PCI - bad, shared between all devices with 133Mb/s bus.
IDE - good, ICH2 south bridge has 2 dedicated ATA channels, which are connected to 266Mb/s bus.

PCI may work fine, if you don't have any other devices which like to hog bus cycles. As example - Voodoo 2.

Do you think putting SSD for a swap file will improve performance noticeably ?

You just need an SSD for everything, not just swap file. That's it.

Yea, but SSD as main disk isn't retro enough 😉 I can live with HDD bad access time on Win98 and XP but that memory swapping with Firefox and some games is awful.

Also, I tried SSD with Promise SATA controller and it wasn't so much better than HDD on my build (on Vista /7 it was day and night difference). But yes, PCI 33MHz was a limitation.

Do you know any good IDE to SATA adapter?

I have a few adapters. They are all over ebay and amazon. One type connects to the motherboard's IDE port and has power and SATA cable connections. The other connects to the SATA drive and then has a PATA connector and power. Most SATA PATA adapters use a JMicron chip that may or may not be labeled. One may work with one board but not another. Or a drive may not like it. They are a pain like that. Usually they work ok though and they are very fast. I've seen ~95MB/s reads, which is pretty much the practical limit of UDMA 133. This was with either an OCZ Vertex 2 60GB or a Intel SSD 320 80GB.

I prefer using these adapters over adding a SATA PCI card.

But typically I just use a PATA HDD in my old systems. Either an 80 or 160GB WD 7200RPM HDD. It just works and I don't mind it being a bit slower in the end.

I started with SSDs in the Windows XP days.
The first/second gen SSDs had terrible performance on XP, but worked fine on Windows 7.
Alignment was corrected on both partitions, thst wasn't the case.
SSD controller was a Sandforce at the time..
The worst experience I had was with an 16GB model.

Anyway, my message is: please don't make the mistake and get an old SSD for your vintage build.
Do the opposite, get a modern SSD for old XP - to compensate for XP's deficiencies.

Good luck! 🙂🤞

Edit: Here's another tip if you're short on money. Get an mSATA SSD and a PATA HDD chassis with an mSATA converter chip.

The chip in the chassis is nothing more than an SATA/PATA converter chip.
And the mSATA SSDs speak.. SATA.

I did this with a few Mac Minis which had 44pin PATA HDDs installed.

That's a simpler and more elegant solution than getting a 2,5" SATA SSD plus an IDE/PATA converter dongle.

The soldering job inside the mSATA chassis is of higher quality, also.
Everything is less cramped, has better mechanical stability.

No no. Bad idea.

You want windows on the ssd, the ram large, and page file disabled or on a magnetic disk.

Page files/swap files rewrite often and wear out ssds

However, a ram based ssd. Like iRam… that’s a different story.

Sandforce does well for me on XP, i run Vertex 2 and 3 SSD, the Vertex 2 lasts since 2011 or so
it served once my Dailydriver 😉

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-11-11, 21:50:

Page files/swap files rewrite often and wear out ssds

Actually, the small reads/writes of the Windows swap file are an ideal application for SSDs.
Microsoft said so in the Windows 7 days.

But the wear out problem is real and not the fault of swapping.

It's because in the last few years, SSD technology hasn't been improved.
We're being lied to. The controllers improved, but not the storage technology.

What's happening is this: The count of cells does barely increase.
Rather, a single cell is forced to store more and more states.
However, this will decrease life time, because the cells aging process is much more of a problem as it originally was.

Originally, SSDs used SLC - two states 0 or 1 or 0-49% charge/ 50-100% charge.

Then MLC came along, creaing fozr different states - 00, 01, 10, 11 or 0-24%/25-49%/50-74%/75-100%.

Then came TLC and and so on.

As we see, the gaps get smaller and smaller and storage capacity increases.
The problem is when the cells degrade, the charge goes down.
In an SLC SSD, there's little problem if a few percent do drop over time. But on the latet, it's critical.

Long store short: Quality of SSDs goes down as capacity goes up.
Because the cell count doesn't increase.
Because we consumer are greedy, not willing to pay what good SSDs are really worth of.

The newer the SSD, the worse it is.
Except for the increasingly advanced controller, which is being tortured by being forced to decipher the mess of those cells.

Edit: Analog to this is the increasing use of consumer grade SD/SDHC/SDXC cards in favor of serious/professional typeCompact Flash technology (CF never was end user technology,
it was intended for higher end digital cameras and embedded use) .
We're willing to trade in quality for cheapness/capacity so to say.

Instead of using CF cards of known origin with a guaranteed to work IDE interface, we're switching to Chinese no-name IDE/SD adapters with a bad soldering job.
Along with that cheap 2TB MicroSD card (SDXC) from China, as well.

Personally, I think we don't deserve any better if things release their magic smoke.
It's shameful how little professionalism remained in the IT fields.
We reached a point where food and drinking is more pricey than technology. Or rather, the other way round.

Even back in the old days, photographers valued good film for their work.
They knew that a cheap film would give a photography of low detail or colour accuracy.
Or that a good camera, their primary tool, has to have a quality lense.

Nowadays, however, we always blindly believe that technology improves all alone and that things can only go better and better.

We feel so proud of ourselves, pat our selves on the imaginary shoulders
and do spend little thought on how this is actually possible.
Maybe a bit more modesty and self reflection would be good instead.

Let's remember - If you're keep saving money, you'll end up buying twice. 😉

The Titanic sank because iron bolts were cheaper than steel bolts, among other things.
Economical thinking risks the life of people.

Edit: I was generally speaking here, I didn't mean you, Sphere478. 😅

False and there is a way to extend the life of the SSD is extra provisioning. Generic SSD is the issue and has very little wear leveling and subpar NAND chips. Go with few good brands eg: Micron's Crucial and Micron, Sandisk, WD, Samsung, Hynix, and some Intel SSDs that is not Sandforce or such.

One level higher is SATA enterprise SSDs, Micron, Samsung, Intel and some other brands, what sets them apart from other is built in extra over provisioning than usual, and higher quality NAND ICs and way more channels. Can manually partition the enterprise SSD: eg Micron P400m 400GB, using your partitioning that comes with windows XP partition it to 200GB and leave the other half unpartitioned for the wear leveling life gets extended about 2 to 3 times longer.

Intel does have utility to manage overprovisioning on their supported enterprise SSDs models. Eg: S3500 400 or 800GB, shrink it down to 120GB by reprogramming it using the tool. And computer detects it as 120GB which is much useful on win98SE or win95. I'm still in process of figuring out how to use the tool.

SD, CF, USB sticks etc are not true SSDs. They are meant for occasional writing, reads unlimited and slower.

Cheers,

avenger_ wrote:

I can live with HDD bad access time on Win98 and XP but that memory swapping with Firefox and some games is awful.

Yeah, that's how it was, authentic early 2000s experience. Enjoy it, embrace it... or install everything on SSD.

Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions.

I did a small test: tried to do something in Windows while running MemTest with "use all unused ram" setting. With page file on HDD (system drive) it was 100% unusable. With page file on a separate SSD (TLC drive formatted to use SLC cache as much as possible) it was still slow but usable.

So I'm probably going to go this way, but with better suited SSD and using IDE not a PCI controller. I agree using mSATA drive with closed adapter is more ellegant solution. Also, I'm thinking about "native" PATA SSD drive like tha one:
https://www.amazon.pl/Transcend-TS32GPSD330-w … y/dp/B00AQT2LCU
(too bad it's MLC; with that price and size it should be SLC).

PATA/SATA RamDrive like HyperDrive, GB i-RAM or Acard would be awesome (the best performance while being retro/vintage hardware) but they are very hard to find in Europe and expensive.

That drive is 44-pin for notebooks (so you need adapter for that too) and internally it's most likely a generic SATA SSD controller with added bridge chip.

has anyone here actually had a modern ssd of quality die from pageswaping. I haven't. but I've had dozens of mechanical drives die on me for all kinds of reasons.

Warlord wrote on 2022-11-14, 04:31:

has anyone here actually had a modern ssd of quality die from pageswaping. I haven't. but I've had dozens of mechanical drives die on me for all kinds of reasons.

Not me, but my father had a Kingston SSD with 120GB or so, which died in ~2016, afaik.
And he was merely using it in an office PC, with plenty of free HDD space.

The symptoms were as follows:
- initially, SSD started to slow down (merely)
- later, it froze for a sec or two (from time to time)
- even more later, it wasn't recognized during POST anymore sometimes
- near it's end, Windows bootloader was corrupted occasionally, so we had to repair it via Windows XP CD/Windows 7 DVD

Edit: To be fair that PC was on 24/7.
Most of the time, it was idling away happily.
All the other parts aside from that SSD didn't mind being awake.

On the other hand, I've got a 20MB MFM HDD from 1985 that still works fine.
Except for a sticky mechanic problem (happens during power on sometimes), which I must fix somewhen.

Edit:

avenger_ wrote on 2022-11-14, 00:38:

PATA/SATA RamDrive like HyperDrive, GB i-RAM or Acard would be awesome (the best performance while being retro/vintage hardware) but they are very hard to find in Europe and expensive.

Absolutely, I think the same!
Unfortunately, people don't see a need for them anymore due to SSDs.
They often claim/believe that SSDs are superior anyway due to their high transfer speeds with tens to hundreds of GB/s.

Unfortunately, they oversee the extremely low latency of RAM and its longevity.
Even though an older generation of RAM disk merely has 250 MB/s or so, it has a latency below 0,1ms.

RAM disks also don't stall, have no micro stutter. Don't need "time to think", don't need to do housekeeping work (garbage collection).

The only modern replacement that I could think of are projects that involve
Raspberry Pi like computers which would provide their RAM as a RAM drive.
If the Linux OS isn't slowing things down or if the software needed is bootable on its own.

But how to interfaces with a PC?
Unfortunately, a network connection has to much overhead.
But an ATA/(e)SATA or PCI/PCIe interface could be implemented via GPIO pins.
Then, the Pi would appear as an HDD/SSD.

Unfortunately, the momentarily available Pi models have little RAM still.
8GB is the maximum.

Warlord wrote on 2022-11-14, 04:31:

has anyone here actually had a modern ssd of quality die from pageswaping. I haven't. but I've had dozens of mechanical drives die on me for all kinds of reasons.

I recently killed a 256gb sata drive. Excessive writing. Was copying a bunch of files and ☠️

That sounds like a defective drive.

SSDs can in many cases handle hundreds of terabytes written before failure. Tech Report did a test back in 2015 and some of them went well beyond their specifications and wrote more than 2000 TB.

You need to write >20 gigabytes per day for years before you will even get close to the typical manufacturer write spec.

It was a old drive