Yes, something like this. There may be problem that some controllers may have IDE connector so close to ISA slot and then it depends if 1-40 pin order goes left-right or opposite that would determine PCB rotation. Always is possible to solder it on wires, it's just 8 incl. pwr.
I didn't try mSATA yet but I belive it's very different kind of problem...

As expected, mSATA still doesn't work with this IDE controller, it must be some lower level electrical/timing incompatability.

RayeR wrote on 2022-12-14, 03:20:

As expected, mSATA still doesn't work with this IDE controller, it must be some lower level electrical/timing incompatability.

BTW I tried to install Win95 OSR2 on the SSD on this 386/486DLC board and it took cca 45min (from install files preloaded on SSD from DOS). Installed system boots within 26s and I was positively surprised how responsive it is. Compared to my 1st PC 486DX4/100 with 630MB platter HDD where I also tried to install Win95 I still remeber that it was a real pain of endless head crunching during swapping to HDD... http://rayer.g6.cz/hardware/retropc2.htm#XTIDE-SSD
Some years ago I upgraded also one Compaq PIII subnotebook with 512MB SDRAM and 32GB SSD in mSATA-IDE adapter, having WinXP there and it also do well...

muon wrote on 2019-02-22, 08:23:

konc wrote:

There is no way a 286/386/486 will detect the capacity of a SATA drive. This is more a capacity than an interface problem. Your best chance is to make use of the XT-IDE BIOS, can be done on a NIC but better on an actual card since your m/b doesn't have an IDE controller anyway.

I do not care that "some" capacity is lost. I don't like to use CF cards or other devices with NAND memory (SSD), due to their short longevity (W95, W98, WMe, MSDOS do not have TRIM). I have mounted the XTIDE BIOS in 3com card ( XTIDE ROM - 3COM 3C509B-C - W27E512-70 ) and it does not solve the problem.

Even without TRIM modern SSD firmware will still work to reduce NAND wear so it will still outlast a hard drive, the wear is more a concern if you are constantly doing full drive size writes which is rare on a modern system and highly doubtful on a retro build. If you are that concerned do not format the SDD it its full capacity and that will give the NAND even longer life. NAND manufacturers do not assume the device they will be running on are TRIM compliant [not all will be even in modern products] thus they place extra contingency functionality into their firmware for wear level management, now does TRIM help absolutely but it is not the only tool in the firmwares' tool belt.

Lots of comments here, and I have not read then all.

But have any of you guys suggested shrinking a Seagate disk with Seatools. Connecting with the use of an XT-IDE and then running a drive overlay software?

brostenen wrote on 2022-12-25, 13:46:

Lots of comments here, and I have not read then all.

But have any of you guys suggested shrinking a Seagate disk with Seatools. Connecting with the use of an XT-IDE and then running a drive overlay software?

I can understand shrinking a drive if its intended use is with an OS that does not handle drives larger than a certain size, but why would you need a drive overlay if using XT-IDE ? The XT-IDE option ROM replaces the PC's integrated drive handling capabilities and supports even LBA48 ( >137GB) drives now . Consequently, XT-IDE addresses the limitations that drive overlays were designed to overcome, which makes them unnecessary it XT-IDE is being used .

Or maybe I've misunderstood your intent ?

RayeR wrote on 2022-12-13, 15:39:

Hi,
I succeed to make a simple IOCS16# decoder using 2 log. gates IOs 7432 and 7403 (simple grounding of IOCS16# is no go as only data register requires 16-bit access and other regs. needs 8-bit). Now the SSD is identified properly and works fine on that ancient 386 with XTIDE BIOS. I plan to make some compact PCB with SMD parts that could be “glued” to backside of old IDE controller 40-pin header. Thanks to rasz_pl for valued posts helping to solve this puzzle.
Here are some photo and schematic diagram of decoder:

Excellent. Applying De Morgan's, you can make the circuit using only NOR gates: //(//(//(DA0+DA1)+//(DA2+CS0))+/CS1). Unfortunately, by my count this is nine gates, so not as chip efficient as your option.

darry wrote on 2022-12-25, 14:40:

brostenen wrote on 2022-12-25, 13:46:

Lots of comments here, and I have not read then all.

But have any of you guys suggested shrinking a Seagate disk with Seatools. Connecting with the use of an XT-IDE and then running a drive overlay software?

I can understand shrinking a drive if its intended use is with an OS that does not handle drives larger than a certain size, but why would you need a drive overlay if using XT-IDE ? The XT-IDE option ROM replaces the PC's integrated drive handling capabilities and supports even LBA48 ( >137GB) drives now . Consequently, XT-IDE addresses the limitations that drive overlays were designed to overcome, which makes them unnecessary it XT-IDE is being used .

Or maybe I've misunderstood your intent ?

It was more meant as XT-IDE or drive overlay.
Another thing that I forgot to mention, was that tons of ATA-100/133 drives can still be bought cheap these days.

Hi, I made a small PCB for IOCS16# generator circuit intended to place on backside of IDE controller's header, so this is why routed on one layer to make bottom insulated from other pins on controller's backside.

EDIT: oh I see I should add more holes for IDE header pins before 31, 32 to pass them through PCB, will be updated...

Oh that’s clever. Did you enlarge the holes a little so they fit on the solder cones?

Yes, I should enlarge them a bit over standard header footprint holes expecting bare pins...

Well, PCB updated...

Package from JLCPCB arrived yesterday. I started to assembly the PCB...

I'm done with this new compact solution. It works as expected.

RayeR wrote on 2022-12-03, 12:42:

Here's below is shown how the POST screen is broken with Samsung mSATA SSD. It's interesting that not only whole characters are missing but also font is broken, I wonder how this can happen when the font is in ROM used by font generator. Other ISA controller that doesn't break like this is not too much different...

286 exhibiting similar glitches are most likely affected by ATA1 pin 28 change from ALE to CSEL Re: "Fixed" 386sx motherboard works but not with 16-bit VGA card
but that still wouldnt explain font glitches!?!?

Heh, another ATA std fun, but I doubt it caused problem in my case... For sure I'll check pin 28 how is routed on mSATA adapter and IDE controller side...

Dear all,

Did I understood all correct that without additional engineering you won’t get a (m2) sata ssd working on a std 386 ide board?

Regards

Edit: interesting info I found here as well:

Finally, with Socket 5 or 486 or older boards, the IDE controller does not support bus mastering DMA transfers in the 'modern' way that the Intel Triton chipset introduced. You are stuck with programmed I/O. One of the biggest speedups for PIO mode is Read Multiple Sectors/Write Multiple Sectors. Instead of generating an interrupt for every 512 bytes, they can be batched into blocks of 1024-8192 bytes. In my experience SSDs do not support multiple sector transfers even when run through one of these converters, while HDDs do. So a mechanical drive may actually be faster, especially when a modern 1TB/2TB HDD has a relatively huge cache inside it vs. what would have been typical for these machines.

Marco wrote on 2024-02-13, 19:22:

Dear all, […]
Show full quote

Dear all,

Did I understood all correct that without additional engineering you won’t get a (m2) sata ssd working on a std 386 ide board?

Regards

Edit: interesting info I found here as well:

Finally, with Socket 5 or 486 or older boards, the IDE controller does not support bus mastering DMA transfers in the 'modern' way that the Intel Triton chipset introduced. You are stuck with programmed I/O. One of the biggest speedups for PIO mode is Read Multiple Sectors/Write Multiple Sectors. Instead of generating an interrupt for every 512 bytes, they can be batched into blocks of 1024-8192 bytes. In my experience SSDs do not support multiple sector transfers even when run through one of these converters, while HDDs do. So a mechanical drive may actually be faster, especially when a modern 1TB/2TB HDD has a relatively huge cache inside it vs. what would have been typical for these machines.

The most common issue that prevents Sata device from working on old computers is that the storage insists on using LBA addressing while BIOS released before June 1994 are usually limited to 512MB and CHS addressing. If you install an option rom that supports LBA addressing, like Xtide Universal BIOS, or add drive overlay software to your boot sector that supports LBA addressing, you can get often successfully mount those devices. But there's a couple other weird addressing and timing that can pop up when trying to make 286's and 306's work with fast large drives, so it's not 100% successful. The posters here are working through one of those issues.

My rule of thumb is that if your BIOS is <=1993, a small CF or an SD adapter will likely be the easiest thing to do without any noticeable performance drop off, and if your BIOS is >= 1997, a small SSD will give you the best value, just make sure to enable DMA in Win98 device manager.

p.s. I've been able to get some Sata SSD devices to work using Multiword DMA with some 1994 VLB controllers from that period, but others from the same company I had no no luck. I don't have any hard and fast rules for that period. Depends on the controller, BIOS, Drive, etc. Example: Re: List of VLB IDE Controllers

Thanks a lot.

What about going for a PATA SSD like Transcend PSD330?

Anyway it doesn’t have any cache built in so I wonder whether a spinning hdd with 16mb cache wouldn’t be faster

Marco wrote on 2024-02-13, 21:26:

What about going for a PATA SSD like Transcend PSD330?

I don't know what they were once upon a time, but these days my experience is that companies selling 44pin PATA SSD's give you a case with a SATA SSD & JM20330 PATA-SATA bridge inside.

Note: if you want a native PATA SSD, consider a CF or a 40 pin DOM, since they are native PATA SSD's that are more than capable of saturating the ISA bus, regardless of the on drive cache.

Ah ok. Thanks a lot