Have you done an fdisk /mbr? If not try it, you shouldn't need more than that + EZ-Drive regardless of the restricted BIOS options.

Yeah I did try that but the system still didn't recognise the paritions on it. It's really quite bizarre. Is there a way to specify the geometry that EZ-Drive should use? I'd try and get another card but they're not cheap these days and seems to be hard to find a legitimate one. Feels like there's a need for a good IDE emulator.

It might be an incompatibility with the adapter or the CF card itself. Do you have it as the only device on the IDE port? Does it have external power connector or is it supplied by the IDE port?

I just discovered today that my perfectly fine working CF card in Windows 98 SE instacrashes Windows 2000 when booting the setup from CD. So even if it looks stable, CF cards can cause issues for old systems.

It's on the same cable as the HDD, didn't seem to play nice with the CDROM on the secondary channel. It does have it's own power connector, and it's set to slave with the original HDD as master. Don't have space in the case for a second HDD hence using this thing but I might just find a bigger HDD and be done with it.

You could test if it works if it is the only device on the IDE port, to see if that helps. Wouldn't be a permanent solution in your case though, if you already have other drives connected.

I'll do that to be sure, did just occur to me that I've got another CF adapter knocking around somewhere too - not one on a face plate but would be worth trying to eliminate the adapter itself as the cause of the issue.

Yeah, try that as well. And also check the cabling. I had things happen due to wobbly connectors before. Always a great feeling to spent hours diagnosing and then discover there's just a cracked solder joint on the power connector for example.

I've just spent well over a week trying to work out why the machine would only boot with the CMOS clear jumper in the clear position... only to realise that I'd assumed the pins go 1,2,3 (1-2 closed is normal). Turns out the pins go 3,2,1 from left to right!

Seems like I discarded my spare adapter.. guess I'll be buying another. Might reflow the solder on this one though, it does feel like something is a little off like that as the behaviour is pretty inconsistent and none of the solder joints are nice and shiny. Managed to get EZdrive recognising it at the right size, but then it'd lose the plot trying to set it up, dumping random ascii and endless beeps.

Could be bad solder joints, yes. But since IDE is implemented in the CF card itself, the adapter is only passing signals and power through to the card. That's why it can work with card A by fail with card B. I'm also not sure of the backwards-compatibility of modern CF cards. I mean, it can be that only modern UDMA access is implemented properly and older PIO/legacy IO is flaky.

Hmmm. Maybe, this card did perform in this machine previously, and it seems ok when using a USB reader with my modern PC. I noticed the name of the drive gets reported different ways in EZDrive, often with some garbage but nearly always starts with "CF Cerd" which isn't exactly confidence inspiring!

Turns out it was the adapter. I've not reflowed it yet as I've been away, but ordered another one since they're so cheap, and the new one works just fine. Now have Windows 95 installed which is sweet, but hit an issue I hit with a previous install, where installing SiS chipset drivers to get DMA transfers seems to screw windows. Time to remove those again!

Glad you found a solution for that.

Just curious, what chipset does you motherboard have? 430fx & 82371FB or 430vx & 82371SB ?

mattlacey wrote on 2023-11-15, 23:08:

Turns out it was the adapter. I've not reflowed it yet as I've been away, but ordered another one since they're so cheap, and the new one works just fine. Now have Windows 95 installed which is sweet, but hit an issue I hit with a previous install, where installing SiS chipset drivers to get DMA transfers seems to screw windows. Time to remove those again!

Nice find! Really similar to what I have experienced. I guess it is kind-of hit & miss sometimes with those adapters.

douglar wrote on 2023-11-16, 01:24:

Glad you found a solution for that.

Just curious, what chipset does you motherboard have? 430fx & 82371FB or 430vx & 82371SB ?

It's an IBM PC 340, so it's an SiS 5511, 5512 5513 combo (can see that on the spare board I have, but also documented here: https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/ibm-pc-340-type-6560). I found the original IBM CD but even the drivers on that cause me issues with this machine. I think it's probably the CF adapter that's failing. I'm tempted to image the current HDD setup and then install Win 95 onto that just to see if DMA will work there or not.

mattlacey wrote on 2023-11-16, 10:27:

It's an IBM PC 340, so it's an SiS 5511, 5512 5513 combo (can see that on the spare board I have, but also documented here: https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/ibm-pc-340-type-6560). I found the original IBM CD but even the drivers on that cause me issues with this machine. I think it's probably the CF adapter that's failing. I'm tempted to image the current HDD setup and then install Win 95 onto that just to see if DMA will work there or not.

That's a chipset that I've never worked with. It's a less common controller from an awkward period of IDE history.

According to this:
http://66.113.161.23/~mR_Slug/chipset/c ... 0623#30535

o Built-in PCI Master/Slave IDE Controller
- Fully compatible with PCI Local Bus Specification V2.1
- Supports PCI Bus Mastering
- Plug and Play Compatible
- Supports Scatter and Gather
- Supports Dual Mode Operation, Native Mode and Compatible Mode
- Supports IDE PIO Timing Mode 0, 1, 2 of ANSI ATA Specification
- Supports Mode 3 and Mode 4 Timing Proposal on Enhanced IDE
Specification
- Supports Multiword DMA Mode 0, 1, 2

So it doesn't look like it supports UDMA and getting Multiword DMA to work is highly dependent on the firmware in your CF.

It would be interesting to see if the CF adapter that is giving you trouble works on older, slower ATA0 or ATA1 systems.

Any chance you could post pictures of the adapter?

This is the broken one, but it's identical (apart from the number on the CF slot shielding/case) to the new one I put in the machine:

As you can see there's no indication of any smarts on the adapter itself - based on the ground pour on the bottom I'm pretty confident it's just a two layer PCB so nothing hidden away. I just installed OSR2 of Win 95 to see if that might behave differently, though it's seemingly got a hardware conflict on the graphics card with OSR1 didn't have and isn't loading the drivers right. Always fun and games with these machines!

mattlacey wrote on 2023-11-16, 14:00:

As you can see there's no indication of any smarts on the adapter itself - based on the ground pour on the bottom I'm pretty confident it's just a two layer PCB so nothing hidden away. I just installed OSR2 of Win 95 to see if that might behave differently, though it's seemingly got a hardware conflict on the graphics card with OSR1 didn't have and isn't loading the drivers right. Always fun and games with these machines!

I've got a couple of those. I like them because they are cheap and have the LED so if you make a 3d printed drive bay adapter, you get the light in the front.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5248654
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5248656

But I have had to touch up the solder that holds on the metal shielding on a pair of them because the two pads on the CF insertion side broke loose.

Honestly, bloody computers. Spent all the time sorting things out - reconnected the HDD, verified both are reporting with correct sizes etc., and installed Plop so I could sort out booting Win 95 off the CF Card and DOS from the HDD, and now DOS is no longer booting.

BIOS sees the HDD fine, Plop can see it, Testdisk can see it, but if I try and boot it all I get is "Starting MS-DOS..." and nothing. Same even if I disconnect the CF adapter. Guess I need to run scandisk or something but even when I boot from a boot floppy the partitions on that drive aren't mounted (one primary, one logical). FDISK shows them as type unknown... guess I'll try correcting that in Testdisk and see what happens.

-- EDIT --

I forgot I put EZ-Drive on there in an attempt to sort out the issues with the old flash adapter. Will get rid off that before doing anything else.