You can try adding

1 ConservativeSwapfileUsage = 1 

to the [386Enh] section.

This will prevent Windows from paging things to the disk if preemptively, so it should at least reduce how fast it wears down your CF. Another thing you can do is to ensure the swapfile is as small as you can get away with.

You unleashed ninja on me.

gdjacobs wrote:

You unleashed ninja on me.

what?

I have been experimenting with SSDs and CF cards when it comes to this and the wear imposed by having a active swap file isn't that great provided you maintain plenty of free space. There are some SLC based CF cards but they are not the fastest or latest models however they will last.

alexanrs wrote:

You can try adding […]
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You can try adding

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1 ConservativeSwapfileUsage = 1 

to the [386Enh] section.

This will prevent Windows from paging things to the disk if preemptively, so it should at least reduce how fast it wears down your CF. Another thing you can do is to ensure the swapfile is as small as you can get away with.

Done, thanks. That should probably be good enough. If I eventually wear down the drive, I can try something else then 😀.

PS: For anyone else who finds this in the future, the above should be added to SYSTEM.INI in the Windows folder.

Oops, it seems I forgot the most basic detail xD
Anyway, good luck for your CF card. About the swapfile on RAM thing... it is probably done by changing the swapfile location manually in CONFIG.SYS instead of relying on the GUI to change the options. I don't recall the settings (as I have never used them), but SYSTEM.INI references and tweaks are easy to find.

Stiletto wrote:

gdjacobs wrote:

You unleashed ninja on me.

what?

Alexanrs posted pretty much the same thing i was in the middle of. Maybe not quite ninja, as I got distracted for a few minutes. Perhaps we should say he Shogi'd me.

On WinXP I use something called "ArSoft AR RAMDisk". I don't remember if I ever actually tried allocating a swap file to it though. The machine I did that with isn't used for games, and I've never tried it with Win98.
I don't remember what I needed the RAM disk for, but I know something that did a lot of unnecessary writes was redirected there.

I would leave a significant amount of space unpartitioned so that some range of logical addresses are never written to. This allows wear leveling to work better and should keep performance from degrading as much. Because of the way data gets shuffled around, having ~30% unused space results in exponentially less wear than if it's full.

The big problem with CF and USB drives is that they don't have any concept of TRIM, so once an address has been written once, they have no idea if it ever got erased. It can later be "erased" under Windows and appear as empty space within Windows, but the drive thinks it still holds relevant data. There isn't even a Secure Erase command so there's no apparent way to ever 'clear' space from a hardware point of view.
Leaving some range of logical addresses unpartitioned (assuming they haven't already been written to before) can effectively limit how "full" the drive will ever think it is.

I just did a search, and the ArSoft AR RAMDisk is only for Windows NT series OSes.

As for wear leveling, I'm certainly not planning to fill up the drive, though I did not actually 'reserve' space in my partition table to support this. Overall, I'm not too concerned about normal write performance, as I'm mostly going to be reading game data off the card to play something, and then save the config and save games back later. I was mostly wanting to minimize OS-level writes in the background.

And yes, I'm familiar with the lack of TRIM, but per above, I'm perfectly fine waiting for the slightly slower write operation because the flash sector needs to be erased first. It's not like Windows 98 has TRIM support for drives that could use it anyways. Sure, I could take a modern 64 GB SSD with a SATA to IDE adaptor, and get generally better performance, but it wouldn't have TRIM either. It also wouldn't let me swap my boot drive out easily for another OS on a whim 😀 .

When I was tinkering with ramdisks on Windows 98 I used the Cenatek Ramdisk 9xMe, it worked fine in general but can't remenber if it allowed putting the pagefile on ramdisk or not (I believe it did).

I'd think that you need a DOS RAMDisk (not a W9x one) for it to work. With a Windows 9x one I'm not sure the RAMDisk drive would be active by the time the Virtual Memory is initialized.

gdjacobs wrote:

Stiletto wrote:

gdjacobs wrote:

You unleashed ninja on me.

what?

Alexanrs posted pretty much the same thing i was in the middle of. Maybe not quite ninja, as I got distracted for a few minutes. Perhaps we should say he Shogi'd me.

Ah. I woulda said "he ninja'd your post". Okay.

I'm having probs getting my adapter & card to be recognized as a drive... could I ask what adapter you are using and what IDE controller you are using it with? Also, how large is the card you are using?

Thanks

If its being recognized as a removable drive the issue lies in the CF card per se.

386_junkie wrote:

I'm having probs getting my adapter & card to be recognized as a drive... could I ask what adapter you are using and what IDE controller you are using it with? Also, how large is the card you are using?

Thanks

Using a Kingston CF/16GB-U2 (clicky, the 16GB variant) together with a cheap adapter from Aliexpress in my Socket 7 machine (i430HX). It seems to work perfectly, but then again, I built the rig quite recently, so haven't really tested it all that extensively yet.

I bought this adaptor on eBay (also from China), primarly so I would have access to the card, without taking up a front 3.5" slot.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/291008485015

Compact flash cards I used were SanDisk Extreme 8 GB (with UDMA) for Windows 98 and Transcend Ultra 1 GB Industrial that I'm saving for an eventual pure DOS/Win 3.11 setup. Both cards pictured below:

The machine I'm using is based on an old eMachine eTower 500ix a friend at work had, though I transplanted it into a nicer case. Windows identifies my IDE controller as Intel 82371AB/EB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller.

Both cards boot fine, though I had a bit of an issue replacing the MBR on the second card (it already had GRUB preloaded when I received it). I would try wiping the partition table entirely, repartitioning it and formatting it. Then either try the hidden FDISK /MBR option, or start a Windows or DOS install, either of which should update the MBR.

@zerker: Where did you find these adapters that *did* take up a front bay? I'd rather have a front one (to use instead of a floppy) but the only ones I can find are the massively overpriced StarTech units, or USB ones that won't work with my DOS machines.

I think it was just the StarTech one. Here it is at newegg.ca:
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Ite … 0-158-_-Product

35 CDN doesn't meet my threshold for "massively overpriced" but they could be cheaper, I agree. Strangely enough, I didn't see a listing for it on the US site, but I did find this Addonics version for 30 USD:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?It … 4-009-_-Product

(Or direct from manufacturer)
http://www.addonics.com/products/aeudmacf.php

How about this as a thought, get a second CF to IDE adapter and install a microdrive on it. Set this as your swapfile and you can keep your CF card safe from the incessant writes.