zyga64 wrote on 2024-04-16, 17:30:

Motherboard from auction site looks like Shuttle HOT-419: https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/shuttl … hot-419-ver.1.1 TheRet […]
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Motherboard from auction site looks like Shuttle HOT-419: https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/shuttl … hot-419-ver.1.1
TheRetroWeb provides BIOS image for it, so there a chance that it is newer than yours (note inside archive says: "5/96 - Latest AMI-Bios 419AIP06.BIN for HOT419DZ")

There is also MrBIOS for Jetway J-403TG, which is based on the same chipset (OPTI 82C895): https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/jetway … 403tg-v2.0#bios
So if you have access to flash/eprom burner and spare W27C512-45 chip - you can find out for yourself if it makes any difference 😀

Good find, yes, I believe its that one exactly! I will check out the version of the BIOS, although I am very scared of flashing such an old piece of hardware. If something goes wrong, I am totally screwed. The PC works great except for the CF incompatibility which is not a given the newer BIOS would improve. Oh and no, I dont have an eprom programmer, or I have a simple one, but not really any idea how to use it. To risky for my blood 😀

WhiteFalcon wrote on 2024-04-16, 17:56:

douglar wrote on 2024-04-16, 16:58:

Unless you are using DOS 7.1 (aka Win95b or newer) you will likely have a hard time using drives larger than 8.4 GB.

Did you try removing the master/slave jumper on your CF adapter? Did you try using a blue 80 conductor IDE cable that supports cable select, putting the blue block on the mobo, the grey block on the slave, and the black block on the master?

I thought the capacity did not matter as long as I only used it as a 512MB or 256MB drive, I would be okay with that. But if it does matter, the incoming 256MB one could make a difference, and a colleague at work promised to lend me a 128MB one to test too.

Yes, I tried all possible combinations with/without the jumper, on both ends of the cable, even with moving the jumper on the HDD (which is curiously not on the back as usual, but on the bottom of the drive). No, I had trouble finding the 40 conductors ones 😉 I think I might have an 80 one too somewhere, will check. Had no idea you can use these newer ones in old PCs.

IDE devices =<528MB rarely have capacity problems on a 486, this is true. I just brought it up because you said your BIOS was detecting your 16GB device correctly using LBA. Just because your BIOS can detect a device doesn't mean it can use the device. And even if the BIOS can use the device, MS DOS FDISK might choke if you use versions from Win95 or older. FreeDOS FDISK will work.

Most 40 conductor cables don't do "Cable Select" for master/slave assignments but most 80 conductor cables will do "Cable Select" as long as Blue goes to the motherboard, Black to the master, Grey to the slave. Sometimes a CF will respond to cable select better than the adapter jumper

douglar wrote on 2024-04-16, 18:58:

IDE devices =<528MB rarely have capacity problems on a 486, this is true. I just brought it up because you said your BIOS was detecting your 16GB device correctly using LBA. Just because your BIOS can detect a device doesn't mean it can use the device. And even if the BIOS can use the device, MS DOS FDISK might choke if you use versions from Win95 or older. FreeDOS FDISK will work.

Most 40 conductor cables don't do "Cable Select" for master/slave assignments but most 80 conductor cables will do "Cable Select" as long as Blue goes to the motherboard, Black to the master, Grey to the slave. Sometimes a CF will respond to cable select better than the adapter jumper

I see, what baffles me is that as master and only drive it worked fine. Today I got a 128MB one and will be picking another 512MB one so hope you are right and the size may be the problem. So is it better to keep LBA disabled in BIOS as it was before? Could I use FreeDOS FDISK just to partition it for MS-DOS 6.22? As I mainly use this 486 for retro programming, I want it to be as "usual" as possible, and lower specs too. Hence a slow ISA Trident 512kB, only 8MB RAM, a real old slow HDD for C: etc.

I also got a new 80 conductor cable with a blue connector as you say, so can give that a try too. Not sure how to set the devices though as the CF only can do Slave/Master, no CS there. The HDD has CS/DS/SP. It was set to DS which I thought was "dual" or "double" something, but it appears that SP means "slave present" to maybe I should switch it to that (I did try it once and it did no help, but maybe it should stay this way). SP is meant for devices not supporting a protocol called DASP, so might have to set both DS and SP.

WhiteFalcon wrote on 2024-04-17, 10:59:

So is it better to keep LBA disabled in BIOS as it was before?

A drive that small, if it was an HDD, wouldn't support LBA in the first place and have no problem with untranslated CHS ("normal") either 😀

But as a CF it probably does - and when using the correct geometry, for this size, Normal/Large/LBA (which are all alternative implementations of CHS access) ought to do the same thing anyway - I wouldn't bet on it, though…

I doubt that BIOS will have a real option for allowing or not direct LBA access (Int13X) but official standalone MS-DOS will ignore it anyway 😀

WhiteFalcon wrote on 2024-04-17, 10:59:

Could I use FreeDOS FDISK just to partition it for MS-DOS 6.22?

Sure, just make sure that you selected DOS 6 compatibility mode (in fdisk.ini or by using the advanced mode argument and selecting it from there, iirc - I think it's the default anyway - that will disable LBA-type and FAT32 partitions

WhiteFalcon wrote on 2024-04-17, 10:59:

The HDD has CS/DS/SP. It was set to DS which I thought was "dual" or "double" something, but it appears that SP means "slave present" to maybe I should switch it to that (I did try it once and it did no help, but maybe it should stay this way). SP is meant for devices not supporting a protocol called DASP, so might have to set both DS and SP.

Cable Select, Device Select (generally means master, slave would be "PK jumper parking position" which as it suggests is equivalent to no jumper), and yes Slave Present ("with a non-ATA compatible master")

Long story at https://www.os2museum.com/wp/the-dual-drive-ide-hell/ but DASP is the activity LED output, on reset it's used by modern drives to figure out whether it should emulate the controller or not (the master's job but it's not that easy and it's possible to have a slave alone), older drives (especially non-HDDs) don't support this autodetection

Ryccardo wrote on 2024-04-17, 11:36:

Sure, just make sure that you selected DOS 6 compatibility mode (in fdisk.ini or by using the advanced mode argument and selecting it from there, iirc - I think it's the default anyway - that will disable LBA-type and FAT32 partitions

Thanks, I will search for just FDISK from FreeDOS then. The current problem is to make the PC successfully boot into DOS with both HDD and CF present and not freeze after memory and floppy drive tests. Will keep the HDD as master (just DS) and CF as slave then, only for the 80pin cable will have to try CS on the HDD and slave(?) on the CF.

WhiteFalcon wrote on 2024-04-17, 10:59:

I see, what baffles me is that as master and only drive it worked fine. Today I got a 128MB one and will be picking another 512MB one so hope you are right and the size may be the problem. So is it better to keep LBA disabled in BIOS as it was before? Could I use FreeDOS FDISK just to partition it for MS-DOS 6.22? As I mainly use this 486 for retro programming, I want it to be as "usual" as possible, and lower specs too. Hence a slow ISA Trident 512kB, only 8MB RAM, a real old slow HDD for C: etc.

I also got a new 80 conductor cable with a blue connector as you say, so can give that a try too. Not sure how to set the devices though as the CF only can do Slave/Master, no CS there. The HDD has CS/DS/SP. It was set to DS which I thought was "dual" or "double" something, but it appears that SP means "slave present" to maybe I should switch it to that (I did try it once and it did no help, but maybe it should stay this way). SP is meant for devices not supporting a protocol called DASP, so might have to set both DS and SP.

Compared to a 486, the CF comes from the distant future when everything was cable select (CSEL) and jumpers were not needed any more. The jumper on the CF adapter should do the same thing as a CSEL cable, which is when the jumper is in place, pin 28 is connected from the CF to the controller and the path is broken when the jumper is removed. However the key thing here is "should". Since CF's were rarely used in master/slave setups, it is not uncommon to find a CFs that doesn't fully support master/slave setups because it wouldn't have considered necessary. And the low end CF adapter? Potentially, the design could have been put together as a midterm sophomore engineering project in Shenango Technical college, pulled off the internet by someone in Guangdong province, and then mass produced after attribution (and hopefully nothing else) was smudged out, and the ones that passed 100% of the testing got a brand name, and the ones that were merely good enough to ebay. Hypothetically.

Then there's the part where there is also a certain amount of cooperation necessary between two ATA devices in order for them to share a cable. Even if they both understand their role in your configuration, getting two devices from different time periods in PC history to cooperate electrically isn't guaranteed.

I don't think capacity is the the cause of the master slave problems, but if you try enough different devices, you should eventually find combo that works together. What the combo is though isn't easy to predict. Thinks like CHS geometry or LBA should specific to the drive record in the BIOS table, not the IDE controller or IDE cable.

Can you tell me more about the hard drive you are using?

My thanks to everyone who tried to help me! It finally works now, turned out the problem was the cheap chinese CF card (or/and its huge size). Today I got a 128MB iPQ (or something like that) and a 256MB Sandisk and they were both instantly recognized correctly by the BIOS and the PC booted without a hitch. The smaller one of them even had a usable partition and was formatted to FAT16. I am using the larger one as I realized I cannot just swap them when I want - it requires going to BIOS and let it detect the geometry after every swap. But its obviously possible, when needed. And the speed is very nice too, after testing by copying DOOM.WAD around, it appears to be twice the speed of the Quantum HDD paired with it.

I managed to get the CD-ROM working connected to the IDE port of the Soundblaster with SBIDE and VIDE-CDD and have 626kB of free conventional memory, even with the added IDE driver, amazing. So this is like my dream PC now, you know 😁

From my personal experience fighting this exact scenario, of trying to get a CF card to behave in master/slave config, it was 100% the cards I was trying at fault, not the adapters or cables. You have to get a card that *truly* supports master/slave, most industrial cards do.

RockstarRunner wrote on 2024-04-17, 15:02:

From my personal experience fighting this exact scenario, of trying to get a CF card to behave in master/slave config, it was 100% the cards I was trying at fault, not the adapters or cables. You have to get a card that *truly* supports master/slave, most industrial cards do.

I will try to make sure it was not just the size over 8GB, I have an 8GB one that works fine in my P75 so will eventually test if the 486 can detect and use it as well or not.

WhiteFalcon wrote on 2024-04-17, 14:44:

My thanks to everyone who tried to help me! It finally works now, turned out the problem was the cheap chinese CF card (or/and its huge size). Today I got a 128MB iPQ (or something like that) and a 256MB Sandisk and they were both instantly recognized correctly by the BIOS and the PC booted without a hitch. The smaller one of them even had a usable partition and was formatted to FAT16. I am using the larger one as I realized I cannot just swap them when I want - it requires going to BIOS and let it detect the geometry after every swap. But its obviously possible, when needed. And the speed is very nice too, after testing by copying DOOM.WAD around, it appears to be twice the speed of the Quantum HDD paired with it.

Congrats! I'm glad it worked out.

If you add XtIde Universal BIOS to your system, or install EZ drive disk overlay on your C:, your system will be able to autodetect the installed drives at boot time.

douglar wrote on 2024-04-17, 15:42:

WhiteFalcon wrote on 2024-04-17, 14:44:

My thanks to everyone who tried to help me! It finally works now, turned out the problem was the cheap chinese CF card (or/and its huge size). Today I got a 128MB iPQ (or something like that) and a 256MB Sandisk and they were both instantly recognized correctly by the BIOS and the PC booted without a hitch. The smaller one of them even had a usable partition and was formatted to FAT16. I am using the larger one as I realized I cannot just swap them when I want - it requires going to BIOS and let it detect the geometry after every swap. But its obviously possible, when needed. And the speed is very nice too, after testing by copying DOOM.WAD around, it appears to be twice the speed of the Quantum HDD paired with it.

Congrats! I'm glad it worked out.

If you add XtIde Universal BIOS to your system, or install EZ drive disk overlay on your C:, your system will be able to autodetect the installed drives at boot time.

Thank you 😀 Well that does sound tempting, I will look into how complicated that is. But I am happy as it is, i have doubled the storage space and first of all have a means to move data around without relying on the slow and very unreliable floppies.