I was able to clone my HDD onto my CF card using clonezilla live disk. Unfortunately, my laptop isn't recognizing my CF card. (or maybe the adapter?)
My windows 10 pc can see the CF card and the adapter just fine. It's a 2GB CF card (verbatim brand), so I though it would work fine in my 486.
Sigh, having doubts I will be able to figure it out.
7F20 wrote on 2020-03-01, 20:52:I was able to clone my HDD onto my CF card using clonezilla live disk. Unfortunately, my laptop isn't recognizing my CF card. (or maybe the adapter?)
My windows 10 pc can see the CF card and the adapter just fine. It's a 2GB CF card (verbatim brand), so I though it would work fine in my 486.
Sigh, having doubts I will be able to figure it out.
You’ll get it! Does the laptop BIOS see the drive at all? Do you need to set a jumper correctly on the adapter? Does the adapter indicate it has power?
Don’t give up 😁
halls_well wrote on 2020-03-03, 05:00:Does the laptop BIOS see the drive at all?
No. And yes. When I turn it on, it sees something, but it says that it's an invalid hard drive. Whether that means it knows it's a hard drive or not I cannot say. It probable that it detects something connected but doesn't know that it's a hard drive, just that it's sensing something at the end of the HDD connector. When you enter that actual bios, nothing shows up in the HDD portion.
Do you need to set a jumper correctly on the adapter?
No clue. There's a Master Slave jumper that I tried changing and it did nothing.
Does the adapter indicate it has power?
I don't know because it's inside the HDD caddie. It should be getting power. The pins are correct and the regular HDD is getting power on the correct pins. Also, this adapter/CF combo works totally fine in my regular PC attached to an IDE header, so it's getting power in that way.
7F20 wrote on 2020-03-03, 15:39:No. And yes. When I turn it on, it sees something, but it says that it's an invalid hard drive. Whether that means it knows it's […]
halls_well wrote on 2020-03-03, 05:00:Does the laptop BIOS see the drive at all?
No. And yes. When I turn it on, it sees something, but it says that it's an invalid hard drive. Whether that means it knows it's a hard drive or not I cannot say. It probable that it detects something connected but doesn't know that it's a hard drive, just that it's sensing something at the end of the HDD connector. When you enter that actual bios, nothing shows up in the HDD portion.
Do you need to set a jumper correctly on the adapter?
No clue. There's a Master Slave jumper that I tried changing and it did nothing.
Does the adapter indicate it has power?
I don't know because it's inside the HDD caddie. It should be getting power. The pins are correct and the regular HDD is getting power on the correct pins. Also, this adapter/CF combo works totally fine in my regular PC attached to an IDE header, so it's getting power in that way.
Alright, a few more qestions...
Have you tried auto-detect in the BIOS? Nothing happens there? Can you toggle DMA and other HDD settings to see if that helps? I'm wondering if it's something about the CF adapter not supporting PIO or something similar.
Just to clarify, on your desktop you are using a 44 pin to 40 pin IDE + power adapter to connect to the CF adapter?
Lastly, if you boot from either a Windows or Linux boot floppy, do either of those see a disk?
halls_well wrote on 2020-03-04, 17:20:Have you tried auto-detect in the BIOS?
the bios has no options for hdd. if there is something there that can see, it shows it. no auto or setup or anything like that.
on your desktop you are using a 44 pin to 40 pin IDE + power adapter to connect to the CF adapter?
yes. the molex connector to the ATX psu is there in place of the regular 44 pin power inputs.
if you boot from either a Windows or Linux boot floppy, do either of those see a disk?
dos doesn't see anything, nor does Check It software. fdisk just says there isn't anything to f
Wow sorry for being slow 7F20, I've been trying to come up with something but think I'm out of ideas... My only theory goes back to some compatibility issue with the card. From what I've read any CF card should support PIO, which should work on the 486. Is the card significantly larger than the HDD you cloned? If so, how large is it? It could be that it's too large for that motherboard?
halls_well wrote on 2020-03-07, 04:42:Wow sorry for being slow 7F20, I've been trying to come up with something but think I'm out of ideas... My only theory goes back to some compatibility issue with the card. From what I've read any CF card should support PIO, which should work on the 486. Is the card significantly larger than the HDD you cloned? If so, how large is it? It could be that it's too large for that motherboard?
Well, I went and purchased a 4gb DOM on the suggestion of a user on the vcfed forum and it worked fine. I can only assume that there is something weird about the CF card, but it's weird because it's one that others have reported working in 486's, and it's 2gb size. I know some bios's only go up to 500mb at that point, but my bios seems to be okay with my new 4gb dom, so whatever. I got drive overlay software going now and have 2-2gb partitions.
I think I'll try to get a CF-pcmcia card and see if I can use it as extra storage or something. Or maybe a future project.
Thanks for the help tho.
Good to know, thanks for the followup! I have a 2GB CF card to IDE that works fine in my Pentium MMX thinkpad, but doesn't show up in a 486 Compaq Contura (420CX, in case that's what you have too...). Nothing at boot, nothing seen by FDISK 🙁
