I believe there are already many topics on this...

You can use CompatFlash to IDE adapter and then use any CompactFlash card on old computers that support IDE drives. For up to 386 less then 512MB CF is recommended as they usually can't address/use more then 504MB. But you can use some software LBA solutions.

CF cards add performance and silence to the old system. I use mix of old hard drives and CF cards with adapters.

jhl2600 wrote:

Are there any flash memory based solutions that can be used with older drive standards?

CF cards/adapters are pretty popular as has already been said. They're silent, and they are probably the best performance you can get in terms of storage device options on older systems, at least 286/386 era systems. As far as 486/early Pentium era, modern SATA drives become an option, though I'd still recommend CF cards. Most of my older rigs have proper hard drives which have surprisingly lasted very well throughout all these years.

DDO software could be pretty useful here as well.

There are lots of options 😀

Very popular are CF cards in 386 and 486 computers for pure DOS.

For faster machines, or machines that use Windows 98, I do use modern drives. It might seem wasteful, but new hard drives are quite cheap, or you might already have one lying around.

I use SATA to IDE adapters and you can either set the capacity manually in BIOS, or limit it with software. Seagate drives work very well because you can use SeaTools and turn a modern 2 TB drive into whatever capacity drive you want. 32 GB, 60 GB, 80, 120, whatever.

kixs wrote:

I believe there are already many topics on this...

Yeah I'm sorry about that, I guess I didn't really know what I was searching for exactly so i couldn't really narrow down any keywords to search for.

I appreciate these responses though, they've given me some things to look into.

I just bought myself an IDE - SD adapter from china for 8 euro. SD-cards are some cheaper than CF.

For DOS a cheap SD card whit 30 mb/s is enough (like 4 euro's). Even windows 98 runs good on it, but a little slow. Here for a 60mb/s or faster would be a good choice. The fun thing is (also whit CF) that you easily swap the card and install some other OS, like OS2, BeOS or QNX.

Yeah I'm doing the real HDD / CF combo over here too. The HDD I use for boring stuff like the OS - I like to hear it rattle every now and then. The CF I use for most everything else, which makes it easy to a) back up games, saves, etc, and b) pull the CF card out (I use an external facing adapter) and copy stuff on to it, which means no floppies / burnt CD's anymore.

Although I've used a CF card in the past successfully together with DOS, I always try to stick with old hard drives, because of the sound.

The "computer thinking" sound is part of the retro experience, so for me that's the way to go on DOS systems.
On Pentium(MMX) class systems, I also use noisy 2-8GB hard disks.
But on Pentium III, the variety of games one can play is so huge, that I cannot fit them into period correct 6-10GB HDDs, so I use 20-80GB ones, from ~2002-2005, which spin most times at 7200rpm and are much less noisy. 😊

GeorgeMan wrote:

Although I've used a CF card in the past successfully together with DOS, I always try to stick with old hard drives, because of […]
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Although I've used a CF card in the past successfully together with DOS, I always try to stick with old hard drives, because of the sound.

The "computer thinking" sound is part of the retro experience, so for me that's the way to go on DOS systems.
On Pentium(MMX) class systems, I also use noisy 2-8GB hard disks.
But on Pentium III, the variety of games one can play is so huge, that I cannot fit them into period correct 6-10GB HDDs, so I use 20-80GB ones, from ~2002-2005, which spin most times at 7200rpm and are much less noisy. 😊

Neighbors think a like I guess. 🤣 In addition to this, in my older rigs, "boot up floppy seek" option is always enabled. I use 0-5GB ones for 386 systems, and 10-20 GB ones for MMX class, and 80-120GB for PIIIs. I also have at least a SCSI drive in almost all of my builds, use them to store partition ghost images (most of my MMX and PIII builds are multiboot), OS install CDs/floppies and drivers for that particular build. They are presumably more reliable and mostly even more noisy. 🤣 I have a lot of old IDE disks around, so probably I'm ok for a decade or so considering the rate of HDDs going bad is low in my case, according to my experience.

I also use CFs of course, but not as primary drives. All of my builds have externally accessible CF to ide adapters, and they are very good for quick boot up tests and of course data transfer.

for older 386/486 machines, a CF card is a very nice option , even a fairly low capacity one will be more than enough to store many games.

for something newer , like say a Pentium/II/III machine, I would go with a hard drive, those machines tend work better with larger hard drives, and doing full installs for many of the games will use up a CF card very quickly (given than with some games it literally will be a gigabyte or more per game for a full install , like with Grim Fandango or Starcraft).

Although when picking hard drives, I would stick with stuff thats in the range of 10-15 years old max, you dont want to be stuck with a cranky old hard drive from the mid 90s which will be no more spacious than the CF option

Darkman wrote:

Although when picking hard drives, I would stick with stuff thats in the range of 10-15 years old max, you dont want to be stuck with a cranky old hard drive from the mid 90s which will be no more spacious than the CF option

Unless you love the sound they make 😉

I am using Disk-On-Modules in my 386-486 and P1 systems.
They are cheap off ebay and work like a charm. You can even plug them in directly into the socket on the board without cable.

Still haven't had any failure on them. Only issue can be that you have to set the bios on older systems to emulate a certain size of old drive. 😊

Does anybody here have any experience with with 3600RPM Microdrives? I think of these: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hitachi-HMS360606D5CF … =item565456a7ae

Trevize wrote:

Does anybody here have any experience with with 3600RPM Microdrives? I think of these: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hitachi-HMS360606D5CF … =item565456a7ae

Yes I do.

I have Seagate and Hitachi micro drives. They are very slow. So slow, that in many games you will have pauses when it accesses the drive.

Trevize wrote:

Does anybody here have any experience with with 3600RPM Microdrives? I think of these: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hitachi-HMS360606D5CF … =item565456a7ae

While I have no experience with those, I'd expect them to be slower than a period correct 6GB HDD (too low RPM), but way more silent.

My pick would be CF cards for DOS systems and newer notebook drives for Windows (possibly using SATA->IDE adapters and artiicially limiting the size). Or just stay with the period correct stuff, have period correct performance and enjoy the noise.

philscomputerlab wrote:

Yes I do.

I have Seagate and Hitachi micro drives. They are very slow. So slow, that in many games you will have pauses when it accesses the drive.

Under what OS are you using them? Windows? DOS?
What do you think, would they be fast enough for my 286 and 486 machines, with DOS? -> playing games, compiling some Turbo Pascal and Assembly code.

This was under DOS.

Personally, I'd just go with a CF card, regardless of the computer being a 286, 386 or 486.

I have a bunch of the Hitachi microdrives that I use with a CF-to-IDE adapter. I like it quite a lot, actually. Like badmojo, I use an adapter that is front-facing so that I can easily swap out drives (like cartridges) without opening the case. I use it with a DOS/Win98SE OEM box (Celeron 466). One microdrive is my DOS drive with all of my AWE64 initialization routines in the autoexec/config as well as games such as Duke 3D, Doom, Blood, Descent, etc. Another microdrive is my Win98SE drive with games such as Quake 2, Unreal, etc.

If you look at the photo below, you'll see that the OEM Win98SE box came with a 10GB drive, so a 6GB microdrive is not such a big step down. You can always have multiples with the same OS and different games on them.

The drives are indeed slower than a typical 3.5" IDE drive, but I have not noticed any in-game stuttering or slowdowns.

I also use one in my DOS-only build. I use a modern PS (Corsair CX430), and the 486 DX2-50 does not have a fan (or heatsink!). Without a 3.5" IDE HD, this box is almost silent when running. I can barely tell that it is on.

One downside is that these drives seem quite fragile to me. I have had a least a couple of them outright die on me. They are pretty inexpensive, so it's no big deal, but you should always have a cloned backup.

kixs wrote:

I believe there are already many topics on this...

You can use CompatFlash to IDE adapter and then use any CompactFlash card on old computers that support IDE drives. For up to 386 less then 512MB CF is recommended as they usually can't address/use more then 504MB. But you can use some software LBA solutions.

CF cards add performance and silence to the old system. I use mix of old hard drives and CF cards with adapters.

The downside of CF cards are the write speed which are terrible slow.

boxpressed wrote:

Like badmojo, I use an adapter that is front-facing so that I can easily swap out drives (like cartridges) without opening the case.

Do you have a cheap source for those? All I can find are the StarTech units that sell for ~$30 each.