Not all adapters are the same. In my experience some just don't play nice with retro systems. It's also possible that it doesn't like the card.

It can be tricky since these firmwares are all very old relative to flash technology.

Yup many of us use those 😀

Just enter the following details manually:

1024 cylinders, 16 heads and 63 sectors. That should give you a 504 MiB hard drive.

To use more, enter the above, and then use DDO software to translate and blast through the capacity limitations 😀

I use IDE/CF adapters in many of my retro systems. In fact I don't think I have more than one system that uses real HDDs. 😀

I echo what is said above, not all are the same. I bought many lots of them cheaply on ebay, and try them as I need. Eventually I find one that works for each of the builds I make. For instance, my BX-chipset build with Abit BH6 likes those adapters that plug directly into the motherboard's IDE slot without any cable. I also found that this particular type of adapter works well on many older systems, e.g. on those ISA multi-IO cards. In contrast, newer builds from the P3 and P4 eras don't like those, and instead prefer the kind of adapters that need an IDE cable to connect to the motherboard.

oldpcguy wrote:

I tried my trusty CF > 2.5in IDE adapter with a 2.5 to 3.5 adapter. This setup has worked reliably for many years, but it doesn't work here. The hard drive is not detected.

I am thinking it's because I didn't specify the hard drive settings, (since Auto Detect doesnt work)

If the bios has an auto detect feature it should work even with a cf card (I have a 486 system with a 512MB cf card and it's recognized automatically).
I used a 3,5" to cf adapter (so 40 pin) that plugs directly onto the male ide connector and it's angled (there are vertical ones aswell if you have enough clearance).
If you buy one of these mind to make sure it has 40 pins the 44 pin ones are visually similar also mind that they have a floppy-like power connector.
However speaking of power if your motherboard provides 5V on pin 20 or you can modify it to do that the cf card will be powered directly from the ide connector, in this case you should remove the diode and bridge those 2 contacts for a reliable operation (eliminates the voltage drop).

The parameters for my Transcend 512MB cf card are 989 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors.

EDIT: Here's the kind of adapter I used (not from this particular seller) http://www.ebay.com/itm/Compact-Flash-CF-to-3 … r-/311406527245
As a precaution I put electrical tape over the exposed contacts on the bottom (or if you need you can use non conductive foam)

Kahenraz wrote:

Not all adapters are the same. In my experience some just don't play nice with retro systems. It's also possible that it doesn't like the card.

Yup, some of them lack the traces for DMA or have/don't have a voltage regulator for 3.3v.
Others are missing caps or are powered via the IDE connector. And some of the cheaper ones even have a short circuit (examine the traces near the IDE connector).

I use one of the following + a 512mb card on my 486dx33 system.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/CF-Compact-Flash-to-3 … W4AAOSwPcVV2tJf

I did order two of them, and one has issues, the other is working flawless, even on a 386 system.
The card that I am using, is just one of those Transcend, like the one in this link:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/512MB-Transcend-Compa … wwAAOSwkZhWTCEC

I had issues with a 4gb card, though it might just have been an overlay/card incompatibility.
Personally I don't mind using old authentic drives, as they provide the true feel and sound.
Sometimes I go for the CF solution, other times I really just want that old sound of real harddrives.
Speedwise I simply can not tell the difference when using the machine, benchmarks might tell
a completely different story. To me, they are equal solutions to go by.

Jo22 wrote:

Yup, some of them lack the traces for DMA or have/don't have a voltage regulator for 3.3v.
Others are missing caps or are powered via the IDE connector. And some of the cheaper ones even have a short circuit (examine the traces near the IDE connector).

Allways inspect china-crapware. 😁 Personally gotten a lot of stuff in the mail, and a lot of refunds.

With very cheap adaptors, always order 2 or more 😀 They can often arrive faulty.