So I went into my box of old computer parts and fished out every 40 pin IDE I could find to do some testing.

some of my drives will progress past the autotyping dialog box so I am assuming this means my motherboard is ok. I guess I'll be ordering another SD to IDE drive as I'm assuming this one has gone bad.

I've attached some of the screenshots of the errors I'm getting.

When using the SD adapter I get the "autotype failed - failure fixed disk 0"

with some of my old IDE HDDs I don't get this error and the system is able to autotype the drive (though it only goes up to 2GB)

So I've gotten another SD-IDE adapter and am seeing no changes. Still can't autotype the drive, still getting failure fixed disk 0 when attempting any manual settings.

Is there possibly some setting in BIOS causing this that I'm missing? I've attached all of the drive settings available in BIOS.

I've also been reading about an XT-IDE bios that's supposed to help make CF and SD devices more compatible. Does anyone have experience using those if that's the case?

Have you tried actually changing the SD card itself? (and/or reading it on a modern PC?) I've definitely had both SD and CF cards go bad and cause similar problems ...

daddyMorendo wrote on 2025-09-24, 15:22:

I've also been reading about an XT-IDE bios that's supposed to help make CF and SD devices more compatible. Does anyone have experience using those if that's the case?

Phoenix Bios 4.03 sometimes has an issue where it locks up hard in the BIOS setup screen if it thinks about large hard drives. XTide Universal BIOS won't fix that, but if you manually configure the BIOS to see a smaller drive, then XTide can let you see the full capacity after the fact. If your 486 has a PCI IDE controller that's trying and failing to negotiate MWDMA modes with your IDE-SD Bridge, XTide universal bios is less likely to help there.

Looks like your system has an OPTi 82C611 IDE controller. PIO4 max in VLB mode. The Sintechi IDE-SD bridge should do fine there. You could try disabling it and adding an ISA IDE controller if you think it's the controller. Maybe the chip has a PCI mode too like the CMD chip?

But the SD card itself is probably the most likely culprit. SD cards die more frequently than 30 year old VLB IDE controllers.

p.s. This tool might be interesting for you some day. https://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=2053 I ran the tool through an analyzer and it looks pretty similar to most VLB controllers.

douglar wrote on 2025-09-24, 20:05:

Phoenix Bios 4.03 sometimes has an issue where it locks up hard in the BIOS setup screen if it thinks about large hard drives. […]
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daddyMorendo wrote on 2025-09-24, 15:22:

I've also been reading about an XT-IDE bios that's supposed to help make CF and SD devices more compatible. Does anyone have experience using those if that's the case?

Phoenix Bios 4.03 sometimes has an issue where it locks up hard in the BIOS setup screen if it thinks about large hard drives. XTide Universal BIOS won't fix that, but if you manually configure the BIOS to see a smaller drive, then XTide can let you see the full capacity after the fact. If your 486 has a PCI IDE controller that's trying and failing to negotiate MWDMA modes with your IDE-SD Bridge, XTide universal bios is less likely to help there.

Looks like your system has an OPTi 82C611 IDE controller. PIO4 max in VLB mode. The Sintechi IDE-SD bridge should do fine there. You could try disabling it and adding an ISA IDE controller if you think it's the controller. Maybe the chip has a PCI mode too like the CMD chip?

But the SD card itself is probably the most likely culprit. SD cards die more frequently than 30 year old VLB IDE controllers.

p.s. This tool might be interesting for you some day. https://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=2053 I ran the tool through an analyzer and it looks pretty similar to most VLB controllers.

Thanks,

I was able to pull the SD card out and it still registers as fine on my modern computer. I formatted it again and tried putting it back in but no luck.

I did also try as many other SD cards as I could find in my house with no luck. I used a different 2 GB card, a 16GB, and even a brand new 128GB though I'm not sure if that would have worked anyway.

Do these need to be formatted a certain way? I figured the adapter shouldn't care since a lot of walkthroughs I've read for using them do the formatting once they're installed in the retro computer.

I'm considering trying to buy a new SD card that should be compatible. Any recommendations?

daddyMorendo wrote on 2025-09-26, 11:53:

I was able to pull the SD card out and it still registers as fine on my modern computer. I formatted it again and tried putting […]
Show full quote

I was able to pull the SD card out and it still registers as fine on my modern computer. I formatted it again and tried putting it back in but no luck.

I did also try as many other SD cards as I could find in my house with no luck. I used a different 2 GB card, a 16GB, and even a brand new 128GB though I'm not sure if that would have worked anyway.

Do these need to be formatted a certain way? I figured the adapter shouldn't care since a lot of walkthroughs I've read for using them do the formatting once they're installed in the retro computer.

I'm considering trying to buy a new SD card that should be compatible. Any recommendations?

The Sintechi Pata-SD bridges support SD cards up to 128GB. They don't handle LBA48 correctly so if you try to use devices larger than that to their full capacity, your data will start getting corrupted at some point.

No, you don't need to format the SD cards. That's all handled by the bridge when you partition and format your SD card in DOS.

I had one of these motherboards with a similar BIOS: https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/anigma-bat4ip3e It was also picky when it came to Sintechi Pata-SD bridges, but it had a CMD PCI0640 ide controller, that was a known to be finicky, so I always blamed that.

Check the power cable you are using on your Sintechi Pata-SD bridge. Is it plugged in all the way? Do you see lights on your Sintechi device?

Yup, it lights up when powered: all three lights

daddyMorendo wrote on 2025-09-26, 22:51:

Yup, it lights up when powered: all three lights

Thats not right. Do you have the IDE cable oriented correctly?