I guess that triangle has a similar meaning as an arrow or dot.
The 5v vs 3.3v thing could be related to the CF card power. Perhaps it has an on-board voltage regulator for 3.3v..

Anyway, please be careful with the CF card orientation. On some adapters, the CF card label has to face the PCB side.

So please better check the manual or resources on the net - If you PC doesn't POST, swicth the PC off instantly.

Edit: Also important: Some IDE controllers offer power on the KEY pin. If that's the case, don't attach the floppy power cable.

Jo22 wrote:

I guess that triangle has a similar meaning as an arrow or dot.

I agree - the triangle usually means pin 1.

Jo22 wrote:

The 5v vs 3.3v thing could be related to the CF card power. Perhaps it has an on-board voltage regulator for 3.3v..

If the OP could post a picture of the back of the adaptor, we could confirm this.

Jo22 wrote:

Anyway, please be careful with the CF card orientation. On some adapters, the CF card label has to face the PCB side.

The grooves in the sides of the card are not centered, if a card is inserted the wrong way up the pins don't align with the holes.

I will post a photo of the rear side later, it's dark now right here and I don't have enough light to take a decent photo.

I figured it out though. The triangle is the "1" pin. On the rear side (as you will see in to upcoming photo), that soldered pin is square while the others are round which is also an indication of the the "1" pin (at least, that's what the Internets say).

Interestingly though, the rear side of the adaptor also as a card slot! So, it can fit two cards? Didn't get the impression of it when I bought it [1].

Jo22 wrote:

Anyway, please be careful with the CF card orientation. On some adaptors, the CF card label has to face the PCB side.

The card can only be inserted one way, so that's a good thing.

Oh, I fdisk-ed the sucker and installed DOS on it. Guess what? No boot of course. I have tried a few different of this flash cards now and none of them boot. Wonder what could be the problem...

[1] https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/183637085362

pan069 wrote:

Oh, I fdisk-ed the sucker and installed DOS on it. Guess what? No boot of course.
I have tried a few different of this flash cards now and none of them boot. Wonder what could be the problem...

Hi, I can't remember to have ever seen a CF card that is truely unable to boot (even the cheapest).
Maybe the factory presets of that card in particular weren't very DOS friendly (preformatted with FAT32, odd cluster sizes, no MBR etc).
I'd recommend to make sure the drive geometry is correctly set up in CMOS setup first and then I'd run S0KILL and wipe track 0 off the disk.
Then, I'd continue with the normal FDISK procedure.. 😀

Some programs that I sucessfully used are mentioned here :

Re: IDE disk-on-module + 386
Re: Will Cisco router CF cards boot a DOS machine?

Anyway, good luck! 😀

Thanks. The drive is recognised fine. I can fdisk and format it. I can install DOS on it, no problem. But no boot. E.g. I also have a Leidisk [1], same issue. Once I boot from another drive (floppy) and I go to C: everything is there. I can run all software, e.g. scandisk. It all works, except boot.

I used different flash card on different systems, same result. Can do everything except boot. Weird...

[1] https://www.ebay.com/p/512mb-40pin-IDE-Dom-In … odule/857785711

I happen to use one of these for my MSDOS machine and I am very happy with it. Except instead of using a CF cards, I use a CF/SD adapter inside the IDE/CF adapter...and it screams along. I have found it MUCH more reliable than direct IDE/SD adapters in fact, and I don't think its possible to find IDE/SD adapters in this compact form factor (without needing an IDE cable).

And I assume that for you it boot just fine? I also have an SD card to IDE adaptor and I have the same problem. I've tried on various different systems. No boot... 🙁

pan069 wrote:

Thanks. The drive is recognised fine. I can fdisk and format it. I can install DOS on it, no problem. But no boot. E.g. I also have a Leidisk [1], same issue. Once I boot from another drive (floppy) and I go to C: everything is there. I can run all software, e.g. scandisk. It all works, except boot.

You're welcome. Did you give it a try, though or checked if the partition is set "active" ?
Just because the partition is read/writeable doesn't necessary mean that the MBR or boot code is fine. 😉

pan069 wrote:

Oh, I fdisk-ed the sucker and installed DOS on it. Guess what? No boot of course. I have tried a few different of this flash cards now and none of them boot. Wonder what could be the problem...

[1] https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/183637085362

I spent the past couple of days trying to get my 8GB Transcend CF card to boot enough so I could install Win98 on it.
Research revealed that cards that aren't "UDMA" have the "removable" flag set, and can't be made into a fixed HD, and therefore Win98 won't install.
I bought two 4GB cards at the same time. Going to test one of them today.

Found a couple utilities to make them bootable, but I can't get them to work, either, and my CF card reader on my Win7 PC isn't working.
Ordered a 32GB Sandisk Ultra (refurbished), which is supposed to have UDMA. It's cost was the same as an 8GB Ultra, so I figured I might as well give it a try.
I'll let you know what I find out, if anything.

pan069 wrote:

And I assume that for you it boot just fine? I also have an SD card to IDE adaptor and I have the same problem. I've tried on various different systems. No boot... 🙁

Yes, most fine. This is just for DOS though, all my win98 systems use a ide/sata adapter and regular Seagate hdds flashed to 120gb. Cf/Sd adapters have existed for a very long time in the camera industry and are high quality. The Chinese ide/sd adapters are dodgy as hell imo. The ide/cf adapter is nothing more than a ide pin extension so it can't really "not work".

Did you try FDISK /MBR? The implementation of the adapter can cause some issues, but AFAIK even Windows XP boots from a CF with a "Removable" flag as long it's not through USB.

Hamby wrote:

I spent the past couple of days trying to get my 8GB Transcend CF card to boot enough so I could install Win98 on it.
Research revealed that cards that aren't "UDMA" have the "removable" flag set, and can't be made into a fixed HD, and therefore Win98 won't install.
I bought two 4GB cards at the same time. Going to test one of them today.

Hi, are you sure that's the problem ? I've got several consumer class CF cards with DOS and Windows 9x for testing here.
As far as I know, the "removable media bit" has absolutely no meaning to the CF card itself and Windows 9x ist too old to even know about it.
OS/2 Warp or Windows NT/2k/XP are another story, though. They check for that bit and refuse to boot if they find it's an removable media.
But even there, things can be patched/fixed. Windows Embedded did run on CF cards and MicroDrives, for examble.
By modifying *.INF files and registry settings, even a normal Windows XP could be run off a CF card. 😀

Edit: Valuable information about "FDISK /MBR" - https://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/FDISK.htm