Never was a fan of HD noise back in the day nor slow disk speeds (judging by software and hardware ram disk solutions im not the only one) but to each his own. The day a computer has a soul burn it with fire. Heh

You woukd think it wouldn't be that difficult to slow these solutions down and recreate the noise for that prefer it.

/I've never been a period correct (whatever that means) guy.

I personally prefer real hard drives for nostalgia reasons, but anyone who says you're cheating or doing it wrong is most likely being a self-important twit.

That said, I wouldn't recommend consumer CF/SD cards for a system drive in Windows XP or newer. I tried that approach in an old laptop once and it made so many random writes that it burned up the flash memory in a few days. A basic mSATA stick in a cheap IDE enclosure works well for that use case though.

I have no nostalgia for noisy and slow hard drives. Also the drive bay mounted CF card adaptors make it very easy to transfer data to retro machines that might have no network or usb connectivity.

I think it really isn't about the noise itself, but what the noise reminds you of: that it's this metal disc coated with magnetic particles spinning at thousands of RPM with a tiny read head positioned every so slightly above the disc, and this is how you're storing and retrieving your data. It's just cool. Flash memory is better in every way, but it's not as fun, and not as in keeping with the spirit of early computing - hard drives are 1950s technology.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2025-04-18, 21:55:

I think it really isn't about the noise itself, but what the noise reminds you of: that it's this metal disc coated with magnetic particles spinning at thousands of RPM with a tiny read head positioned every so slightly above the disc, and this is how you're storing and retrieving your data. It's just cool. Flash memory is better in every way, but it's not as fun, and not as in keeping with the spirit of early computing - hard drives are 1950s technology.

Agree on the noise. You can get period correct quiet harddrive drives (not as silent as flash ofc), which I think is a compromise between the nostalgia of the heads moving sound and making the systems usable in 2025. With the rise of networking apps like NetDrive, ethsrv,ethflp, mtcp package it has become easier than ever to keep files accessible beyond the harddrive compensating a bit for the convenience by inserting your flash memory in your modern computer for easy file transfer.

I dont think anyone has said using flash storage in retro computers is cheating, but it feels like that to me on the performance aspect alone since you turn the computer into something that was just not possible.

My take is that the decision to call it cheating or not, depends on who's building the system and what the objective is.

a) If one wants 100% vintage parts, that's fine, if one can find those in working or repairable condition.

b) If one does not mind newer parts, that's fine too.

Realistically speaking, this is not going to get easier over time, so we all need to accept that most of us will eventually need to compromise on a) and gradually end up migrating to ship of Theseus type setups.

That being said, while slow storage was part of the experience back then, is it really part of the nostalgia and if so, can the feeling really be recreated nowadays ? Conversely, who misses waiting for a program to load from tape on an 8-bit micro. I mean, one can be nostalgic about the feeling impatience and prolonged anticipation related to running from slow(er) media(floppy, tape, older HDD), but does the wait still now bring joy/happiness or is the innocent pleasure of anticipation gone now that we know how fast things can be with flash or newer drives?

Spinning drivers were noisier than more recent fluid bearing based ones (and obviously flash), but after years of use, surviving old drives often have much noisier bearings than they did in their heyday. Is such an old drive close enough to the original experience to someone for whom drive sound is nostalgic, or is it more annoying than anything else ?

We have different answers to these and other questions. My feeling is the best compromise we can hope for going forward is an emulated "drive" that mimics the seek characteristics and transfer rate of a spindle based drive and, optionally, its sound.

TLDR: While the old hardware we each value lasts, let's all enjoy it while being happy when modern alternatives exist (and keep appearing/improving) for parts that can no longer be found.

Cheating?

Im not sure if it is.
I prefer spinning disks if I can use them but the one problem apart from finding one is the grim inevitability of its own mortality.
A spinning disk no matter how much better if feels when using those systems will die, and as time marches on it will be sooner rather than later as many of them are getting on for as much as 35 years old.

Ive recently dipped my toe into the 486 world of computing which has a 500Mb HDD fitted. But when its set up I have been thinking about adding an IDE to CF adapter for its hard drive to preserve the life thats left in the old drive.

DosFreak wrote on 2025-04-18, 21:24:

Never was a fan of HD noise back in the day nor slow disk speeds (judging by software and hardware ram disk solutions im not the only one) but to each his own. The day a computer has a soul burn it with fire. Heh

You woukd think it wouldn't be that difficult to slow these solutions down and recreate the noise for that prefer it.

/I've never been a period correct (whatever that means) guy.

I don't really give a crap about period correct either, I have plenty of anachronistic builds.

But I would never want a simulation of the sensory inputs, if I don't KNOW it's real it's meaningless to me

No. Storage is just storage.

No. Spinning Hard drives are literally Melting.
The plastic parts inside old spinning hard drive is literally melting away and disintegrating into pieces.

CF cards and SSD are a better solution.

Nah, I don’t think so. They're sort of a necessity these days.
A bit like Li-Ion or LiPo rechargeables with special charging regulators are used in place of plain NiCD accus (they needed no real charger yet).

Performance wise, a CF card at PIO 0 is not much better than an old 1993 era IDE HDD + SmartDrive with enough of memory.
SmartDrive from DOS 6 might be even better, since it doesn't have to read from slow ISA bus each time.
On a 386 with a good chipset, memory reads are better than ISA bus reads.

In addition, old HDDs didn't "stutter" during writes like CF cards might do on a multitasking OS (Windows 98SE etc).

Also, on an PC/XT, XT-IDE Universal BIOS can be slower than a real old MFM/RLL controller card with a matching drive.
I saw it myself once. The XT-IDE code, non-V20 optimized, was worse in performance than the code in an XT HDD controller dated 1987 or so.

PS: CF cards did exist since the early-mid 90s and were still used on Amiga, even. Via PCMCIA to CF adapters (A600, A1200?).
So technically, CF cards are period-correct, too.
They had been used in embedded systems early on, for example. Just like these PATA DOMs, I think.

If that's still too new, the DOCs can be used on network card or an homebrew ISA card.
Re: Flash storage for 286 computers? Preferred approach?

Edit: On other hand, a real old HDD might be favorable for demonstration purposes (say YT video) or if someone wants to pretend it is 1990 again.

Like for example, to escape 21th century for a few hours and do a mental time-travel.
In such a case, any upgrade might ruin the experience.
The LCD monitor, a capacitor recap, an LED light bulb, double glazed windows..

I suppose that's why some people love to have an original AdLib in their build (or a replica), rather than a Sound Blaster 2.0 with CMS upgrade.
The latter would be better, objectively speaking, but it's not an AdLib from 1987 (or 1990).

In such a case it's not a bad idea to rebuild an authentic replica of a vintage PC and dedicate a whole little room to it.
That can be fun, too. It's ahobby inside a hobby, so to say. 😀

Keeping all vintage builds 100% authentic, by contrast, would be a lot of work.
At one point things will break and have to be replaced.
But that's not as bad as it sounds if we don't set up our requirements too high.
An approximation of the real thing is still very good, most of the time. IMHO.

Edit: Or let's take MS-DOS, for example.
A lot of PC/XTs ran MS-DOS 2.11 to 4.0 originally,
but nowadays these old versions are being too limited for real world use.

While they can still be used (I love PC-DOS 3.30!), they have their limits and overcoming them needs lots of tricks.
Such as using Quarterdeck QRAM, a special HDD driver for HDDs >32MB (or using DOS 3.31),
using himem.sys from later DOS, using a floppy driver for HD formats..

The real minimum to make everything work on an PC/XT would be DOS 5 thus,
which can handle FAT16B, more than two hard disks, HMA/UMBs, 1.44/2.88 MB floppy disks etc.
It doesn't have to be MS-DOS, though. PC-DOS 5 or DR-DOS 5 are just as good, maybe.

That being said, if authenticity is most important, then the hardware should be equally limited perhaps.
An IBM PC 5150 with CGA, 256KB of RAM, 360KB floppy drives and a 5 MB HDD can be left at running MS-DOS 2.11.

It doesn't need support for networking (DOS 3.1), FAT16 or 720KB floppy disks (DOS 3.x).
Here, even DOS Plus 1.2 is being a tiny bit too new already (shipped with Amstrad PC1512 in 1985/1986).

I would like to move the margin to the centre for a minute.
Does using a IDE to CF card and a modern CF card increase the performance of a 486 system?
Is it noticeable increase or only slight?

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2025-04-19, 07:32:

I would like to move the margin to the centre for a minute.
Does using a IDE to CF card and a modern CF card increase the performance of a 486 system?
Is it noticeable increase or only slight?

Its very noticeable if you use modern CF cards compared to a period correct spinning IDE drive. The lower access times especially makes a huge difference.

vetz wrote on 2025-04-19, 07:33:

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2025-04-19, 07:32:

I would like to move the margin to the centre for a minute.
Does using a IDE to CF card and a modern CF card increase the performance of a 486 system?
Is it noticeable increase or only slight?

Its very noticeable if you use modern CF cards compared to a period correct spinning IDE drive. The lower access times especially makes a huge difference.

Oh that is interesting.
All old systems I use, with the exception of a HP T5720, all use "period correct" drives so I cant say Ive noticed it in the older computers that a modern disk like CF would improve the speed of it over all.
I would have thought the speed of a 486 was so slow with its 33 or 66MHz the disk wouldnt really matter.
I tried it in a more "modern" computer in the form of an i7-7700 I use on my workbench to view web sites and open PDF files etc.. It was running Win11 on an NVME drive, I wanted to play with it and swapped the NVME drive out for a 1Gb spinning disk (Seagate 2.5" FireCuda) and the drop in performance was a level that I really didnt expect. I swapped it for a SATA SSD (Samsung 960) and even then the drop in performance was intolerable. Went back the the OEM supplied NVME SSD (No name brand) and never looked back.

But I didnt realise the 486 suffered the same problems.

vetz wrote on 2025-04-19, 07:33:

The lower access times especially makes a huge difference.

That's right. Not all CFs are equally quick here, though.
I did some lazy benchmarks in the past 15 years (using HDTune and a CF card reader) and some CFs had an access time of 1 ms, while some had up to 16 ms.
Also, some models have a tiny 1KB buffer, while some have none.

Depending on the use case (DOS vs Windows; single-tasking vs multi-tasking),
a given CF card performance can be worse than an 80 MB Conner IDE drive from ca. 1992.

Because consumer class flash is not being designed for random access (read/write), but sequential access.
Like playing MP3s, recording a movie or taking snapshots.

They were made to read/write one file after another, so to say.
Not opening/closing multiple files at once, so to say.
(Flash has no concept of files, but sectors.)

DosFreak wrote on 2025-04-18, 21:24:

Never was a fan of HD noise back in the day nor slow disk speeds (judging by software and hardware ram disk solutions im not the only one) but to each his own. The day a computer has a soul burn it with fire. Heh

You woukd think it wouldn't be that difficult to slow these solutions down and recreate the noise for that prefer it.

/I've never been a period correct (whatever that means) guy.

The only HDD noise I want to hear is the old MFM/RLL drives, they sound great unlike old IDE HDDs.

The old reliable Seagate ST-225 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tOS6deoRLhI if you can ignore the background server room HVAC, that HDD noise is amazing.

Found another of the 251 ...pure HDD sound porn ! https://youtu.be/Xy3uWRuQXl0?t=161 The NEC D5126 drive later in this Video is perfect.

Jo22 wrote on 2025-04-19, 07:53:

That's right. Not all CFs are equally quick here, though. I did some lazy benchmarks in the past 15 years (using HDTune and a CF […]
Show full quote

vetz wrote on 2025-04-19, 07:33:

The lower access times especially makes a huge difference.

That's right. Not all CFs are equally quick here, though.
I did some lazy benchmarks in the past 15 years (using HDTune and a CF card reader) and some CFs had an access time of 1 ms, while some had up to 16 ms.
Also, some models have a tiny 1KB buffer, while some have none.

Depending on the use case (DOS vs Windows; single-tasking vs multi-tasking),
a given CF card performance can be worse than an 80 MB Conner IDE drive from ca. 1992.

Because consumer class flash is not being designed for random access (read/write), but sequential access.
Like playing MP3s, recording a movie or taking snapshots.

They were made to read/write one file after another, so to say.
Not opening/closing multiple files at once, so to say.
(Flash has no concept of files, but sectors.)

I do agree with you that memory cards are not created equal and the cards you could get i15 years ago when I first the first time tested Windows on CF card the experience was horrible. The old Bigfoot harddrive was quicker. Things are though moving ahead. More modern industrial CF cards perform alot better, the same goes for solutions like ZuluSCSI or PicoMEM. I just used both ZuluSCSI and PicoMEM on my Zenith 386 (upgraded to Cyrix 486Drx2) as stated in the first post and compared to the high-end 1993 SCSI drive the difference in load times and especially Windows for Workgroups 3.11 is night and day.

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

I consider myself a bit of the "old-school" in this hobby in that I mainly use spinning hard drives in my builds. Back in the st […]
Show full quote

I consider myself a bit of the "old-school" in this hobby in that I mainly use spinning hard drives in my builds. Back in the start of the 2010s when I started there was only slow CF solutions so going with a silent IDE or SCSI drive was the way to go.

In my builds I've also tried to stay period correct, so that means I've been using drives from around the same era as the system, with the main focus on noise. For example in my Zenith Z-386 I have a 330mb SCSI drive from 1993 installed (system is 1990). That is already a larger and quicker drive that what it came with originally (ESDI), but compared to a XTIDE CF card solution, or PicoMem or ZuluSCSI those options are another world. It turns the system into something else in terms of productivity usage. This is especially noticeable in Windows and other OS related tasks, but also any file access such as loading screens. I would say a 386 transforms into a 486 in terms of feel. Ofc, it is still as slow in terms of screen rendering and frames per second in games.

After I upgraded to a ZuluSCSI in my Zenith I kind of feel like it is cheating. You're getting performance that was never possible untill very recently. It kind of negates a bit how a 386 system felt to use back in the days.

I'm a bit torn. I cannot lie that I like the pros to this, the performance, the silence and the convenience.

What are your thoughts on this?

I'm in the depends on use case group here, if its a period correct system that is for complete compatibility with software of that era then a HDD would have huge benefits for that use case. If its just a retro rig for playing games and tooling around then by all means throw a CF/SD card in there and do away with the Spinning Rust.

If you really want the authentic feel without the hassle of mechanical drives then grab a HDD clicker.

IBM Microdrives were 1998, so you could say it's decade correct. The interface & concept.

Getting a 1GHz Raspberry Pi to replace a sound card or some other function is bogus.

MikeSG wrote on 2025-04-19, 08:34:

Getting a 1GHz Raspberry Pi to replace a sound card or some other function is bogus.

This tbh