Generally speaking you don't need to do anything special, just letting the BIOS to auto like a normal HDD is enough.

I can't of course know what exactly is going on, just a few thoughts:
-Have you also connected power to the adapter?
-Can the motherboard recognize a normal HDD of similar size? Not all socket 7 boards do so, some can after a BIOS update, some never
-if not^^^^, try a smaller CF like a 8GB one.
-Can the adapter-CF combination be recognized on some other, more modern PC?
-Some adapters do have weird issues with specific cards.

Power adpater is connected, the power light comes on
The Motherboard does recognize a 20 GB Hard Drive in the BIOS, but I had to manually enter the drive settings
Havent tried the adapter in a more modern PC

Would manually entering the heads / cylinders / etc. for the CF Card possibly work? I know I can test to find out, but curious if others have had any luck?

I dropped the search after trying 2 cards. None of them worked reliably. I might try again with another adapter.
As far as I know most of the cards are not even bootable (removable versus fixed disk profile) and manufacturers do not actively support or document this feature.
SD looks more promising but the adapter is more complicated and therefore expensive.

Not sure if you're at the FDISK stage, but you should run

FDISK /MBR

before partitioning your CF card with FDISK.

Smack2k wrote:

The Motherboard does recognize a 20 GB Hard Drive in the BIOS, but I had to manually enter the drive settings
Havent tried the adapter in a more modern PC

Would manually entering the heads / cylinders / etc. for the CF Card possibly work? I know I can test to find out, but curious if others have had any luck?

Well there's no logic behind it, but you already had to do this for a mechanical disk, so why not.
I'd first try a BIOS update (if there is one available) and if this doesn't apply/doesn't solve anything then just connect the whole thing to a modern system and copy the params.
When you can finally see the drive don't forget to fdisk /mbr before anything else.

Edit: oops, boxpressed was on the same frequency about fdisk 🤣

Do you know anywhere SANDISK keeps the specs of their CF Cards? I keep finding PDF Files that go over the whole range of cards, but nothing on individaul cards to get the heads / cylinders / sectors from.

Smack2k wrote:

one of which looks to be 16 GB and is set to User, but I am not sure if that is right or not.

So what happens with this setting?

It doesnt appear to see the card.....but doing some testing today, it could be my power supply....setting up with another one to check and see...

Smack2k wrote:

Do you know anywhere SANDISK keeps the specs of their CF Cards? I keep finding PDF Files that go over the whole range of cards, but nothing on individaul cards to get the heads / cylinders / sectors from.

No, and I don't think you'll ever find them. You can always try this utility HDD Geometry for small CF cards but again, this is not the order I would take my steps. You should be able to auto-recognize the card.

I currently use the following adapters and all have worked flawlessly.

• https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?I … N82E16812200158
  https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?I … N82E16812200688
  https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?I … N82E16822998003

The CF card itself could certainly be at fault. I've had one 32GB Transcend card that flaked out on me. Sometimes the system would detect it and sometimes not. Then, when it did detect, it would usually quit working within a few minutes. I replaced it with another Transcend 32GB, but got the "industrial" version, and haven't had any problems since.
Yes, the cards are identified by the operating systems as "removable" but DOS, 9x, and Linux don't care. I believe there are workarounds if you're trying to get XP and later to work, but I have not explored this.
And as others have said, fdisk and format should work as usual for DOS/9x.

I could try another card but when I go into hdd settings I have to choose my drive. The one labeled user seems to have my cards specs but if I try auto detect it doesn't find it

I will try another card tomorrow night when I can get back to it and see. This is gonna be a 95 OSR2 build.

Does anyone know where i can find BIOS Update files for this board? Searched around google and couldnt find anything...found some empty directories but that was it.

Freetech 586F60 Board with an SIS85C551X Chipset / Award BIOS

The latest BIOS I could find in Freetech's site as it appears in waybackmachine

can be downloaded from here
http://www.elhvb.com/supportbios.info/Archive … 6F60/index.html

Don't blame me if you end up bricking anything, the decision is yours 😀
Of course check the revision you currently have, if you already have G (or even a later one) don't update
btw since this BIOS is from 1996, there is a very-very good chance that it can't auto-detect >8GB disks

Would overlay software help?

Also, I wanted to add this that I discovered last night testing:

When I boot the PC up and get into the BIOS, I have 3 HDD options to choose from and I choose the one marked User as its a 16 GB.

When I reboot to a 95 or 98 Boot Floppy and run FDSISK, I go in and remove the Primary Partition and then add a DOS Partition. I get prompted to Enable Large Disks by pressing Y. It seems to create the partition and then wants to reboot.

On reboot, when I boot into the boot disk again and go into FDISK and look at the primary partition, its reporting a 1 GB Partition....

So that is why I wan thinking maybe its not seeing the drive properly>

Why don't you try a 8 or 4 Gb compact flash card? Or even a 1 Gb card? Most systems that old have an 8 Gb limit, some might have an even lower limit (1Gb or less).

Smack2k wrote:

Would overlay software help?

Of course. But allow me to notice that you have a thing for skipping things, you're not telling us what have you tried so far from all the suggestions, if any at all.
Do you have a BIOS upgrade option? You asked for it, it's posted and on your next post you're jumping to DDOs. Did you try a smaller card? Can the m/b auto-recognize anything at all? Did you try the utility I posted and enter its values manually? Sorry, I can't go any further like this despite my good intentions

I am just trying to get a bunch of options available to me so I can test them instead of testing 1 thing and then having to go back to drawing board.

I have the BIOS file and of course I am going to try it, as for the rest, the only thing i skipped was what I noticed last night, but thanks for pointing it out for me.

I appreciate everyone's help on this...I will take it from here and see what I can do..

Extra thanks for the BIOS...I didnt thank you before, for that I apologize.