Why is it that some older (386 / 486) motherboard's recognize a CF card in a IDE CF Adapter and some require Drive Overlay software for it to be recognized? I assume its the BIOS, but is there an exact reason why it happens?
If the disk is less than 504mb, any compatibility issues can be caused by the CF card itself. I've got a couple of 256MB cards that dont like working with the older laptops in my collection. One of my really old computers, the Packard Bell Legend 300, which is a 386 SX 20 will only work with 64MB CF cards, anything bigger fails to write correctly even after formatting.
Otherwise, with newer desktops and laptops (late 486 and pentium) that have LBA - logical block addressing, support they should be fine with 512MB to 8GB CF or SD cards. You can avoid having to use overlay software by using XT-IDE or other LBA BIOS extensions to use larger disks.
Overlay software is a big hassle if you want to use the disk in another computer. On my main 386, I just use 2x 256MB disks in a dual CF-card adapter to move files around. Since I can remove the D: drive and load files on it from my USB>CF adapter.
Thanks for the information. Yeah, I have overlay software installed on both my 386-33 and 486-100 and I cannot put the card into another CF Reader and migrate files to it. Thankfully I have them networked and a big Retro Storage drive network storage so I can get to things I need.
My CF cards are both 2 GB in size, so the 504 MB limit makes sense. Thanks again
It is really a nuisance being stuck to 504mb or less. Rececently though, someone backed up the rom from an LBA enhancer card and you can put that onto a ROM on an ISA network card to get past the limitations of non-LBA addressing on 386 and early 486 systems:
I think it is possible to use Ontrack disk overlay without using the Non-dos partiotion type.
Thermalwrong wrote on 2020-12-28, 03:54:It is really a nuisance being stuck to 504mb or less. Rececently though, someone backed up the rom from an LBA enhancer card and you can put that onto a ROM on an ISA network card to get past the limitations of non-LBA addressing on 386 and early 486 systems:
I think the same.
just a while ago I mentioned one of these, too.
Re: Help Flashing XTIDE Universal bios
From what I remember, the LBA extension ran just fine off a network card's boot rom socket, just like XTIDE Universal BIOS would do.
But unlike XUB, some Enhancer BIOSes also include Year 2000 fixes.
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