Antique car people deal with this for oil and tires, I guess, where the standards have gone up a lot over the decades, and you can't necessarily get 1940s quality even if you wanted.

More than the "cheating" issue to me is that these aren't as universally compatible/painless as they are made out to be. For example, CF is cast as just being IDE and the adapters more compatible because they are passive, but the reality is more complicated. I put a CF-IDE on a UM481-based 386, and it doesn't work, because the CF (or maybe the adapter) does something wrong where IOCHRDY gets tied up, locking up the machine during POST. But maybe requiring tinkering and stuff like that actually makes it a period correct experience after all, so relax on it being cheating.

They also do silly games with how they actually serve single sectors, and in some cases, have dropped ata modes entirely because 'lul, legacy! Nobody uses that! Let's save money!'

The converters for SDCard almost universally dont properly handle lba (only do lba24, but fake like they can do lba48), dont do dma transfers right, etc, and are all clones of clones of a single one chip implementation originally made for compact flash.

That is to say, there's a lot of room for improvement.

It all comes down to what the goal of the build is.

If the goal is to a 100% period correct build, then using anything other than period correct storage would be 'cheating'.

On the other hand, there are a lot of good reasons to use flash storage including:

1) They're more reliable and will save the wear 'n tear on vintage hard drives. Once those old hard drives fail, they're done.

2) It's more convenient for installing/transferring files. I can do a fresh DOS 6.22 install on a CF card and copy over 2 GB of installed programs and games in about 20 minutes flat. Doing this the old school way on an HDD would take far longer. Having done a lot of DOS based builds, I don't want to waste the time with slower storage.

3) Flash storage runs cooler and quieter. I've never liked hard drive noises, so silent flash storage has been a godsend.

Personally, even on my "period correct" builds I still allow myself to use flash storage, modern fans and heatsinks, and any modern replacement components (capacitors, etc.). In these instances my goal is to have a functional system that uses classic graphics and sound hardware, but I'm not as fussed about storage.

They aren't "cheating" because CF cards were available back in the day, though not in the capacity ranges that we have today.

Also, industrial grade CF cards are being used as replacements for real production systems based on old hardware that are still in use today.

jakethompson1 wrote on 2025-04-18, 16:18:

More than the "cheating" issue to me is that these aren't as universally compatible/painless as they are made out to be. For example, CF is cast as just being IDE and the adapters more compatible because they are passive, but the reality is more complicated.

I think a lot of it depends on specific CF brands and drive sizes. I've had consistent success with industrial Cisco, consumer SanDisk, and modern Verbatim (2GB/4GB) cards.

I've installed them on everything from Turbo XT systems up to Pentium 4 / LGA775 builds, and everything in between. Always been able to get them to work, although some times it's a matter of matching the CF card to the system, and ensuring proper BIOS settings.

Industrial cf have real reqs for keeping ata modes.

Commodity cf DO NOT, and often DO NOT

Industrial cards cost a lot more $.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-04-18, 16:33:

They aren't "cheating" because CF cards were available back in the day, though not in the capacity ranges that we have today.

True, CF cards were originally invented in the mid 90s. Though older than that, CF technology wouldn't have been available.

Pcmcia -> CF adapters were available then. I owned a few.

Microdrives were also things then.

Both were small and prohibitively expensive, but actually DID do ATA correctly.

I stand behind my condemnation of modern cards, because the DO NOT do ATA correctly.

wierd_w wrote on 2025-04-18, 16:47:

I stand behind my condemnation of modern cards, because the DO NOT do ATA correctly.

How does one determine if a CF card is doing ATA correctly?

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-04-18, 16:44:

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-04-18, 16:33:

They aren't "cheating" because CF cards were available back in the day, though not in the capacity ranges that we have today.

True, CF cards were originally invented in the mid 90s. Though older than that, CF technology wouldn't have been available.

Yes it existed as mainly a memory card for digital camera. The main issue were write speeds, especially small file size writes were horrible. It could drop down to floppy speeds.

I have personal experience of using CF card in 2007 for Windows 95 and it was not usable.

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-04-18, 16:57:

wierd_w wrote on 2025-04-18, 16:47:

I stand behind my condemnation of modern cards, because the DO NOT do ATA correctly.

How does one determine if a CF card is doing ATA correctly?

Interrogate it with hdparm

I should probably clarify.

CORRECT CF spec REQUIRES support for things like 8bit transfer mode, and pals, as these kids discuss.

https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/com … nterface.33612/

HOWEVER, most modern CF cards just 'lulwut!' At you if you ask for 8bit modes.

Additionally, in very new cards, card makers only really implement the high speed modes cameras use, and NOT the ATA high speed modes, which makes switching them into ultradma, or even DMA Mode 2, et al, basically a crapshoot.

This is in addition to not correctly handling IORDY signal.

INDUSTRIAL cards do things CORRECTLY, but get the 'fringe market' pricetag.

Commodity CF cards increasingly DO NOT do things correctly.

It is not cheating, man. I use CF cards too. Some retro parts are just not gonna last. As long as the motherboard, cpu, rams are original, is ok to make some compromise to keep it working.
Is like the fans in the PSU or the CPU heatsink. I replace those when they go too noisy/fail.
Or the use of p2 to serial adapters. Serial "ball" mice were just awful. It is so frustrating to play War Craft 1 or Operation Wolf with a serial "ball" mouse. So I use ps2 optical mouse through a serdashop ps2toserial adapter.

Not all ball mice were created equally.

OG MS Intellipoint had a sterling reputation for a reason. 😀

I wouldn't call it "cheating" as in many cases people are unable to source old working hard drives, so it's a perfectly good solution for them. As for me, I have accumulated enough old working HDDs and I prefer using those instead of modern solutions: after all, if I'm tinkering with old hardware, why would I replace old hardware that is working fine with something else? Using old HDDs when possible is part of tinkering fun for me just like an old motherboard or video card. If they fail at some point then so be it, I'll look into a replacement if that happens, and it's not like I store any critical data on my old PCs.

What I don't understand and have to admit kind of bothers me, in particular from certain YouTubers, is this compulsion of replacing almost everything with "modern solutions". Like "yeah, so I have this perfectly working vintage computer/console and now I'm going to gut it and replace HDD and power supply (which are promptly thrown away) with something modern because they may fail at some point in the future". In many cases it gives the impression that you MUST replace all this stuff as soon as you can. And don't get me started with the optical drive emulator craze in consoles and the need of drilling holes and ruining cases just to add a freaking HDMI output... they really get a kick out of clipping parts of the RF shield or cutting of screw posts 😛

Also, I agree with the posts above that CF is definitely not a seamless IDE HDD replacement. I've encountered quite a few problems such as the ones mentioned above, in particular with older PCs and controller cards. I thought they would be useful for a retro test system but even in that case after a few "HDD controller failure" messages I just give up and put an old HDD. I also hate that there are very few options to mount them so that they at least kind of look like an old HDD, maybe some 3D-printed options that make them look like actual 3.5 HDDs would be cool, but again I agree with vetz that the ultra-fast read speeds kind of detract from the experience (unless you're aiming for productivity on your retro PC).

And the SD to IDE "things" are just a big no to me, those really suck in terms of compatibility.

No I don't consider it cheating. Jake already pointed out the biggest practical issue - you run into a lot of problems using flash based storage on retro hardware that you otherwise wouldn't have to deal with.

But my biggest personal gripe against it is a spiritual one. I believe that the electromechanical elements of computing are what really define the generation of hardware we all play with. Take away the moving parts, and the machine has lost its soul. With no hard disk, floppy, and/or optical drive you have a machine which bares little resemblance to the genuine article.

TheMobRules wrote on 2025-04-18, 20:03:

What I don't understand and have to admit kind of bothers me, in particular from certain YouTubers, is this compulsion of replacing almost everything with "modern solutions". Like "yeah, so I have this perfectly working vintage computer/console and now I'm going to gut it and replace HDD and power supply (which are promptly thrown away) with something modern because they may fail at some point in the future". In many cases it gives the impression that you MUST replace all this stuff as soon as you can. And don't get me started with the optical drive emulator craze in consoles and the need of drilling holes and ruining cases just to add a freaking HDMI output... they really get a kick out of clipping parts of the RF shield or cutting of screw posts 😛

To be fair the earliest stuff is starting to go with MFM drives frequently having failures. I've seen several that don't even attempt to boot the drive before pulling it and trying to rescue any data off it just in case there's something interesting. And stock PSUs need to be disconnected and tested before being used. A misbehaving PSU could fry an otherwise working system. Do you have to do this in all cases? No, but there's a risk, and why not take some precaution.

Consoles are a whole other beast. The ODEs are a modern version of flash carts. And there are mods that improve consoles from stock giving RGB output, or cleaning up audio or removing a design flaw causing a hum bar in the video or things like that. That's not how it was, but doesn't it improve on the original experience?

RGB mod, yes
ODE, no

No, because you can and you should have fun in this hobby however you like: build 100% period correct systems or just slap any compatible stuff together however you please. There isn’t only one way and certainly neither is more correct than the other.

Just have fun and stop over thinking this stuff.

I just want people to not throw their hands up in the air in frustration, that's all.

I'd suggest a DOM over a CF adapter for the reasons I cited. Much less headache.