How did you format and partition the CF card?

Is there a jumper to set the CF adapter as Master?

with DISKPART in windows 8..

yes, it have master/slave jumpers.. - its master

i tryied set my old HDD as master and CF IDE as slave..

that same
wait........
primary: 170mb hdd bla bla
master: CF SANDISK bla bla

and nothing....

without CD IDE system start normal

How old is this board? Old ones tend to have problems?
Anyway you could try a smaller CF?

Have you tried the FDISK /MBR command on it? I've had to do this a number of times with various CF cards before they would boot successfully through to a DOS prompt.

how i can tried FDISK /MBR if i dont access to tat drive?..

i cant boot if CF IDE is connected.. i tried boot with no master and slave - BIOS dont detect it on slave (jumpers is on slave)..
hmmm

is this mainboard:
http://turiecfoto.sk/pt-432b.html

viktorcech wrote:

how i can tried FDISK /MBR if i dont access to tat drive?.. […]
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how i can tried FDISK /MBR if i dont access to tat drive?..

i cant boot if CF IDE is connected.. i tried boot with no master and slave - BIOS dont detect it on slave (jumpers is on slave)..
hmmm

is this mainboard:
http://turiecfoto.sk/pt-432b.html

That is a modern 486 board. The only thing I can suggest is to try a smaller CF card. 256MB-1GB size is best to try

wait, progress...

i change it from my CD.. as slave disk, then i have access to it from windows 95..

i make format with copy system files, but again.. cant boot..
so.. i access.. what i can do?
or maybe small card? on card is 500mb partition only

How have you configured the device in your BIOS? It is possible the BIOS will not recognize devices that are 16 GB in size.

jumper is on PRIMARY and is not detected by bios.. like cdrom.. cdrom is not on bios too

edit: 21:09.. master is OFF, only slave.. i boot from diskette, but i no acces to CF.. fdisk not working (not disk found)

viktorcech wrote:

jumper is on PRIMARY and is not detected by bios.. like cdrom.. cdrom is not on bios too

edit: 21:09.. master is OFF, only slave.. i boot from diskette, but i no acces to CF.. fdisk not working (not disk found)

I've not seen this behavior. Typically with a CF card inserted, the system will refuse to boot to a DOS prompt. To mitigate this, I leave the CF card plugged in, reboot the machine and boot from a bootable DOS disk. From there I can run FDISK /MBR, reboot the system and it will boot normally.

For your case, it sounds like even with the CF card plugged in, it won't even boot from the floppy despite having a boot order of A: and then C:. That's odd to me - have you tried other floppy drives/disks? Sometimes these adapters are flakey and I try to buy several at a time. Do you have any other CF->IDE adapters you can try?

no.. with CF IDE as master i cant boot.. when i change it from CD, then i dont partition on fdisk, but CF disk is visible from windows 95.. strange..

viktorcech wrote:

hello, i buy CF IDE adapter and i trying first boot.. im using 16GB SANDISK CF card (formated, created 500mb partitions, formate […]
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hello, i buy CF IDE adapter and i trying first boot.. im using 16GB SANDISK CF card (formated, created 500mb partitions, formated FAT16).. but on boot i see only:

WAIT...
Primary master hdd: hdx 6.03 sandisk sdcfh-016g

and nothing........
in bios i have boot priority: A:, C:..

when i remove CF card, system trying reads from A:, but A: diskette not respons (no led flashing, no reading)..

hmmm, what i can do?

There are some limitations to how you can partition a drive under MS-DOS. If you make 32 * 500MB primary partitions on a 16GB drive, then it will not be MS-DOS compatible, and you won't be able to use it under MS-DOS, let alone boot from it. If you're going to use it with MS-DOS, then I'd suggest staying with a 4GB CF card and make one primary partition of 2GB and one extended partition of 2GB and make a single logical drive on the extended partition. This way, you'll have the best DOS compatibility, along with good usable partition sizes. As far as I know, you can have a maximum of 3 primary and 1 extended partition if you want the drive to be dos compatible. MS-DOS is a lot more picky about these things than more modern OSes. I would also recommend not partitioning a drive for use under DOS or Windows 95 using Windows 8. I somehow doubt maintaining backwards compatibility was a priority when MS made Windows 8.
Have you tried running the CF card as secondary master instead of having it on the same IDE channel as your HDD?

What I would do, is to try to boot from a Windows 98 boot floppy (you can find disk images online), with only the CF card on the IDE controller, and see if fdisk can see the CF card. If it can, then the fdisk /mbr would be the way to go, as that rewrites the master boot record on the CF card. This is what I had to do to make my CF cards bootable. Also, I'd delete all partitions on it and partition it using fdisk.

Sometimes you have to force the CHS parameters in BIOS. I use something like this for my 500MB size partition on 8GB CF card: C: 1023 H:16 S:63

I even prepare CF card in VMware Workstation using some DOS BOOT disk and also use above CHS parameters in VMware - use FDISK to make 500MB partition, make it active and issue FDISK /MBR just in case. Always use the same CHS parameters as then when you partitioned the card. This way I haven't had any problems from 386 to Athlon systems.

http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CardTricks

At first, use this program and make it "CF boot OFF" to "CF boot ON".

If your card was still "OFF" at your effort. Do the format and fdisk thing again.

Beware, we don't need any firmware space for CF card. only BOOT ON.

The problem is, your M/B's LBA setting doesn't seem to work with 16G HDD.

CF BOOT ON not working..
i go try make win98 boot diskette and try fdisk (if i get acces to card)..

if not, make new partition, as LunarG says..

when i setup Cf AS SLAVE, bios dont detect it...... so i cant use FDISK..........

slave working.....but not happend

progress.. i setup C: 1023 H:16 S:63, as says kixs.. i have acces from dos, etc.. now i got try fdisk 😉

edit:
progress.. got access from A:.. deleted partition, create new primary partition..... format, reboot..
system boot.. MISSING OPERATING SYSTEM..
soo.. this will be easy 😉

so, thanks ALL for time for me.. 😀 greetings from slovakia.. 😀

viktorcech wrote:

progress.. i setup C: 1023 H:16 S:63, as says kixs.. i have acces from dos, etc.. now i got try fdisk ;) […]
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progress.. i setup C: 1023 H:16 S:63, as says kixs.. i have acces from dos, etc.. now i got try fdisk 😉

edit:
progress.. got access from A:.. deleted partition, create new primary partition..... format, reboot..
system boot.. MISSING OPERATING SYSTEM..
soo.. this will be easy 😉

so, thanks ALL for time for me.. 😀 greetings from slovakia.. 😀

Really glad to hear things are working 😀
Let us know how the CF is working out for you.