CF to IDE adapters are mainly passive (they usually just have a couple LEDs and maybe a couple capacitors, usually for grounding) so it's not likely that a different one will give you a different result. Which error do you get when trying to boot from the Transcend or industrial cards?

There is an issue with some CF cards that prevents a bit from being set so the device will identify as a fixed drive. Win9x doesn't like being installed on a removable drive.
Maybe the problems you're having are related to this?

aha2940 wrote on 2021-06-27, 04:37:

CF to IDE adapters are mainly passive (they usually just have a couple LEDs and maybe a couple capacitors, usually for grounding) so it's not likely that a different one will give you a different result. Which error do you get when trying to boot from the Transcend or industrial cards?

They do… I’ve had many issues with a particular type of CF adapter (the one you plug directly in the IDE connector) and some 386 motherboards. It took me quite some time to debug it, because the issues were far from being indicative of an I/O or storage problem: corrupt graphics, the motherboard would fail to boot 3 times out of 5, garbled sound. Eventually I narrowed it down to the I/O controller, so I tried 4 different I/O controllers in various ISA slots - they all exhibited some sort of issue (some worse than others).
At one point I disconnected the CF adapter, and lo and behold, all problems were gone. I tried an old 1 GB HDD, which also worked perfectly with any I/O controller.
Not to be defeated, I bought a bunch of other CF adapters (the ones that come with a bracket, that you mount on the case). These adapters have no issues, they work with any motherboard I’ve tried them in.

So there definitely is a difference between these adapters (even though both are passive, which is normal, since CF cards are already IDE and don’t need any translation like SD cards).

Of course, the OP might have a different issue, but just wanted to point this out. 😀

There are differences in the wiring of passive CF adapters.

Some have a 3.3v voltage regulator that can be enabled,
some have traces for DMA signals (not necessarily needed on pure DOS),
some have the master/slave pins,
and others have shorts.

Btw, there are sometimes issues with the IORDY line (I/O Ready) which can be used
as an hardware flow control.

(From what I remember, IORDY problems can occur if the floppy controller and the IDE controller are on separate expansion cards.
So if you're using a classic mult-i/o card with serial/parallel, IDE, Floppy etc, things may work as expected.)

https://www.opennet.ru/docs/FAQ/hardware/ide-part2.html

Basically one hangs, the other gives an IO error

The one that hangs is a industrial CF card.

However I hooked it to my dell system (P3) and it worked as normal.

I am wondering if there is a bios setting.

The Industrial one apparently is UDMA 7 and I was told the Transcend(SP?) Would work , but the Verbatim one I have works. I got 3.1 on it but almost afraid to install 95 on it incase I lose the ability to boot off it.

The system in question basically the 3½ drive works whenever it feels like it. Unsure if the drive simply is too old or its the IO card that's the issue.

I was thinking perhaps update the bios on the XT-IDE. I haven't since I got it. And it might make a difference?

hyprthecat wrote on 2021-06-27, 11:51:

Basically one hangs, the other gives an IO error […]
Show full quote

Basically one hangs, the other gives an IO error

The one that hangs is a industrial CF card.

However I hooked it to my dell system (P3) and it worked as normal.

I am wondering if there is a bios setting.

The Industrial one apparently is UDMA 7 and I was told the Transcend(SP?) Would work , but the Verbatim one I have works. I got 3.1 on it but almost afraid to install 95 on it incase I lose the ability to boot off it.

The system in question basically the 3½ drive works whenever it feels like it. Unsure if the drive simply is too old or its the IO card that's the issue.

I was thinking perhaps update the bios on the XT-IDE. I haven't since I got it. And it might make a difference?

Please post a picture of the adapter you are using now, that may give some ideas to people with experience using several of them.

bloodem wrote on 2021-06-27, 05:32:

They do… I’ve had many issues with a particular type of CF adapter (the one you plug directly in the IDE connector) and some 386 […]
Show full quote

aha2940 wrote on 2021-06-27, 04:37:

CF to IDE adapters are mainly passive (they usually just have a couple LEDs and maybe a couple capacitors, usually for grounding) so it's not likely that a different one will give you a different result. Which error do you get when trying to boot from the Transcend or industrial cards?

They do… I’ve had many issues with a particular type of CF adapter (the one you plug directly in the IDE connector) and some 386 motherboards. It took me quite some time to debug it, because the issues were far from being indicative of an I/O or storage problem: corrupt graphics, the motherboard would fail to boot 3 times out of 5, garbled sound. Eventually I narrowed it down to the I/O controller, so I tried 4 different I/O controllers in various ISA slots - they all exhibited some sort of issue (some worse than others).
At one point I disconnected the CF adapter, and lo and behold, all problems were gone. I tried an old 1 GB HDD, which also worked perfectly with any I/O controller.
Not to be defeated, I bought a bunch of other CF adapters (the ones that come with a bracket, that you mount on the case). These adapters have no issues, they work with any motherboard I’ve tried them in.

So there definitely is a difference between these adapters (even though both are passive, which is normal, since CF cards are already IDE and don’t need any translation like SD cards).

Of course, the OP might have a different issue, but just wanted to point this out. 😀

Good information there, thanks! I only use the adapters you describe with the bracket, maybe why I've never had issues with these. It still makes me wonder how a passive adapter can produce such issues, but I guess if it's built poorly, it may (will?) misbehave.

Jo22 wrote on 2021-06-27, 07:24:

There are differences in the wiring of passive CF adapters. […]
Show full quote

There are differences in the wiring of passive CF adapters.

Some have a 3.3v voltage regulator that can be enabled,
some have traces for DMA signals (not necessarily needed on pure DOS),
some have the master/slave pins,
and others have shorts.

Btw, there are sometimes issues with the IORDY line (I/O Ready) which can be used
as an hardware flow control.

(From what I remember, IORDY problems can occur if the floppy controller and the IDE controller are on separate expansion cards.
So if you're using a classic mult-i/o card with serial/parallel, IDE, Floppy etc, things may work as expected.)

https://www.opennet.ru/docs/FAQ/hardware/ide-part2.html

Why would a 3.3V regulator be required when dealing with IDE, which AFAIK only use 5V signals? (and 12V for motors IIRC). The rest you mention seem to be more like design / quality control issues when building the adapters, correct?

Here it is. I am considering getting a better one but would it be worthwhile updating the BIOS on the XT-IDE?

Just to make sure, you do fdisk /mbr and partition the cards on the PC with the XT-IDE, right?
Because you mentioned having problems with the floppy and I thought maybe you're preparing the cards on another PC. This does play a role.

These adapters work just fine by the way.

Ah okay as the floppy controller seems to work sometimes. It's pretty random when it does work.

I'll try it I do have another I/O card with the floppy connector but I'm starting to wonder if the FDD is just dead and needs to be replaced ?

Basically it's FDD controller error. But the connection is set right

I also experienced intermittent FDD controller errors when using CF-IDE adapters in the past, never got to troubleshoot that properly, but it may be related to what Jo22 says. What I can say is that removing the CF-IDE and using a regular IDE hard drive made everything work perfectly again. So the problem was definitely related to either the adapter or the CF card.

Note that I wasn't using XT-IDE at all, just a regular ISA controller card.

You may want to read this: A solution to compact flash IDE (CF-IDE) floppy drive problems

I'll try that. One question though is remember old video game cartridges?

People these days use rubbing alcohol to clean the leads would that be a possibility?

It's a possibility that it could work as most times with a non working NES cartridge most times using rubbing alcohol can help the game load.

I'll be surprised if this works to be honest.

aha2940 wrote on 2021-06-27, 13:37:

Jo22 wrote on 2021-06-27, 07:24:

There are differences in the wiring of passive CF adapters. […]
Show full quote

There are differences in the wiring of passive CF adapters.

Some have a 3.3v voltage regulator that can be enabled,
some have traces for DMA signals (not necessarily needed on pure DOS),
some have the master/slave pins,
and others have shorts.

Btw, there are sometimes issues with the IORDY line (I/O Ready) which can be used
as an hardware flow control.

(From what I remember, IORDY problems can occur if the floppy controller and the IDE controller are on separate expansion cards.
So if you're using a classic mult-i/o card with serial/parallel, IDE, Floppy etc, things may work as expected.)

https://www.opennet.ru/docs/FAQ/hardware/ide-part2.html

Why would a 3.3V regulator be required when dealing with IDE, which AFAIK only use 5V signals? (and 12V for motors IIRC). The rest you mention seem to be more like design / quality control issues when building the adapters, correct?

Well, to my understanding, modern Compact Flash cards officially expect 3.3v levels (like SD cards), but are 5v "tolerant". Whatever that means.
That's why (modern) quality CF adapters do have a small DC-DC converter that converts 5v to 3.3v.
- It's the little three legged black square, often found near a jumper. 😀

Btw, CF cards do have 3 ("three") modes of operation:
- True IDE Mode
- PC Card I/O Mode
- PC Card Memory Mode (Memory-Mapped I/O)

And each of that mode uses a slightly different physical interface.

http://www.interfacebus.com/CompactFlash_Memo … ule_pinout.html

hyprthecat wrote on 2021-06-27, 18:47:

I'll try that. One question though is remember old video game cartridges?

Oh, yes! 😁

hyprthecat wrote on 2021-06-27, 18:47:

People these days use rubbing alcohol to clean the leads would that be a possibility?

It's a possibility that it could work as most times with a non working NES cartridge most times using rubbing alcohol can help the game load.

I'll be surprised if this works to be honest.

I don't know the answer, but that reminds me of that blowing the cartridge thing somehow! ^^
- Which worked, but not because of the popluar idea of dust that's blown away.
If you blow on the contacts, the metal rather tarnishes and a small conductive film arises due to condensation. 😀

same as blowing on the video game cartridges; but hours have passed, and found a somewhat messed up solution,

Since I have several retro computers, one recent purchase at a thrift store was a old voicegate PC ; basically rebuilt it in the early months of the pandemic to have a 3.5 , 5.25 and optical drive and installed windows 95 on it as it had a working hard drive.

So months have past, work in food service kept me busy finally had a week off and I decided to have a go at it again,

Seeing how XT-IDE keeps the settings on the CF cards (I have two a Monotech one which doesn't like CF card adapters , and a Glitchworks one which tolerates them) I transferred it over to the voicegate system with a ms-dos 6.22 boot disk and formatted with the /s command switch, as well as sys.com and fdisk /mbr so did that after a test on Voicegate without aid of floppy it worked, this was the industrial CF card.

The retro PC I want to build into is a Cyrix 486 I have, so I moved the Glitchworks XT-IDE over to Cyrix and it booted into MS-DOS.

I know it seems like a fair bit of work doing this but it worked.

The Transcend CF card doesn't really want to format, it goes so far then wants to repair the allocation units I wouldn't mind using that one and putting 95 on it unless someone has a solution for it, I am interested to see if we can get it to go. Or should I suck it up and buy another Verbatim CF Card ?