I wonder what would happen if you use a manufacturer's utility or HDAT2 to change the reported size of a larger drive. I've only tried that once, and it worked, but that was for a size issue on a later Pentium-era laptop, not an early IDE controller like this.

Have you done fdisk /mbr on the card?

I suggest you inset your CF card into a late 486 or pentium board that can auto-detect C/H/S, then put down that information and type it manually in 386 BIOS HDD settings.

Thanks for the replies. Yes, it's an older BIOS where you have to manually enter C/H/S settings. I would rather not have to try to get drive overlay software to work on this machine.

I've tried fdisk /mbr to no avail. Still the same thing with both cards, both controllers. I can copy files to the card, format it, etc., but trying to run executables from it causes read errors.

I originally obtained the C/H/S settings by setting the card as the primary master on my Athlon XP and having it autodetect. Those are the settings I'm using with the 386.

Most Sandisk CF cards don't have 'true IDE' mode. Not sure about Delkin. This could cause that kind of issue.

Can't remember off the top of my head which brand I ended up having to use at work (high-vibration environments and spinning platters don't mix).

I'll look it up today and update the post.

Maybe the drive needs to be aligned?

Smaller HDDs are not really that hard to find. Plenty of those on eBay. You can also post an ad on AmiBay and Vintage Computer Forum. I personally prefer IDE HDDs. I am not a fan of using modern technology. Takes away the fun for me. 😀

This outfit has a lot of IDE HDDs as well: www.acsoutlet.com. They are pretty cheap all things considered.

Had the exact same symptoms myself. Tried to recognize the card in another computer as suggested earlier in this thread, but still. What solved it was installing a disk manager. I know, the cards you're using are within the theoretical limits and it shouldn't be necessary, but it seems that for reasons I don't have the knowledge to explain for some BIOS's it is. I was trying an old 386 too.
If I remember correctly the one that worked for me in all cases was Maxtor's Maxblast - EZ-BIOS. Just find a version of that era, let's say v3 or v4.
Tell us how it went if you attempt it.

I had the same problem on an early 486. It works on my late 486
Apparently many early BIOSes don't like CF cards. Chuck over at VCF seems to think it has something to do with the removable flag

Looking for 200-300MB drives on eBay does yield some results; they tend to be around $40 shipped though...

Random shot in the dark: are we sure the CF cards here are in working order? (I'm just thinking the same "unable to read" kinds of errors are what I've seen on other flash media when it has failed).

Thanks everyone for all your help! Konc's suggestion worked! I downloaded MaxBlast Plus from http://members.shaw.ca/rinocanada/hdutils.htm, created the boot disk, partitioned and formatted the disk, and installed the EZ-BIOS software. Restarted, and EZ-BIOS prompted me to insert my operating system disks to install, which they did successfully (before it would hang when DR-DOS tried to execute VIEWMAX from the hard drive), and rebooted successfully to drive C !

EZ-BIOS was the key here. I had pretty much resigned myself to trying to hunt down an ISA IDE controller with its own BIOS, but, like old hard drives, EBay sellers want too much money for these things...but no need to worry about it now.

I'm so glad to get this machine working again!

I hope to be retro gaming with Zone66 later tonight...

Somewhat of a reverse scenario, I remember having problems trying to use a 40MB hard drive on an early EIDE controller. A 250MB drive from the same manufacturer worked though. Both drives were working on an older controller.
I wonder if there's something different about the earliest IDE drives/controllers that causes problems like this.

Glad to hear this 😀

Now if only somebody could explain it...In my mind I'm starting to believe that there is something going on with the way cf cards/modern hard disks report their characteristics and how those old BIOS's try to access them, but I cannot back it up with with data.