Haven't we had this conversation?

To be bootable the card either needs a BIOS onboard or your system BIOS needs to have the option for an external PCI storage controller. Ideally you want the former, because otherwise you'll undoubtedly have LBA capacity limit problems.

I suggest getting a Promise SATA150 TX2. It has 2 SATA and 1 PATA. I've booted a 486 with it. I've also used Promise Ultra66 and a Silicon Image card with success. Ultra66 was popularly used by OEMs as a way to add UDMA66 to 440BX systems. Almost any Promise card should be fine.

I have had good luck with a Promise Ultra100 TX2. There is also an Ultra 133 TX2. The Ultra100's are a little easier to find and are often cheaper, esp. for non-US based eBay buyers. They are great for retro systems because they have driver support on a broad range of operating systems: WinXP/2K/NT4/98/95/3.1/DOS. I used this card for the Ultimate 686 Benchmark Comparison and did not have any trouble with it on 8 different motherboards, including PCI 486's. I got mine for $4.

http://firstweb.promise.com/upload/Support/Ma … 2_manual_En.pdf

EDIT: As swaaye pointed out, if you want to change your HDD, you can go with a Promise SATA150 TX2. I prefer the Promise SATA150 TX2plus because it also adds an ATA connector (along with 2 SATA connectors), making it ideal for testing different hard drives.

http://firstweb.promise.com/upload/Support/Ma … User%20v1.3.pdf

swaaye wrote:

Haven't we had this conversation?

I don't think so... I did mention in someone else's thread that i was thinking about getting one though.

Anyway, thanks for the replies guys and it looks like i'll be getting a Promise card (not SATA though)... I've seen a few cheap Ultra100 TX2 cards and i'm sure it'll be more than fast enough for an old DOS/Win98 PC (a big improvement over ATA 33 at least 😀).

I like the SATA card because I can plug in a SSD.

I actually tend to use the onboard IDE on my 440BX board. Upgrading from UDMA33 to UDMA100 just isn't very noticeable and using the onboard IDE keeps things simpler. Less PCI card juggling when you find out that some cards aren't getting along.

i've used a silicon image ide card for a few years - it's in our main pc right now as the damn motherboard only has 1 pata socket but i have 4 pata devices.

what i would like is a pci-e card that supports 2 ide devices - the only one i've seen only supports one pata drive.

my pci ata card takes the only pci slot not blocked by the graphics card 🙁

swaaye wrote:

Upgrading from UDMA33 to UDMA100 just isn't very noticeable

With this I have to disagree. The performance gain from UDMA33 to ATA100 is indeed noticeable. Actually the difference between UDMA66 and 100 is not *that* noticeable, but from 33 to 100 it is; and by far.

But to be honest, the best possible thing would be to ignore ATA altogether, plug in SATA controller and use SSD instead of HDD. I didn't have a clue how much faster and more reliable it was until I started using one myself. Never again will I take my chances with HDD RAID 0. 😀

UDMA33 is slower yes but I've not found it to be much of an annoyance on a machine used for W98 and old games. The Abit 440bx board I have is touchy with PCI cards so I prefer to keep things simple.

On the other hand with my 440FX Socket 8 board that only has PIO4/MWDMA2, a PCI IDE card is a vast improvement and not left out.

elfuego wrote:

swaaye wrote:

Upgrading from UDMA33 to UDMA100 just isn't very noticeable

With this I have to disagree. The performance gain from UDMA33 to ATA100 is indeed noticeable. Actually the difference between UDMA66 and 100 is not *that* noticeable, but from 33 to 100 it is; and by far.

But to be honest, the best possible thing would be to ignore ATA altogether, plug in SATA controller and use SSD instead of HDD. I didn't have a clue how much faster and more reliable it was until I started using one myself. Never again will I take my chances with HDD RAID 0. 😀

I'm not prepared to fork out for an SSD just for it to be used in a cheap old PIII system... It would be the most expensive part in the entire PC 🤣. Wouldn't there be any issues running an SSD or any SATA drive with DOS and Windows 98?

I think going 33 to 100 should be noticeable, and the HDD in my PIII system already supports UDMA100 (but currently running at 33).

I have an Adaptec 2400a caching IDE RAID controller in my main WIN98SE gamebox with a 128 meg of ram on it set up with 3 80 gig drives in RAID 5 with another one for backup and it works great for me. When playing Half-Life the loading pauses are quite short and I have redundancy if a drive dies. If you look on ebay they are cheap and available. Just be aware that they are a full-length card so you need the room in your machine.

That 2400a looks sweeeeeeeeeeet. Too bad I just re-did my Ultimate Win98 machine w/ a Promise SATA TX4 card. I invested in a bunch of SATA drives and didn't really need to.... 😢

PowerPie5000 wrote:

I'm not prepared to fork out for an SSD just for it to be used in a cheap old PIII system... It would be the most expensive part in the entire PC 🤣. Wouldn't there be any issues running an SSD or any SATA drive with DOS and Windows 98?

As long as the SSD and the controller card get along, everything will be fine and stupid fast (when the CPU isn't a bottleneck). I've had an extra SSD on occasion and tried it out.

SSDs from a few years ago are getting pretty cheap on ebay. So it really isn't an insane choice anymore. Those first gen Sandforce drives are still awesome.

Pair that PCI SATA controller w/ a fully-populated Gigabyte i-RAM, and just be happy with your superfast Dos-sized HDD. 😉

SSDs are getting cheap enough, so cheap in fact, that a small SSD is cheaper than the cheapest platter HDD you can buy.

For some reason I couldn't get this PCI SATA card going the last time and I gave up, but tried again today and it works right away.

I tested this card on a ASUS CUSL-2M (S370) and Iwill AX100 Plus (Super Socket 7).

On the Asus it just worked (booted), on the Iwill it boots through the PCI card if the boot order is set to SCSI. So if I have to to C, SCSI it boots from the CF card first, if I have it set to SCSI, C it boots from the SATA HDD. Quite nifty 😀

Old SATA HDDs are cheap and easy to find. Don't discount notebook drives as well...

Very interesting thread. Makes me think about using one of these PCI cards in my Tualatin i440BX and plug to it both some cheap small capacity SATA SSD and the DMA-5 HDD (currently working at just DMA-2 ATA33).

Have no previous experience with these gadgets, but from what I understand a Promise SATA150 TX2Plus could boot the i440BX from the SATA SSD and run the HDD at DMA-5, right?

Yes a SATA 150 TX2 will do that.

This is getting interesting... I actually have a spare 120GB 2.5" SATA laptop HDD, but will Windows 98 see all the space? And will it work under DOS with a Promise PCI card? I'm pretty sure i'll need to format it with a WinME boot disk too iirc?

PowerPie5000 wrote:

This is getting interesting... I actually have a spare 120GB 2.5" SATA laptop HDD, but will Windows 98 see all the space? And will it work under DOS with a Promise PCI card? I'm pretty sure i'll need to format it with a WinME boot disk too iirc?

Man I just recently played with all of this, now it's gone. I must be getting old...

The basics are:

- Use Windows 98SE
- Max partition of 120MB

You can even use this HD preparation tool from Western Digital (it's on the Ultimate Boot CD), and it will create a compatible FAT32 partition for you.

You think this controller would work with ancient hardware (i440BX, GA-5AX)?:

(Click to expand)

Konig CMP-SATAPCI11 S-ATA PCI CARD + IDE

"Driver supported MS Windows® 98SE/Me/2000/NT/XP, Linux"

I own that card, stay away from it! Win98 drivers are bugged, and I could not install it on the 440BX system I tested on. It does not have a proper BIOS, so it is not bootable.

Get the Silicon Image cards as mentioned in this thread.