It seems I'm unable to edit my original post. The correct link to the USB 2.0 PCI card is https://www.ebay.com/itm/376542860763

The USB card probably won't work in a PCI 2.1 slot on the 440LX, the storage card is listed as PCI 2.1 compatible but doesn't have a bootrom (eeprom is unpopulated on the PCB) so it will only appear after loading device drivers.

The adapter probably will work but it may be having issues with the SATA device that's plugged into it, or potentially the master/slave jumper is set incorrectly

For USB cards you will need to find a PCI 2.1 compatible card like an older NEC chip.

set the bios to boot from scsi with the pci ide/stat card. Ether that or you could try a grub boot cd.

you don't need a pci 2.1 card for it to work, pci is for the most part backwards compatible and I ran the via chipset card you have in a 440bx and lx boards ion the past. IDE2SATA adapters are very much hit or miss, do you have any other drives or hdds to test it with?

Thanks a bunch for the responses!

Set the boot order to SCSI/C/A, getting "DISK BOOT FAILURE, ...", so no dice on that front.

The motherboard manual says PCI 133MB/s, which is 33MHz at 32-bits, but I couldn't find any information on PCI version (2.1 or 2.2) on it. However, I found the explicit mention of 2.1 in the Intel 82443LX (PAC) datasheet.

I would love to try GRUB, but unfortunately, I currently don't have any IDE devices (HDD or CD-ROM)! I do have a RPi with USBODE-CIRCLE installed on it, but the BIOS doesn't allow for USB boot (the motherboard has only USB 1.1 which I believe is problematic with USB 1.1 anyways)

I ordered a USB 2.0 card with a NEC 720101 chip, will take a couple of weeks to reach here.

From what I gathered, StarTech was the most recommended IDE2SATA adapter, but I see that even that is a hit or miss. The SSD I had was Intel SSD 520 Series 120GB, which is a SATA 3.0 drive according to the specifications. I do have other disks lying around, but they're all newer that this one. Do you think it is still worth a shot?

I also have no FDD...

hydraphone wrote on Yesterday, 03:16:

I do have other disks lying around, but they're all newer that this one. Do you think it is still worth a shot?

I'd give it a shot, I seen some older boards act oddly with some newer drives. but if I where you I'd be buying a ide CD drive and burn off a boot disk so you can better test things and get everything installed.

Ah, I missed this bit: the jumper (assuming NeoG_ was referring to the StarTech IDE2SATA) was set to master. I did play around with it, and tried slave and cable, but it was the same.

With regards to the jumper configuration of the PCI SATA card, it did not come with a documentation, so I don't know what the jumpers do. I tried all 3 SATA slots with all jumpers in the "default" configuration (all jumpers placed in the upper 2 pins), as well as with all jumpers moved to the lower 2 pins, and none of these configurations worked.

I never imagined myself dealing with CDs and CD-ROM drives anymore, but I hear you, it would indeed make things a lot easier 😀 I was hoping things would just work, so I avoided buying one.
I ordered a Rosewill RC-212, if that also doesn't work, I guess I'll get back into CD business...

The smallest disk other than the 120GB one I have lying around is a Samsung 980 1TB, will give it a try...

I wonder whether IDE to SD-card adapters less problematic than the IDE2SATA? Would be a lot easier & cheaper than getting back into CDs for sure!

Samsung 980 didn't work with StarTech IDE2SAT2 either. Could the problem be the IDE cable?
I'm currently using this 40-wire cable but some people insist that StarTech only works with a 40-Pin 80-Wire cable such as this one

Not sure why I can't edit, but anyways, it's a Samsung 860, not 980

hydraphone wrote on Yesterday, 00:48:

2. I tried to connect a SATA SSD (120GB) using this PCI card, but unfortunately, the card doesn't seem to have a BIOS on its own, and the AWARD BIOS doesn't detect any disks. It uses VT6421A chip. The one I received is slightly different from the one in the eBay photo, mine has 4 jumpers and a SST 39SF010A chip, it looks like this one

Google how to insert a PCIrom module into the Award BIOS using CBrom utility.
The external controller firmware doesn't matter where it starts—from the main BIOS or from the flash memory on the card.
The PСI ROM starts based on a matching device ID.

Thanks for the suggestion with regard to injecting the VT6421A BIOS into the main BIOS, I believe there is sufficient space on the official BIOS.
Unfortunately, I currently don't have any means to flash the BIOS because I don't have any means to access any storage with the hardware I have...

hydraphone wrote on Yesterday, 06:48:

Thanks for the suggestion with regard to injecting the VT6421A BIOS into the main BIOS, I believe there is sufficient space on the official BIOS.
Unfortunately, I currently don't have any means to flash the BIOS because I don't have any means to access any storage with the hardware I have...

Try booting from the network card.
You'll need a NIC with its own BIOS and a server running on another PC.

I suppose I'll need to find & buy a PCI NIC card with its own BIOS which will hopefully work with this motherboard to try that 😀

hydraphone wrote on Yesterday, 07:03:

I suppose I'll need to find & buy a PCI NIC card with its own BIOS which will hopefully work with this motherboard to try that 😀

Although this won't help much, since you'll most likely need VIA drivers when installing the OS.
On a Floppy Disk 🙁

Perhaps the easiest way is a CD drive + CD-RW.
If you have one.

Hi hydraphone,

These retro systems have a lot of BIOS HDD limits and from the 1998-1999 era the most infamous ones were the Award BIOS 32GB and 64GB HDD limit bugs.
In its September 1999 and later BIOS releases, Award properly fixed these bugs and provided native 128GiB/137GB HDD support. This fix allowed even larger drives up to 640GiB to be attached but the BIOS then only "sees" the first 128GiB of that drive due to the limits of the LBA28 interface.

Note that to fully break the 128GiB barrier, you need a BIOS with 48-bit LBA support but these came much later in 2004, after the ATA-6 specification was published in 2003.

I’ve checked the LS-6ALX Ver. #9JJ8-1 (02/23/1999) BIOS and it indeed has the 32GB HDD limit bug. This bug will cause the BIOS to hang during drive detection when a >32GB drive is attached, just like you experienced.
The Ver. #9JJ8-0A (02/15/2000) BIOS has these bugs fixed and supports drives up to 128GiB/137GB, including the 120GB SATA SSD via the StarTech adapter.
This BIOS also has updated microcodes from Intel to fix CPU errata’s.

So before you do anything else, you have to upgrade the BIOS if you want to fix that 32GB drive limit. The most direct way would be to remove the BIOS EEPROM from its socket and reprogram it in an EEPROM Programmer.
If this is not an option, the BIOS flash has to be done on the 6ALX from DOS, and either a bootable floppy or a < 32GB HDD drive is needed. Note that a 40GB to 120GB HDD with the 32GB limit jumper set, will also work.
Hopefully you have another system where you can prepare these bootable media.

Happy tickering!
Jan

Forget about retrofitting USB 2.0 on systems which predate it. Even if you do get it working system performance will take a noticeable hit. Just deal with the 1.0 speeds on your motherboard and carry on.

I would also forget about the VIA IDE card and obtain a promise sata150 tx2. These have their own boot ROM and offer excellent performance on older systems, even as old as 486. Just make sure you DON'T get the "fasttrak" version, which is for RAID

maxtherabbit wrote on Yesterday, 14:00:

Forget about retrofitting USB 2.0 on systems which predate it. Even if you do get it working system performance will take a noticeable hit. Just deal with the 1.0 speeds on your motherboard and carry on.

I would also forget about the VIA IDE card and obtain a promise sata150 tx2. These have their own boot ROM and offer excellent performance on older systems, even as old as 486. Just make sure you DON'T get the "fasttrak" version, which is for RAID

That matches my experience. My Cyrix Media GX system was more responsive and had faster boot times if I stuck with the integrated USB 1.0 controller and added a UDMA Sil3112 IDE controller rather than using the integrated MWDMA controller and adding an NEC USB 2.0 controller. Re: Super Swanky Cyrix Media GX Minuet

The Sil3112 works pretty well. Win98 drivers were a little more finicky compared to a promise controller, but the setup is fast and stable for me. It is better than the Via drivers.

While the “long” fast track controllers are different beasts, I thought that the smaller promise fast trak controllers could act like promise ultra controllers, and could even get flashed with the ultra bios with a little work.