Did you swap the CF card between your vintage system and a modern PC when it was working? I use CF's to transfer files from my laptop to my vintage system and I must say I had a few issues with that. Safely removed but content completely corrupted. Unzipping files straight to the CF seems the cause.

I swapped it (copy+pasted files in modern PC) as I did successfully before and it was working ok then next day 386 said "Drive not ready insert boot diskette."

I used WinRAR to unzip DOS games downloaded online(.ZIPs) but it worked that day ok on 386. Next day it did not start.

I think some online downloaded old DOS games had a boot sector virus.
- Avast virus scanner did not warn in my modern PC but I read online that it can't see boot sector viruses.

Oh and some games(Warcraft 1,...) SETUP.exe had "STACKS OVERFLOW SYSTEM HALTED"-error jamming the 386.
- Could that have corrupted the CF card ?
- What does the error mean ? I had to push power off when it happened.
Someone said insert STACKS=9,256 to CONFIG.sys ?

user33331 wrote:

I used WinRAR to unzip DOS games downloaded online(.ZIPs) but it worked that day ok on 386. Next day it did not start.

In my case the disk was corrupted straight away. It probably is something else.

user33331 wrote:

Oh and some games(Warcraft 1,...) SETUP.exe had "STACKS OVERFLOW SYSTEM HALTED"-error jamming the 386.

This looks like a problem with your soundcard. Perhaps a resource conflict. Does Warcraft 1 run without sound?

user33331 wrote:

"Drive not ready insert boot diskette."

Does your BIOS save the settings correctly? Battery still ok? I would think that with a corrupted FAT table or MBR you would get "non-system disk or disk error". The message you get AFAIK is an I/O error.

Haven't tried again the FDISK \ MBR -trick.
I will try it on weekend when I have time and install all again if needed.
+ BIOS remembers settings OK with a PIN-plugged 4.5V (3xAA Varta DIY CMOS-battery.)
+ Sound card is with a ES1869F-chip.
This is the only driver that worked with 1869 in Win3.1. Other like 1868-drivers give "Audiodrive not found" error.
http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=690&menustate=0
ESS ES1869 driver for OS2 WIN31 WIN95 WINNT40

Warcraft 1 does not run war.exe says "please set sound from setup.exe".
- Then when I launched setup.exe it always jammed immediately="STACKS OVERFLOW SYSTEM HALTED".
I even had "SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T3 P330" in Autoexec.bat.
http://www.rinkworks.com/apogee/s/6.4.2.shtml

Try the STACKS=9,256 first to see if that fixes the problem with Warcraft. Did a quick Google and it can indeed be the fix.

If you manage to get the CF running again, keep F-Prot at hand. It makes me wonder what errors you get if you run for a while with incorrect cylinder settings etc.

Is this the latest virus free download of F-PROT Version 3.14e. 2.2 MB ?
http://www.pcxt-micro.com/download.html
Compatible with Win3.1 and DOS6.22 ?

I believe 3.16F is.

HanJammer wrote:

I use whatide.com recommended by Kev Parr who's a true english gentleman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G26cRjrt5Mg

Indeed, a very nice person, imho! 😀

There's one thing to take care of, though. Something that seems to be ignored, over and over again. 😢
The original CHS addressing (on IBM PC) is using a max of 1024 cylinders, 16 haeads, 63 sectors.
- But some BIOSes do count this way.. 0-1023, 0-15, 1-63.

So if whatide or any othe tool says there are "16" cylinders in total, it doesn't automatically mean you have to enter "16", but maybe "15".
So please better be careful here and double check. BIOSes using LBA and/or Large (E-CHS) *may* behave different.

Furthe information: http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/bioslim.htm

Some other useful things that Wikipedie says:

"The CHS addressing supported in IBM-PC compatible BIOSes code used eight bits for - theoretically up to 256 heads counted
as head 0 up to 255 (FFh). However, a bug in all versions of Microsoft DOS/IBM PC DOS up to and including 7.10 will cause these operating
systems to crash on boot when encountering volumes with 256 heads[2]. Therefore, all compatible BIOSes will use mappings with up to 255
heads (00h..FEh) only, including in virtual 255×63 geometries."

-That infomation might be useful when using LBA or E-CHS/Large..

"CHS addressing with 28 bits (EIDE and ATA-2) permits eight bits for sectors still starting at 1, i.e.,
sectors 1…255, four bits for heads 0…15, and sixteen bits for cylinders 0…65535.[9]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylinder-head-sector

user33331 wrote:

Haven't tried again the FDISK \ MBR -trick.

Good luck! 😀

But please keep in mind that the switch doesn't work as it seems.
It will only work, if certain conditions are met. Also, the FAT16 (DOS 6.x) an FAT32 (DOS 7.10+) versions of FDISK behave different in detail..

It also is of little help in case of partition problems.´. To quote the author of the site linked below:
"you still need to understand that FDISK /MBR may seldom be a cure for your own MBR problems!
Why? Because it's almost always the Partition Table data itself that has been changed"

Please keep that in mind. I've also attached the relevant part of the text.
More information: https://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/FDISK.htm

Also, DOS by itself needs no partitions. It would also work in super floppy "mode"..
Having a partition could be better, though. Programs like disk tools and Win 3.11 might be confused it there's none.

Silicondrive manual:
PDF page 15:
https://www.semiconductorstore.com/pdf/newsit … xxx-3500_DS.pdf

It is either:
- Corrupted CF-card:
* due to swaps
* due to adapter
* due to powering OFF computer too frequently
*or such...
or
- Boot sector virus from old dos games downloaded online.

^ According to the table, the card has 1011 cylinders, 16 heads and 63 sectors.
1011x16x63 results in 1019088 sectors total, as noted in the table.

However, it doesn't say anything on how these are numbered, sadly. Or which addressing type is used. 🙁
In traditional CHS, the CMOS setting could be 1010 cyl, 15 heads and 63 sectors.
-> https://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/wiki/CHS_and_ … _Disk_Addresses

Also, be careful with the number of cylinders. I have PQ 512MB card and autodetecting says something like 973 cylinders.

I'm soon to give up 😵
How about Transcend CF200I 256mb; TS256MCF200I ?
https://www.alliedelec.com/m/d/393ed7dc8c94e9 … 64e87e75b68.pdf

What can I trustfully use if not any CF cards ?
- CF card and "flash thingies" as a HDD seem a bad idea now afterwards.
- I might go back to original 130mb Seagate from year 1990 😵

Don't despair. It's all a bit of a question of interpretation.
This table is fine, IMHO. 493 cylinder x 16 heads x 63 sectors = 496944 sectors in total.
However, if you multiply with 512 (bytes per sectors) it's 254435328 (bytes), as shown in the table.

- If you divide this by 1000, you get 254435,328 Kilobyte (~254MB, Megabyte)
- If you devide this by 1024, you get 248472 Kibibyte (same as old Kilobyte; ~242MiB, "Mebibyte")

HDD makers used to use 1000 instead of 1024 (RAM makers) for "Megabyte"..

This led to a bit of confusion. 😉

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibibyte

Edit: Small edit. I'm not quite good at explaining things, I'm afraid.
Here's an article that covers the issue why HDD manufacturer used to use "1000" instead of "1024" when using Kilobyte/Megabyte.
- Please note that the matter might be different for semiconductor makers (RAM, Flash) - I just mention it here.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/attention-hard- … -is-1024-bytes/
Traditions aside, using "1000" also gives nicer numbers (= more Megabytes for less capacity).

Edit: I did some experimentation. You're lucky. It seems that old AMIBIOSes and AWARD BIOSES do handle things similar.
In your case, the CF card maker seems to have used "1000". Also, entering the values "as listed" in these BIOSes, gives the mentioned capacity.
So depending on your BIOS, you might be able to enter values as shown in the maker's table. Alternatively, just lower cylinders and heads by 1 and see.. 😀

Also, you don't need to use the exact values. They're virtual, anyway. It's all good if you use less , as well (stay within the max capacity).

Ah math I still have nightmares about it.
Never really got over with it. 🤣
1264 pages Calculus, Early Transcendentals Matrix Version 6th Edition
Read from start to finish.

Haha, math is funny sometimes. Especially if it contradicts itself or makes no sense without considering the context*. 🤣
Remembers me of my math teachers in the lower classes when they were talking about perfect figures (circles, squares).
It was hard for me to not mention that nature and "perfection" is/was rather fractal..

(*If a singer needs 3 minutes to sing a song, how long take three of them ? 😉 )

Now I got the WD 512mb working again with FDISK, formatted it and installed dos6.22 again and win3.1.
SSD-C51MI-3800.
I don't swap the CF-card anymore and replace all odd dos game library(in case of boot sector viruses) and such...

I'm trying now really hard to get the sound card IDE-CD drive to work so I can use CD-ROMs.
+Sound card is ISA with a ES1869F-chip.( AK1868PNP from mfg.1996-1998 ) =No jumpers. ESS Audiodrive.
http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=690&menustate=0
ESS ES1869 driver for OS2 WIN31 WIN95 WINNT40
"CD driver"=ES1868.COM
What to write to AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS to get D:\-drive up and showing ?
AOATAPI.SYS doesn't seem to work and says "no driver found error" when starting dos.

One of the command line parameters must be the one that enables IDE. You might need to move the ESS init to CONFIG.SYS so that you can load the ATAPI driver for CDROM as well - both needs to be in CONFIG.SYS.

ESS 1869F Windows drivers creates automatically *DEVICE= C:\xxx\ES1868.COM* to CONFIG.SYS
Something like this:
CONFIG.SYS
DEVICE= C:\xxx\ES1868.COM /A:170 /I:9
AUTOEXEC.BAT
C:\DOS\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD001 /V

Hm. Not sure, but maybe that enabler programs doesn't contain a CD-ROM driver itself, but only enables the IDE/ATAPI port on the sound card.
If so, it is required to load a separate IDE/ATAPI CD-ROM driver afterwards in config.sys (oakcdrom.sys etc)..