What does fdisk say ? Is the partition beeing active ?

I'm sorry, that's all that comes to my mind. Well, almost.
Some people have reported that "fdisk /mbr" would have helped them in such situations,
but personally I never saw the need for that. Anyway, maybe you like to give it a try. 😀

http://www.getusb.info/flip-your-bit-usb-util … ke-local-drive/

Might this be a solution?

I had boot problems with some of my SD/CF-equipped retro machines too. My PS/Valueline wont boot from CF but could access it without any problems while booted from other media. I coud fix the problems by using GAG, which is a boot manager. Maybe it could help you too. http://gag.sourceforge.net/

every single time that i used sd to ide, fdisk /mbr did the trick.

Yes, it looks like "fdisk /mbr" fixed it. Now I have at least two systems that can boot from the SD card, proving that it really is bootable. Thanks for your help. 😀

I noticed that it still won't boot on the oldest system (TI Travelmate 4000E WinSX 25), but I guess the BIOS just doesn't like the 1 GB card (it shows up as "030 MB" in the BIOS when I enter the CHS numbers that worked fine on the other systems). When booted from a floppy, the system shows all files and directories on the C: drive, but it locks up every time I try to boot from it or run an executable like QBASIC from the C: drive. I'll try a smaller SD card when I get my hands on one.

Well, I got myself a 128 MB SD card, figuring it should work fine in the Travelmate 4000E since its original hard drive is about 120-130 MB. It doesn't. 😠 The SD card itself works perfectly fine and is bootable in the other two systems, just like the 1 GB microSD card I tried earlier.

My routine for setting up the SD was as follows:

• open up one of the laptops that have HDD auto-detection and remove the HDD
• put the SD card in the converter and connect it to the IDE cable
• start the laptop and enter the BIOS
• write down the numbers (Cylinders, Heads, Sectors, Write Pre, Land Zone)
• insert MS-DOS 6.22 disk 1
• exit the BIOS and boot from floppy
• abort DOS installer
• run "fdisk/mbr"
• run fdisk, delete all partitions, then create a new primary partition (using all the space on the HDD), fdisk automatically makes the partition active
• reboot (and abort DOS installer again)
• run "format c: /s"
• remove floppy and reboot -> booting works fine
• turn laptop off and disconnect the IDE cable
• connect SD converter to IDE cable in the TM 4000E
• start the laptop and enter the BIOS
• select harddisk "Type 48" (the only type that allows me to enter the CHS... numbers manually) and type in the numbers
• save settings and reboot

The TM 4000E fails every time when trying to boot from the SD as HDD. When booting from a floppy, I can see the C: drive and write data to it. But reading the data from the C: drive always gives me a read error, which is probably why it won't boot. But any data that is written to the SD card is actually written correctly. I can take the SD card, put it in a card reader and can read everything the TM 4000E wrote to it. Only the TM 4000E itself can't read anything (well, typing "echo testing > test.txt" and "type test.txt" did work, no idea why).

What I can say is that "Type 48" works fine for the original harddrive when I enter the correct numbers (the drive is usually set up as Type 37), so Type 48 should be the general user defined option in that BIOS version. The POST screen says "PhoenixBIOS(TM) A486 Version 1.01" and "System BIOS version 2.11 - TI TravelMate 400E Color" if that helps.

Does anyone have an idea why the TM 4000E can't read the SD card? I already tried putting an actual HDD in it, but the smallest 44 pin HDD I have is over 3 GB and didn't work at all. I couldn't change to the C drive even though I booted with a Win98 boot disk. At this point I have no idea if the system would work with any HDD other than the original.

Re: Compaq lte 4/75cx restoration woes
Re: Toshiba Tecra 720CDT = Great DOS Gaming Laptop

I feel ya. 🙁

If you like to make sure the card has no partition-leftovers,
give S0Kill a try (make backups first). Re: IDE to Compact Flash as MS-DOS boot drive.
It helped me lots of times. It was also helpful in erasing Linux boot loaders.

Edit: As a last resort, give FreeDOS a try.
Perhaps the BIOS is providing more information via int13h than it should.
In combination with a huge SD card, this could confuse old MS-DOS. It's just a wild guess, though.

Not all CF cards are bootable. You need to make sure your CF card is supported as a "fixed disk" rather than removable. I remember some cards have a physical switch for this, but some need a software utility to switch it. Some cards are stuck in removable mode, because the manufacturer refuses to release the utility.

Um, okay. In pure DOS, I've never encountered a non-bootable CF card so far.. 😕 The ones I had booted in one machine or another.
(Not 100% sure why. Maybe I was just lucky. Or my copy of DOS just didn't know it wasn't allowed to boot from a non-fixed disk and just did.)

Just to make this clear again: All SD cards I've tested so far are indeed bootable in at least two systems. So the cards as well as the IDE -> SD converter are working fine.

The problem must be related to the TI TravelMate 4000E. It can read the FAT from the SD card (typing "dir" at the DOS prompt and changing directories works fine) and it can write new files to the disk (which can then be read perfectly fine by other systems accessing the SD card). But the TM 4000E can't actually read any files, not even the ones it just created. That obviously makes it impossible to boot from the SD card. The systems does try to boot from the card, it just hangs or locks up at the point where it would normally say "Starting MS-DOS" or "Operating system not found".

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Not all CF cards are bootable. You need to make sure your CF card is supported as a "fixed disk" rather than removable.

I'm using SD cards in an IDE -> SD converter, so I'm not sure why you mention CF cards. Does this restriction also apply to SD cards?

Jo22 wrote:

If you like to make sure the card has no partition-leftovers,
give S0Kill a try (make backups first). Re: IDE to Compact Flash as MS-DOS boot drive.
It helped me lots of times. It was also helpful in erasing Linux boot loaders.

I don't think it would be neccessary to do that, since the other two systems booted just fine from the SD cards, but I downloaded the tool anyway. Thanks for bringing that up.

Jo22 wrote:

Edit: As a last resort, give FreeDOS a try.
Perhaps the BIOS is providing more information via int13h than it should.
In combination with a huge SD card, this could confuse old MS-DOS. It's just a wild guess, though.

I bought that 128 MB (megabyte, NOT gigabyte) SD card to avoid any size related issues. The TM 4000E's original harddisk was a Seagate ST9145AG (about 130 MB), so the size itself shouldn't be a problem.

Is it possible that the TM 4000E uses a proprietary/non standard interface/protocol to communicate with the harddrive and that's what's causing the read errors? I found the manual for the original harddrive but I don't know a thing about the technical details, so I can't tell if it's any different from a regular 44 pin IDE drive.