I had been using the same revision P2B with the latest beta BIOS for some months with a 120GB SSD on a IDE-SATA converter and never had a problem with it.
I moved the SSD+converter to an AOpen AX6BC and never had a problem either.

Based on that experience I would guess your problem has to do with your SD-IDE converter. But it is only a guess based on an anecdote.

SD cards are hit and miss for win98 in my experience. The best solution for win98 is a 120gb ssd with a ide/sata adapter. CF/SD is for DOS in much smaller sizes.

I have been installing and moving files with the 128GB SD inside the CF-SD adapter, and moving files from a 10GB mechanical drive which is slaved to my DVD-ROM drive. It is such a strange occurrence for the CD-IDE adapter to have a Primary Slave fail simply because of the presence of a 128GB drive on the Primary Master...

I think it has to do with how the CF-IDE adapter communicates with the motherboard during a reboot, which is why I have to power down and back on for the slave card to be seen.

I will put my 4GB Windows 95 card back in as master and the 128GB as a slave in order to conduct further testing. I will also update the chipset drivers for the P2B to see if that helps when rebooting from Windows 98 SE.

With the 128GB card as the sole drive on the Primary IDE, it is running perfectly. I may buy two separate CF-IDE adapter cards that can be connected in an IDE chain and have the primary as a 3.5 external in a floppy bay, and a large card as a file storage slave. This would allow me to use CF cards as cartridges in lieu of a multiboot set up: A Windows 95 card, 98SE card, XP Card, Dos/WFW 3.11 card, etc...

CF cards natively support ATA/IDE standard, its why they became a popular alternative.
SD cards do not. So IDE to SD card adapters also have to translate commands into "IDE speak" to work as a Hard drive.

I would be surprised if a CF to SD adapter has the brains to do this as its not an issue in modern machines where they are just treated as an external USB type device and not a hard drive.

If you want to go down the SD card route for cost, I'd recommend getting a proper SD to IDE adapter.
Any adapter you do get make sure it has a jumper to allow you to select master or slave, as this could be adding to your troubles.

I do like the cartridge style mulitboot setup it's also what I do. If you use the same cards you don't even have to change settings in bios when you swap them out 😀

chinny22 wrote on 2020-05-05, 09:42:

CF cards natively support ATA/IDE standard, its why they became a popular alternative. SD cards do not. So IDE to SD card adapte […]
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CF cards natively support ATA/IDE standard, its why they became a popular alternative.
SD cards do not. So IDE to SD card adapters also have to translate commands into "IDE speak" to work as a Hard drive.

I would be surprised if a CF to SD adapter has the brains to do this as its not an issue in modern machines where they are just treated as an external USB type device and not a hard drive.

If you want to go down the SD card route for cost, I'd recommend getting a proper SD to IDE adapter.
Any adapter you do get make sure it has a jumper to allow you to select master or slave, as this could be adding to your troubles.

I do like the cartridge style mulitboot setup it's also what I do. If you use the same cards you don't even have to change settings in bios when you swap them out 😀

I have been looking into various options, including a 128GB SSD that Amazon has for around $23, and I already have a SATA/IDE adapter on the way.

The SD/CF adapter is currently working in my Pentium III, and is working perfectly as long as it is the only thing on the primary IDE. The 10GB mechanical drive that was slaved to my DVD drive stopped working out of the clear blue last night, and I had to disconnect it in order for the system to allow me to boot from the DVD drive. Either the drive or the cable is failing (out of the blue when it was working perfectly the night before,) or the SD/CF adapter is causing instability over both IDE channels while translating the SD to CF to IDE...

I am looking forward to getting it all ironed out, with all devices working and with all of the software installed, as I will then back it all up so that I can restore it all if something happens and I don't have to worry about going through all of this again! Ultimately, I will probably run three 128 GB SSD drives, two primary and one on the secondary as a backup/restore drive.

but reinstalling windows is 1/2 the fun and I'm only semi joking !
3 12oGB drives seems pretty excessive for a Win98 PC but at $23 I don't see how you can really go wrong.

chinny22 wrote on 2020-05-05, 14:10:

but reinstalling windows is 1/2 the fun and I'm only semi joking !
3 12oGB drives seems pretty excessive for a Win98 PC but at $23 I don't see how you can really go wrong.

Drive 1 is the main drive for installs. Drive 2 will have everything in ISO/BIN+CUE format for mounting/backups, and drive 3 will be for drive 1 backups/extra storage.

Being the eccentric man that I am, I am going to put my mp3 collection of songs release up until December 31st, 2000 - in order for it to be period correct. All apps will follow those rules, though games that came out after 2000 but which will run decently on the rig can be installed. After that, games will be installed on my Athlon XP box. I am skipping quad core PCs and will use my Ryzen system for everything post Athlon XP era, as theoretically - everything past that era should work on a modern rig.

All parts in the Pentium rig will be period correct, except of course for the storage solutions (for convenience.) My Win98 rig from back in the day had an 80 gig drive! I had to uninstall things for new stuff. Since I am using a black desktop case, I bought a black remote for the Sound Blaster front panel I/O drive which is for the Live! card, though the I/O panel will be from the X-Fi Platinum, since they didn't make a Live! Drive with a black bezel as far as I can tell, though I believe that all of the I/O drives are compatible, so it is suitable for this build.

I went with the black case so that it matches everything in the room, though I originally wanted a white/beige case with old school PC speakers, in order to recreate the look and the feel of a vintage rig. The scarcity of white/beige desktop cases was the main deciding factor, however. Now I may buy a white micro ATX case with a DVD drive and a floppy drive, for a future DOSBox/86box rig, and basically recreate a vintage rig in miniature, with a CRT monitor and the works (unless I can find a decent white LCD monitor.)

Doornkaat wrote on 2020-05-03, 08:35:

I had been using the same revision P2B with the latest beta BIOS for some months with a 120GB SSD on a IDE-SATA converter and never had a problem with it.
I moved the SSD+converter to an AOpen AX6BC and never had a problem either.

Based on that experience I would guess your problem has to do with your SD-IDE converter. But it is only a guess based on an anecdote.

Do you have the model # of the ide-sata converter you find works well( is it a 2$ Chinese job) . I have tried a few and had write errors in Win98 on a connected SSD. I take it these are not passive adapters ?
Also all the ones I have tried so have increased access times and I get much slower mb/s, not sure if they support DMA mode.

AvalonH wrote on 2020-05-05, 18:55:

Doornkaat wrote on 2020-05-03, 08:35:

I had been using the same revision P2B with the latest beta BIOS for some months with a 120GB SSD on a IDE-SATA converter and never had a problem with it.
I moved the SSD+converter to an AOpen AX6BC and never had a problem either.

Based on that experience I would guess your problem has to do with your SD-IDE converter. But it is only a guess based on an anecdote.

Do you have the model # of the ide-sata converter you find works well( is it a 2$ Chinese job) . I have tried a few and had write errors in Win98 on a connected SSD. I take it these are not passive adapters ?

The one I have doesn't work and gets very hot. The one that was on the way was canceled by the ebay seller, so now I am looking at some on Amazon. The seller just put my project behind by a few days... I'll use Prime to order the adapter and the 128GB drive. Now I am looking to buy four just to have one for each possible device, since I can use SATA optical drives if I need to do so. Amazon is easier to deal with if they don't work and I need to return them. After years of zero issues with ebay, I had the seller cancel and I got scammed by another seller and am waiting on ebay to deal with it.

I have spent more time tinkering and hunting for parts than game playing. It all started when my 486 died...

I'll try to remember to post back once I have adapters that work.

Most of those Sintechi SD-IDE adapters try to guess slave or master on the fly. Perhaps it guesses wrong on the soft boot.

Also, I have found that I often have issued old IDE controllers to work with Flash PATA devices is getting them to negotiate the same PATA transfer mode. More with 486's than Pentiums, but sometimes with Pentiums. But put two devices second device on the same channel and I bet it isn't any simpler.

Here are a couple thoughts:

• Do you have any PCI IDE controllers you can try? Sometimes the devices will behave when paired with a different controller & bios.
• Can you put the SD-IDE device on its own channel or put it on a channel with a different device?
• Are you using an 80 pin cable with cable select? Make sure the slave device is on the slave connector and the master is jumpered for cable select.
• If you don't mind slower speeds, consider trying a 40 pin cable. That can limit the PATA transfer modes on some controllers and that helps compatibility.