vstrakh wrote on 2023-03-13, 18:24:

Ok, plugging back all the devices - Gotek floppy emulator, CF card with IDE adapter. The ALE is dead again. The ALE is present o […]
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Ok, plugging back all the devices - Gotek floppy emulator, CF card with IDE adapter. The ALE is dead again.
The ALE is present on the IDE interface, so unplugging the CF card in case it's somehow behaves bad - ALE is still bad. Unplugging the whole CF adapter - now it's alive again.

Holy crap, "The Chinesium Strikes Back".
See the pin 28 where ALE is delivered with IDE cable. They've grounded it!

all according to ATA specification 😀

>In all cases CF is used instead of HDD

crap, I missed this the first time 🙁 would have told you the cause right away Re: "Fixed" 386sx motherboard works but not with 16-bit VGA card Everything is explained in that link

Yeah, I remember the CSEL jumper on the HDDs back in the day, but never was interested enough to learn how it was implemented.
And googling for IDE pinout (not ATA) I found the picture with ALE, which solved my case, though didn't tell the whole story of pin 28 😀

Still, I don't agree that the pin 28 should be grounded on the device. Isn't it supposed to be grounded on the controller side, and then the gap in the cable between the ATA connectors would deliver that info into the device? The device should not put anything there, it should read the status of pin 28 - grounded or floating.