Your speed will likely be limited by the speed of the controller card.
PIO Mode 2, for example, maxes out at around 8 MB/s. You'll probably max out around 14-15 MB/s at PIO Mode 4.
CF cards are also quite slow when writing/reading small files under 512KB. Like, we're talking under 100 KB/s.

You might instead look into getting a cheap PATA Disk on Module SSD off ebay.
I got a 16GB DoM for my 486 120mhz using a VLB controller on PIO Mode 4, it's quite speedy.

Interesting. Never heard of DoM before. I recently bought a CF-card to use with an CF-adapter I had, but didn't get it to work. I later read that new CF-cards can be difficult to get to boot from.

Which DoM did you buy? I see this Kingspec-brand pop up and wondering if you can use two next to each other, one in each IDE-port, or if they are too thick. I'm looking at having a few with different OS-installation media on them so that I could skip my CD-ROM.

DNSDies -

Your speed will likely be limited by the speed of the controller card.

Yes, I'm aware of this. But I still hope for speed-up over the dreaded old slow HDD... The intended board, Asus TXP4-X, does support PIO4 and DMA2. Both these are 16.7MB/sec rated. The card even support UDMA, witch could (at PIO4/DMA2) get me to 33.3MB/sec, but that is probably wishfull thinking.

CF cards are also quite slow when writing/reading small files under 512KB. Like, we're talking under 100 KB/s.

Are not there some caches that help? Still, that should be faster that the old HDD...

You might instead look into getting a cheap PATA Disk on Module SSD off ebay.

Will it be fater? Because CF card use the PATA interface, so there is no translation between PATA and SATA = fastest possible speed?

I got a 16GB DoM for my 486 120mhz using a VLB controller on PIO Mode 4, it's quite speedy.

What is DoM and no... my mainboard does not have VLBus. I have 4 PCI buses, tough. Can they be used for something meaningfull?

Marquzz -

I recently bought a CF-card to use with an CF-adapter I had, but didn't get it to work. I later read that new CF-cards can be difficult to get to boot from.

This is exactly what I fear. I was told that in such cases, the CF card must be changed from removable to fixed device.

Which DoM did you buy? I see this Kingspec-brand pop up and wondering if you can use two next to each other, one in each IDE-port, or if they are too thick. I'm looking at having a few with different OS-installation media on them so that I could skip my CD-ROM.

Makes me wonder, what these DoMs are... 😀

Sandisk response:

Dear Pavel,

I understand that you want to change your CF card from removable to fixed device.

Please allow us to inform you that CompactFlash cards can be configured to use “Fixed Disk mode” as this is defined by the CompactFlash specification.

SanDisk does not support its implementation with our consumer or professional-level cards as it is outside of the scope of their intended use. Thus, all of our consumer and professional cards are shipped, by default, in Removable mode.
SanDisk no longer offers an OEM or fixed disk Compact flash card line. There also is no utility available to change retail Compact Flash cards from removable to fixed disk.

Additional information you may read on the following web article:
Can I enable the Fixed Disk mode on my CompactFlash card?

In order to answer your question to which voltage the PATA to CF card adapter should be set, I will reply to you later as I will escalate this issue to our technical department, in order to give you a correct answer.

Thank you for your preference of our SanDisk products.

Click here to register your product online.
Please provide us your phone number (for technical support call back only)

Thank you for your kind cooperation.

Best regards,

Joanna R.
SanDisk Global Customer Care

...

So to put it short, I pay premium price for "CF card" that is not really a CF card, because I cannot change the bit that is defined by CF specification...? You are gotta be kidding me...

I've got a Transcend DOM and honestly, it does not seem any different from a CF card.

It's a good idea to buy a second-hand small CF card from China that would work anywhere before trying newer cards of higher capacity.

Marquzz wrote:

Interesting. Never heard of DoM before. I recently bought a CF-card to use with an CF-adapter I had, but didn't get it to work. I later read that new CF-cards can be difficult to get to boot from.

Which DoM did you buy? I see this Kingspec-brand pop up and wondering if you can use two next to each other, one in each IDE-port, or if they are too thick. I'm looking at having a few with different OS-installation media on them so that I could skip my CD-ROM.

Disk on Module are mostly used in embedded computers, like ATMs, ticket machines, and other such small purpose built PCs.
I got a 16GB kingspec one, and it works fine.
They're slightly larger than a standard IDE cable.
I'd recommend getting an IDE gender change cable and using that to plug it into a standard IDE cable from your controller. This will let you use 2 as master/slave. Make sure it's a proper gender change cable, as plugging it in incorrectly WILL FRY IT.

For larger moves/writes/reads, it's about as fast as a good CF card, but for moving lots of small files, it's noticeably faster. CF cards don't have a cache on them, but DoM units do. They're basicall small SSDs.

trodas wrote:

DNSDies -

Sandisk response: […]
Show full quote

Sandisk response:

Dear Pavel,

I understand that you want to change your CF card from removable to fixed device.

Please allow us to inform you that CompactFlash cards can be configured to use “Fixed Disk mode” as this is defined by the CompactFlash specification.

SanDisk does not support its implementation with our consumer or professional-level cards as it is outside of the scope of their intended use. Thus, all of our consumer and professional cards are shipped, by default, in Removable mode.
SanDisk no longer offers an OEM or fixed disk Compact flash card line. There also is no utility available to change retail Compact Flash cards from removable to fixed disk.

Best regards,

Joanna R.
SanDisk Global Customer Care

...

So to put it short, I pay premium price for "CF card" that is not really a CF card, because I cannot change the bit that is defined by CF specification...? You are gotta be kidding me...

I have to wonder if this is something you would fix by simply running the CF card through MBR Wizard and wiping it completely out, then starting fresh with a new MBR and setting it up, correctly within Windows 7 with it's factory utilities. Although, you may have to research on how to set the card up with MBR Wizard as far as aligning it's partition(s). Perhaps, running it through Paragon Alignment tool, afterwards. The fact that they say "there is no utility" only tells me that they don't supply one--there must be disk utilities available to set this thing up, correctly.

Umm, does it have to be Sandisk?

Well, since SanDisk is not going to reply, I tried with the default 5V setting the DeLock adapter I mentioned earlier with very old, 0.5G CF card SanDisk SDCFH. It does support PIO 4, but no DMA and the speed is very slow:

Tested on ASRock 775Dual-VSTA (P4, 3.8GHz WinXP, alligned). Also works (or more precisely, get detected) on the target Asus TXP4-X, so so far, so good. Except the speed, 🤣.

Now the question is - what voltage to use for the SanDisk Extreme PRO 32G CF card and how to change the removable bit to fixed, so there will be the caching in Windows possible.

...

DNSDies -

DoM: Disk on Module are mostly used in embedded computers, like ATMs, ticket machines, and other such small purpose built PCs. I got a 16GB kingspec one, and it works fine. They're slightly larger than a standard IDE cable.

Oh thanks, I now know, what DoM is.

For larger moves/writes/reads, it's about as fast as a good CF card, but for moving lots of small files, it's noticeably faster. CF cards don't have a cache on them, but DoM units do. They're basicall small SSDs.

Well, I wonder if PATA converter and SATA SSD on it will be faster 😀 Probably yes. But how to limit the capacity to 32G (or 128G when using patched bios)? I wonder, if that could get me more speed. The results from the old SanDisk card are shockingly slow...

Logistics -

I have to wonder if this is something you would fix by simply running the CF card through MBR Wizard and wiping it completely out, then starting fresh with a new MBR and setting it up, correctly within Windows 7 with it's factory utilities. Although, you may have to research on how to set the card up with MBR Wizard as far as aligning it's partition(s). Perhaps, running it through Paragon Alignment tool, afterwards. The fact that they say "there is no utility" only tells me that they don't supply one--there must be disk utilities available to set this thing up, correctly.

I use Mini Tool Partition Wizard Pro - it let me allign the partitions on SSD. It offer the same on HDDs, but no performance gains. Same on CF card - yet no performance gains on the old card...
So you suggesting to try MBR Wizard? Good. Now where is the Hiren CD's, that migh have this tool... 😀

RacoonRider -

Umm, does it have to be Sandisk?

No, absolutely not. Why? I only have SanDisk CF card(s) right now. Nothing else...

http://www.ehow.co.uk/how_7811193_set-cf-card … fixed-mode.html
Has some info / utility for fixed mode

I found myself (and unsucesfully tested) two ways, ATM, that attempted to flip the removable / fixed bit on my SanDisk CF cards. I have own a oldie SanDisk 5V and 0.5GBy big CF card (SDCFH-512) too. The second tested card was the SanDIsk Extreme PRO 32G (SDCFXPS-032G) CF card.

1 - there is a program called BootIt v1.07, that offer the flipping between the removable and fixed devices:
http://www.getusb.info/flip-your-bit-usb-util … ke-local-drive/
It does promise that it will work (despite showing my 32G CF card as 18G) and it even claim to work:

...but the device stays as removable. Both my CF cards cannot be changed. It should work good on USB drives... but it does not work on both mentioned CF cards.

2 - there is program called atcfwchg.com:
http://www.ehow.com/how_7811193_set-cf-card-fixed-mode.html
Again it claim to flip the removable bit to fixed on CF card, connected thru PATA to CF card adapter into a PATA interface. The usage is shell and it is simple:
atcfwchg /P /F
That should set the CF card, that reside on the primary IDE channel to fixed mode. In reality it output this error:

D:\>ATCFWCHG /P /F NAND Athens ID Drive Config Word (Fixed/Removable) Change Utility Version 1.4. Fail (error #20) D:\> […]
Show full quote

D:\>ATCFWCHG /P /F
NAND Athens ID Drive Config Word (Fixed/Removable) Change Utility Version 1.4.
Fail (error #20)
D:\>

So changing the "most important bit" on any CF card is not possible for these SanDisk cards, witch make them virtually useless for any PC usage, as for example, two partitions are not possible on removable device under Windows, while it is not a problem on fixed device...

There are also "solutions", like a diskmod-0.0.2.2, witch is basically a driver that trick Windows into treating all devices as fixed. Yet that is not going to help me to be able to install Windows on the CD card, therefore I cannot attest on it's functionality of quirks or bad things that happen, when you use it. I saw video of this driver working well on Win 8.1, but since the change is not permament ON THE DEVICE and it is just a Win patch, then it does not interest me one bit.

So far, I'm clueless. Hopefully the information I gather will help someone... On SanDisk forum this message I posted disappeared very quickly (under 20 min)... so, beware, users. SanDisk does not sell CF cards, but compatible CF cards with the exception that the most important change you are forbidden to do it and they will even actively seek and eradicate all informations regarding the topic...

A possible work around is have both a HDD and CF card. My 486's have a HDD as C: and CF card as D:
I did it like that as I missed the sound of a HDD when booting but will work to get round your issue as its only the sys files that don't like living on a removable drive. the dos folder can happily live somewhere else

trodas wrote:

Segate 13G ST313021A on Pentium 90 @ 125MHz: […]
Show full quote

Segate 13G ST313021A on Pentium 90 @ 125MHz:

By the look of it... your motherboards controller is limiting this HDD. I don't think even a fast CF card to get over 8MB/s mark. Check in the BIOS if there are any settings (PIO, DMA). Also check in the Windows devices > IDE Controller if you can change mode of operation and check DMA if possible.

I was looking at some Sandisk and Transcend CF cards on Amazon recently thinking about using one for DOS. This is disappointing. I noticed you tried the ATCFWCHG.COM utility, and that didn't work either, so I guess Sandisk changed something to make that utility not work anymore.

I doubt it's any help with a Pentium 90, but I did read of one workaround that I think is specific to Windows XP:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/CompactFlash_boot_drive

thinkwiki.org wrote:

Most CompactFlash cards by default identify themselves as removable media instead of fixed disk. Which is fine for Linux, but no […]
Show full quote

Most CompactFlash cards by default identify themselves as removable media instead of fixed disk. Which is fine for Linux, but not for Windows.

If you have to use a CF card that has the type bits set to Removable and want to install Windows XP you can work around it as follows;

Use Linux to partition the drive with a FAT32 partition (you can boot from one of the LiveCD/LiveUSB distributions for this), and set the partition bootable.
Start the install of Windows, during install you will be given the opportunity to migrate to NTFS
After the install is finished you will need to install the Hitachi microdrive disk drivers (google for XPfildrvr1224.zip), which will mask the removable bits and should allow suspend and other operations that fail on a removable drive to work.

I found that .zip they mentioned at:
https://matthieu.yiptong.ca/2012/03/16/window … ildrvr1224-zip/

I don't understand this though. Seems to me that if you can't boot into Windows, you'll never get a chance to install that driver. But maybe I'm missing something. Anyway, that driver might be just for XP so it might not be very useful. Maybe a similar driver exists for older Windows - but if so I didn't see it mentioned.

I looked at Transcend's web page and saw exactly the same message as what Sandisk told you about not "supporting" fixed disk mode because it "goes beyond their intended use". They're copying each other's text.
Kingston doesn't allow it either, but they said it in their own, different words.

I'm annoyed at these companies. Seems they've all decided to stamp out the fixed disk flag. What kind of business are they trying to run? "We don't want you to use our products. They are only for photographers."

Might be time to switch to SD cards. Tried out a few adapters and they work fine. Local super market sells no name 16 GB and Verbatim 8 GB SD cards, both work fine, the Verbatim performs faster though.

Attached is a benchmark, run on a P4 with XP live and ATTO. In POST, the adapter shows up as a UDMA6 device.

The low size write performance is certainly decent, I wouldn't have issues recommending it even for a Windows 98 SE machine.

Compared to the CF cards I have, the SD has lower read performance, but better write performance, more important IMO.

What performance impact do you see with W98, W2k and XP by killing the swap file? I would be concerned about swap eating the write cycles on SD media, unless you are sure that wear leveling is available with your controller.