I don't recommend cf/sd for win98 at all. Use a 120gb ssd. Save them for pure dos.

C0deHunter wrote on 2020-05-05, 08:04:

but the second I try to install Windows 2000, its setup complaints.

It complains about what? Industrial-grade CF cards use SLC instead of MLC, but that's it. As for what the system sees as an IDE device, there's no difference. The card may not have the fixed-disk bit set and is seen as removable media therefore (no idea if Win9x would work then but NT not), but even though many people say so, industrial-grade CF cards don't always have that bit set either.

kolderman wrote on 2020-05-05, 08:06:

I don't recommend cf/sd for win98 at all. Use a 120gb ssd. Save them for pure dos.

Can you please recommend a good/compatible IDE to SATA adapter then?
Thanks.

derSammler wrote on 2020-05-05, 08:10:

It complains about what? Industrial-grade CF cards use SLC instead of MLC

not all of them, you have to look up the model numbers before, a lot of industrial CF cards use MLC as well.

the Transcend CF170 mentioned in the OP is MLC for example: https://www.transcend-info.com/Embedded/Products/No-586
see here for an overview which Transcend cards are SLC or MLC: https://www.transcend-info.com/Embedded/cate-303#392

you can also get industrial PATA SSDs... tbh MLC is probably fine if you don't use the machine 24/7 :p
also I'd still prefer industrial MLC cards over consumer CF cards.

C0deHunter wrote on 2020-05-06, 14:59:

kolderman wrote on 2020-05-05, 08:06:

I don't recommend cf/sd for win98 at all. Use a 120gb ssd. Save them for pure dos.

Can you please recommend a good/compatible IDE to SATA adapter then?
Thanks.

I only use one kind - pic below. No IDE cable required, just plug in and connect to ssd with sata cable. Some people reckon these red ones are problematic - I literally have them in 4-5 PCs right now for over 2 years, and they have been rock solid. Maybe a few years ago there was a bad batch or revision or whatnot, but I swear by them and would not use anything else. The brown one has also been solid. They support DMA, only thing to remember is the two sata ports are NOT master/slave -- you only use one depending on direction of connection. Search this on a certain auction website: (pata,ide) sata (adpater,adaptor,converter) -(usb)

I notice now you said Windows 2000 as well...I tend to run it on 160GB plain old hdds...personally I would not run NT<WIN7 on a SSD. However the above adapter obviously works with any sata device including plain hdds so you are covered either way.

C0deHunter wrote on 2020-05-06, 14:59:

kolderman wrote on 2020-05-05, 08:06:

I don't recommend cf/sd for win98 at all. Use a 120gb ssd. Save them for pure dos.

Can you please recommend a good/compatible IDE to SATA adapter then?
Thanks.

I'm currently testing an adapter that uses a JMicron JMD330 Serial ATA Bridge Chip . I've had it for years in a PVR that did not get much use . It seems very reliable so far (tested on Promise Ultra133 TX2 and ICH2 IDE ports) . It does 90MB/sec sustained at ATA133 (probably limited by PCI bus) and 58MB/sec at ATA66 on a 815ep board with a Pentium 3 1400MHz (512K L2) . That is with a Samsung 860EVO .

EDIT : They are not easy to find based on description, but I have found at least one on a certain auction site by looking at the photos .

Hi! SSDs and HDDs from 2010 onwards are using 4kbytes/per sector. FAT (FAT32) isn't ideal for that, unlike NTFS.
That's essentially because FAT32 "data blocks can start unaligned even in case of an aligned partition."
Hence, I'd recommend reading a few of these other threads that I remember..

SSD in a Vintage Computer
Re: SSD easily corrupted under Windows 98

Re: Benchmarks: HDD vs. CF vs. true SSD on Tualatin rig
CF vs SD storage

PS: Old, small SSDs (64GB, Sandforce-based etc) are not recommended for vintage projects, IMHO.
I was an earlier adaptor at the time SSDs came out and despite correct alignment (partition created with Win 7 DVD),
these SSDs ran dog-slow on Windows XP and below.
In practice, Windows 7 was the only consumer's OS at the time which the SSDs archived "normal" speed.

Industrial CF cards and PATA DOMs might be better in this regards, since they come in small capacity despite being based on modern Flash designs.
Also, if they are forced of using MLC cells internally, they *may* run them in SLC "emulation" mode nowadays (needs verify).
Last, but not least, capacities of 8GB and below come in handy, because that's what 16-Bit DOS and Windows 3.1x can handle at max.
For example, the MircoHouse FastDisk driver for Win 3.11 can handle fixed disks of ~8GB total capacity (8,4GB ?).

Using a large, modern HDD or SSD here could cause data corruption and other funny side effects (worst case scenario),
if combined with some older helper programs like Dynamic Drive Overlays (DDOs) and FastDisk drivers try to determine the drive size
directly, bypassing the BIOS. And if they are, in addition, also limited to an 8GB range (typical mid-90s software limit), they may mess up things.

That's why it's probably best to stick to 8GB drives (max) in older systems or use XTIDE Universal BIOS or another IDE Enhancer BIOS
and not use FastDisk drivers (on Windows 3.1x), for example. 16-Bit DOS / MS-DOS 6.2x may still be limited to 8GB, though.
Alternatively, limiting a modern drive in capacity might also work. Phil of Phils Computerlab mentioned something about
Seagate utilities which can do that..

Edit: Sorry for my poor English. The wording didn't come out very well, I'm afraid.. 😅

Modern SSDs have no issue with Win98 whatsoever and are extremely fast. If there waa corruption i would have encountered it after running them for over 2 years on multiple win98s. This block alignment stuff sounds like FUD.

I've heard good things about JMicron based SATA<->IDE converters but also that they don't work well with DMA. It seems it's dependent on the combination of hardware used.

Oetker wrote on 2020-05-07, 09:16:

I've heard good things about JMicron based SATA<->IDE converters but also that they don't work well with DMA. It seems it's dependent on the combination of hardware used.

At the speeds I am getting under Windows 98 SE (measured using HDTACH), DMA seems to be working for me .
90MB/sec at 10% CPU usage with ULTRA133 TX2 (always uses DMA, AFAIK)
58MB/sec at 5% CPU usage with ICH2 IDE port (DMA checked in device manager)

Both of the these are LBA48 capable, as verified by rloew's lba48 utility and as evidenced by lack of corruption using partitions over the 127GB mark (NOTE/WARNING: not all ICH2 implementations are LBA48 capable) .

Jo22 wrote on 2020-05-07, 07:12:

Hi! SSDs and HDDs from 2010 onwards are using 4kbytes/per sector. FAT (FAT32) isn't ideal for that, unlike NTFS. That's essentia […]
Show full quote

Hi! SSDs and HDDs from 2010 onwards are using 4kbytes/per sector. FAT (FAT32) isn't ideal for that, unlike NTFS.
That's essentially because FAT32 "data blocks can start unaligned even in case of an aligned partition."
Hence, I'd recommend reading a few of these other threads that I remember..

SSD in a Vintage Computer
Re: SSD easily corrupted under Windows 98

Re: Benchmarks: HDD vs. CF vs. true SSD on Tualatin rig
CF vs SD storage

PS: Old, small SSDs (64GB, Sandforce-based etc) are not recommended for vintage projects, IMHO.
I was an earlier adaptor at the time SSDs came out and despite correct alignment (partition created with Win 7 DVD),
these SSDs ran dog-slow on Windows XP and below.
In practice, Windows 7 was the only consumer's OS at the time which the SSDs archived "normal" speed.

Industrial CF cards and PATA DOMs might be better in this regards, since they come in small capacity despite being based on modern Flash designs.
Also, if they are forced of using MLC cells internally, they *may* run them in SLC "emulation" mode nowadays (needs verify).
Last, but not least, capacities of 8GB and below come in handy, because that's what 16-Bit DOS and Windows 3.1x can handle at max.
For example, the MircoHouse FastDisk driver for Win 3.11 can handle fixed disks of ~8GB total capacity (8,4GB ?).

Using a large, modern HDD or SSD here could cause data corruption and other funny side effects (worst case scenario),
if combined with some older helper programs like Dynamic Drive Overlays (DDOs) and FastDisk drivers try to determine the drive size
directly, bypassing the BIOS. And if they are, in addition, also limited to an 8GB range (typical mid-90s software limit), they may mess up things.

That's why it's probably best to stick to 8GB drives (max) in older systems or use XTIDE Universal BIOS or another IDE Enhancer BIOS
and not use FastDisk drivers (on Windows 3.1x), for example. 16-Bit DOS / MS-DOS 6.2x may still be limited to 8GB, though.
Alternatively, limiting a modern drive in capacity might also work. Phil of Phils Computerlab mentioned something about
Seagate utilities which can do that..

Edit: Sorry for my poor English. The wording didn't come out very well, I'm afraid.. 😅

I had been using a 500GB drive initially, then replaced with a 1TB one when that failed on a patched Windows install (BHDD31) on a SIL3114 SATA card (does not use ESDI506.PDR, so does not even need the patch) using multiple partitions of 120GB (to avoid Windows limitations) with no corruption issues for years . The SIL3114 is LBA48 capable . See datasheet : http://www.pix.net/techpubs/silicon_image/SiI-DS-0103-D.pdf

I only recently switched to a Samsung 860EVO 512GB SSD which works fine with the SIL3114 . The only reason I tried the controllers (with IDE to SATA adapter) mentioned in my other posts was because rloew's TRIM.EXE does not work with the SIL3114 .

With the ICH2 and Promise controllers (both LBA48 capable according to rloew's own LBA48 test utility), TRIM.EXE causes corruption on the second partition (see this other thread: Corruption issue when using rloew's TRIM.EXE (TRIM utility for DOS) with FreeDOS FDISK 1.2.1/1.3.1 partitioned DISK) . This may be due to my use of an IDE to SATA adapter (IDE adapters were never meant to pass TRIM commands) or to a bug in TRIM.EXE . To test that, I have a Promise Fasttrack SATA S150 TX2 and a PCI to PCI Express bridge (to test AHCI PCI Express controllers that are designed to pass TRIM commands) on order . By the way, I tried Linux's fstrim command (which supposedly can trim FAT32 filesystems according to some sources, Windows only trims NTFS drives), but it did not want to work, again possibly due to the IDE to SATA adapters . There is apparently another option to trim FAT32 partitions : https://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootit-bare-metal.htm ; I will probably give that a try and report back if I cannot get TRIM.EXE . Also, I wonder if trimming is really worth it when used on interfaces this slow. Would you really notice any potential slowdown if the max speed is capped at 90MB/sec anyway ?

As for block alignment, I plugged the SSD drive into a modern PC, ran diskat-gui.exe and Easus Partition Master Professional, and both confirmed proper alignment .

The remaining issue is the fact that FAT32 file allocation units are huge (32KB) at 120GB disk size and that will result in write amplification and more wear on the drive if using lots of small files . There are way around that, though (smaller partitions, patching Windows and using smaller file allocation units).

Transcend CF170 is MLC. CF200, CF300 and CF220 are SLC. Dos works best with any SLC based NAND SSDs.

Cheers,

I can also add from experience that the CF170 has the fixed disk bit set, and operates as a normal IDE disk. For me, the 16GB CF170 card has worked for over a year in my MS-DOS retro PC, but that is of course no long term guarantee. 😉

The issue that I have is this:

I have created this MultiOS setup on a real 8GB IDE Hdd:

Partition1: System Commander 2000 (boot partition), MS-DOS, and Windows 3.1 (all on the same partition)
Partition2: Windows 95
Partition3: Windows 98
Partition4: Windows 2000 Pro

When I clone this Hdd to my SanDisk 32GB CF (using Acronis TrueImage 2017), all OS boot/run fine, *except* the Win2k, which generates a BSOD, and the dreaded Windows STOP: 0x0000007B INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE error

I just need to be sure to get an Industrial grade CF card, as I am sure, *if it is MLC* and has the proper bit, then Windows 2K would work as well. (it boots just fine on my original IDE Hdd install)

So I repeat my original request:

Can someone kindly confirm if this CF would be a suitbable choice, as I am about to order it now:

https://www.amazon.com/CF170-16-GB-CompactFla … 8665453&sr=8-14

I really appreciate it! 😀

digistorm wrote on 2020-05-07, 14:49:

I can also add from experience that the CF170 has the fixed disk bit set, and operates as a normal IDE disk. For me, the 16GB CF170 card has worked for over a year in my MS-DOS retro PC, but that is of course no long term guarantee. 😉

Thanks! I just ordered one!

I am curious as to how fast these CF cards are, throughput wise .

I just received the card today, cloned my IDE Hdd to CF170, and Windows 2000 Pro boots flawlessly! No more BSOD!

This card is really nice, and it's FAST!

Thank you so much for responding to my original post and helping me to get this card!

HIGHLY Recommended!