in the mix. I'm not sure if the same applies for 9821 machines though.
Don't quote me on this, but I think the 500MB size limit is not per image, but per drive. So a physical hard disk cannot be larger than that.
I cant say for sure about the PC98, but the PC9821 is rather close to IBM PCs in terms of some of its hardware, I imagine the IDE controllers included. So it should be possible to do the two drive thing you want.
To handle to drives in DOS you would need to launch fdisk and partition, format them. You can find guides online.
Quote from: kamiboy on January 22, 2026, 05:42:47 PMDon't quote me on this, but I think the 500MB size limit is not per image, but per drive. So a physical hard disk cannot be larger than that.
That's correct. The earlier PC9821 models don't support larger drives. That's why I've asked about adding a second drive.
I hope a second drive is supported on those old models. I wonder which drive letter will be assigned to the second hdd. B, C, D, E are already reserved for floppy disk drives.