There are guides out there how to get these working and it is pretty easy but the main reason to go CF is mainly down to not having any small capacity hard drives on hand as supplies have dried up or have become cost prohibitive. I stay away from SD cards because I am concerned with reliability and for the money you can go CF cards anyway. All CF cards are essentially IDE SSDs with some basic features of modern sata based SSDs, the downside is performance is often crippled to ata 33 because of the adapters for some reason.

If you want to boot from it it has to be of the fixed disk variety, these are much less common and generally a lot more expensive. Some CF cards can be changed to fixed disk through utilities but don't expect to buy any old CF card and expect it to work. I was able to adapt an old Sandisk 2GB card I had.

I was thinking about this exact issue a few days ago.

I came up with a possible, but high complexity solution, that I intend to try:
If you could get an Adaptec 1542 or 2940 into them, you could make a SCSI target on another, more modern PC. You'd need to present an appropriately sized LUN from the fileserver.

lvader wrote:

If you want to boot from it it has to be of the fixed disk variety, these are much less common and generally a lot more expensive. Some CF cards can be changed to fixed disk through utilities but don't expect to buy any old CF card and expect it to work. I was able to adapt an old Sandisk 2GB card I had.

For DOS this is a non-issue. Windows 9x is the one that checks for that.

I've actually thought about this as well. An IDE to CF adapter should work, and they're so cheap they're basically free. But CF cards aren't cheap or easy to come by.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Compact-Flash-CF-to-3 … 1kAAOSwQTVWA-92

SD Cards however are very cheap and easy to get hold of, but IDE to SD adapters cost a bit more.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Durable-SD-To-3-5-40P … OYAAOSwQItUBtHK

Here's one with a PCI bracket, so you can change out SD cards without opening up your PC. I'm sure they make these for CF as well.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/High-Quality-SD-SDHC- … 0UAAOSwQItT11W7

The only thing I have noticed is that many of these adapters don't let you specify Master/Slave drives. The CF one appears to have a jumper, but I don't see anything on the SD version. It's possible that is uses "Cable Select" by default, but I wouldn't count on it.

My knowledge is limited regarding anything prior to the Pentium 1 Socket 7 era, so not sure what you'd need to specify in the BIOS for this.

I see you're also here in SA, so it's worth mentioning that all of the links I posted include free shipping. 😀

I'm getting good mileage from my IDE to SATA adapter plugging into Seagate drives. Seatools size limits them according to your preference: 127 GB, 32 GB, 8 GB, whatever.

going through this now. I got a $5 adapter that was dual CF. jumper select for master/slave and jumper select for 5v or 3.3v to the card.

the biggest problem, old ide controllers are not made for handling 64GB cf cards. 1/2/4gb... now if you get into pci level stuff your much better off but on 386/486 type stuff it likes the smaller sizes, but getting new/nos smaller 1/2/4gb CF cards is a pain. lot of fakes around.

also some smaller/older CF cards had no partition table/mbr setup, it was like a large floppy disk (my 64mb NOS cf cards are like this), something to be aware of.

JodieC wrote:

I was thinking about this exact issue a few days ago.

I came up with a possible, but high complexity solution, that I intend to try:
If you could get an Adaptec 1542 or 2940 into them, you could make a SCSI target on another, more modern PC. You'd need to present an appropriately sized LUN from the fileserver.

I would like if you could explain us how OP is supposed to accomplish this. While i'm aware that this rare configuration is possible (connect 2 HBAs and make one of them work as SCSI target i mean), only a few Macs and some HBAs like LSI Ultra320 MPT allow to be used in this way, and in LSI HBA case, them require an extensive fileserver configuration (Macs don't allow target mode to FileIO backing store, only to internal HDD device). Also, Fusion-MPT only allows Target Mode in Wide Ultra160 Mode, which excludes many ISA cards.

https://sourceforge.net/p/scst/mailman/message/29746748/

hyoenmadan wrote:

I would like if you could explain us how OP is supposed to accomplish this. While i'm aware that this rare configuration is possible (connect 2 HBAs and make one of them work as SCSI target i mean), only a few Macs and some HBAs like LSI Ultra320 MPT allow to be used in this way, and in LSI HBA case, them require an extensive fileserver configuration (Macs don't allow target mode to FileIO backing store, only to internal HDD device). Also, Fusion-MPT only allows Target Mode in Wide Ultra160 Mode, which excludes many ISA cards.

https://sourceforge.net/p/scst/mailman/message/29746748/

It seems to have ruffled your feathers a bit.
A ton of the Adaptec cards supported target mode (supposedly even 154x), and we used to run a product called ScsiServer on NT4 to provide the targets.
I've seen people on another forum using Symbios Logic boards to provide targets for vintage computers, under FreeDOS.

Odds are that FreeBSD or a Solaris derivative will be the easiest powerful solution today (though still hard), though on my list that project is behind others. I'm still reworking my garage right now to make more room for the PS/2 and Ultra1.

For my DOS rigs, I use DOM's (Disk On Module) and they are fantastic. Think of them as industrial SSD's that were made for embedded OS's but are perfect for DOS. While they work for Windows as well, the larger capacity DOM's can cost quite a bit more than a large multi terabyte HDD and SATA to IDE adaptor without offering better performance due to the limitations of whatever IDE host adaptor is being used on said rig. So for windows rigs, keep it simple and look for a the fastest HDD with the largest cache and lowest price you can find (between $20 to $60 new for a 1 to 2 terabyte HDD) and a cheap SATA to IDE adaptor for a couple of bucks. Just my two cents on the matter.

A lot has been said already, so I'm just going to share my personal findings and thoughts.

For pure DOS, on a 386 or 486 I like to use CF cards. They work really well for me.

But by far my favourite storage solution is using SATA to IDE adapters in combination with Seagate / Samsung drives and SeaTools. This allows me to set the capacity of the drive to whatever size you want.

I'm also using SD memory card to IDE adapters, but I'm still assessing longer term reliability.

Thank you for all the input provided.
Phil, could you perhaps provide a mini guideline on how you went about in setting up a CF card(s) in your 386 or 486 PC?
What to buy, what to look out for, and how to properly set it up on a 386 PC?
I suppose this is only ideal for pure DOS and not necessarily Windows 3.x/95?

The SATA to IDE solution I'm familiar with and have used it in the past.

CF is fully compatible with the IDE standard, so setting it up is no different than any other IDE drive. But yea, a mini tutorial is a great idea 😀

BIOS and OS limits do apply though.

Worst case just use DDO software such as EZ-Drive.

Speaking of CF cards. Take a tour around on youtube. Make shure to spot how many different CF cards that are used. 😉

Anyway...
The SATA to IDE converters are cheap too. They work great (some of them). Just make shure to use Seagate harddrives.
This seatools thing just works, no issues there. Well... You need a more modern machine, as I have not been able to
run it on a Pentium-III. Something about the program, using technology found in P4 and onwards.

I am in the process of gathering hardware, in order to test out the compatibility of different storage solutions on my
old Unisys PW/2 Series 300 workstation. Wich is an old 80286 machine.
In this process, I am going to test plain normal harddrives, CF-Cards and finally a SCSI solution.
I will be posting my findings in that tread that I have made for my machine.

The reason being for this, is that I simply do not trust that old MFM harddrive anymore. Shure it is an old 20mb
miniscribe drive, with no bad sectors and no wierd and/or hissing noises. Works great.
I simply do not trust that thing, due to it's age. Will keep it though, because the machine has to have the
original parts ready, if reinstallation is needed. Yeah... Going to test with a 32mb CF-Card.

EDIT:
I would say, that you can do one of the following things:

1: SATA drives....
Buy one of these below here, and get a 500gb to 2tb (whatever the cheapest) seagate harddrive.
Then prepare it with seatools (limiting it to 32gb or lower) and just use it as a normal drive.
If a PATA 128 to 500gb Seagate drive is at hand, just reduce it with seatools.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/OE-SATA-7-15-TO-PATA- … SkAAOSwDNdVyedB

2: SCSI drives...
This is a darn difficult area compared to PATA/SATA and all that. You need to know what you are doing.
On the other hand. I personally think that finding this out by trial and error is half the fun of it all. 😁
You can not break it, it just does not work untill you discover stuff like the controller in question, does
not like booting on LUN-1 to 6. As it actually only like to boot HDD's off LUN-0... Minor setbacks... 😉

3: CF-Cards...
Just get something like the stuff below and start tinkering with it. Personally I have no experience
with this technology. As why I am going to check it out in the next couple of months.
It looks easy compared to SCSI, for what I have read and seen on youtube. Feeling positive here.
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_sac … =cf+ide&_sop=15

And the card...
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_sac … sh+card&_sop=15

There are some pretty cheap card's there. If you only want 500+/- megabyte as the maximum storage.
Just pick whatever you want, ass long as it is cheap. You can allways go for something better once
you know you'r way around this technology. 😉

I wouldn't recommend any Flash Memory based solution to replace an HDD in DOS and old windows versions except for very specific embedded solutions were the Flash Disk works as readonly media image and all is written to RAM.

The biggest problem comes from the fact that you can't really align DOS partitions and writable FAT cluster blocks to flash media Memory Erase page blocks, since DOS expects these aligned to 512b blocks (sectors) and partition boundaries/fat allocation tables aligned to cylinders (odd problem about DOS and old *nixes). Since you can't really tune OS and Disk utilities in these OSs to workaround the problem, the only hope would find Flash Memory based media with 512b Page Erase Size... But even expensive industrial memory cards (CF, SSD, SD, etc) come with an 4k/8k erasing page size... Flash media with 512b "sector" erase size doesn't exist at all.

So nope, DOS and many old *nixes aren't flash memory technology aware, at least in non embedded versions, and you really don't want to replace your fixed magnetic media with them. Your best bet are small old IDE disks and microdrives, based in the same principle, which are 512b Sector/Cylinder alignment aware.

JodieC wrote:

It seems to have ruffled your feathers a bit. A ton of the Adaptec cards supported target mode (supposedly even 154x), and we us […]
Show full quote

It seems to have ruffled your feathers a bit.
A ton of the Adaptec cards supported target mode (supposedly even 154x), and we used to run a product called ScsiServer on NT4 to provide the targets.
I've seen people on another forum using Symbios Logic boards to provide targets for vintage computers, under FreeDOS.

Odds are that FreeBSD or a Solaris derivative will be the easiest powerful solution today (though still hard), though on my list that project is behind others. I'm still reworking my garage right now to make more room for the PS/2 and Ultra1.

I wonder if the product was available as part of the EZ-SCSI package, or it was only available as retail product under contract for high enterprise market only, because if it is, chances to find a copy to test it are low.

Don't know about FreeBSD, but Solaris servers have an LSI Fusion-MPT derivative chipset as SCSI host, hence why it allows working in target mode, and in this case, limitation to Wide Ultra160 still applies.

Please, if you could give us some links with instructions to test this possibility, as it seems a better long-term approvach than flash media, which old OSs aren't really aware of it as i explainded before.

Seriously how much writing occurs on a 486 running DOS? I ran Windows 98 on a flash based DOM for years without issues.

lvader wrote:

Seriously how much writing occurs on a 486 running DOS? I ran Windows 98 on a flash based DOM for years without issues.

I was talking about cheap solutions using CF/SD media which aren't designed to scenarios like this, or common SSD media, which requires an SSD aware controller and OS to work correctly (no, 512 emulation found in these drives can't deal with the problem). By contrary, DOM modules meant for industrial usage can have built in solutions like smaller erase page size, built-in caching and block section reorganization, so them can deal better with partition boundary misaligment/block section write misaligment. Ofc, depending where you live, searching for these modules can be easy, or it can become an ugly odyssey.

Sometimes is easier to just search for an older HDD, or a microdrive module to replace drives in old systems.

hyoenmadan wrote:

I wonder if the product was available as part of the EZ-SCSI package, or it was only available as retail product under contract for high enterprise market only, because if it is, chances to find a copy to test it are low.

Don't know about FreeBSD, but Solaris servers have an LSI Fusion-MPT derivative chipset as SCSI host, hence why it allows working in target mode, and in this case, limitation to Wide Ultra160 still applies.

Please, if you could give us some links with instructions to test this possibility, as it seems a better long-term approvach than flash media, which old OSs aren't really aware of it as i explainded before.

The product was a commercial product from a VTL vendor.

Solaris supported Adaptec, QLogic, Emulex as well as LSI chipsets, but they killed a lot of that in the version that introduces COMSTAR. 😒 So it sounds like I'll have better luck with FreeBSD or one of the openSolaris derivatives.

This guy had target success with his Beeb:
http://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3707&start=30

hyoenmadan wrote:

I wouldn't recommend any Flash Memory based solution to replace an HDD in DOS and old windows versions except for very specific embedded solutions were the Flash Disk works as readonly media image and all is written to RAM.

Then tell me, why do people here constantly reporting great results when using CF cards in MS-Dos-6.22?
Not why it's working, just why so many people reports good results.