At least you have a sense of humour about it.
You're nearly at the point of having two of everything, which isn't a bad place to be if you will always want to run old software. Testing against known good parts is the non-multimeter way to eliminate possible causes but you need to first have trusted and stable parts to test against.

Since you don't have a booting system to start with; perhaps try starting with IDE, test one channel and one cable at a time booting from a CD which is going to do more than boot to a DOS prompt. If you don't have an old Linux live CD or Windows PE you know would work on this system, perhaps just boot a Windows 2000 install CD. Once that works, try the other channels and cables to make sure they all work too. If they all work, you've eliminated that as a cause.
If it's intermittent on the same configuration it may be power supply but could also be board related...
but you have two boards and can do the same test on the other board.
Same with RAM, try one stick in one slot, then test that same stick in the other slot and see if it makes the problem appear or go away.

IDE to CF adapters can be flaky and/or the 32GB card may not be IDE compatible... I see lots of people with similar issues. Apparently the Startech branded adapters are the only branded ones you can buy where you have some certainty of not having problems. It's not something I have personal experience with but there are many threads of woe on these forums.

For those cables, you can just heat up a pin or needle and melt holes where the regular IDE cables have them. However, if the cables you got are the 80-wire ones with the one wire cut (you will see a small hole in the cable near the ends) I am not 100% sure if those will work or not.

As for drive controllers, I try to only use SATA drives if possible (anything with PCI slots). The best controller to get rid of the limitations of old boards is to get a Promise Sata I - 150 PCI RAID controller.

For IDE stuff, I try to use CF cards but I have found that even if you use a small enough card, it is very important to get a good brand. Some of the cards I bought that were the same model all came up with different auto-detected settings and none of them would work. The only way I could get them to halfway work was to hook them up to a newer system, get the auto-detect settings from the BIOS and manually enter them in the older system's BIOS.

I ended up buying some different CF cards that just work.

Well, I used the same two old IDE cables. Connected the CDROM to the IDE1 as master and the CF card to IDE0 as master... and it found the CDROM.
But with both on IDE0 with the CDROM as slave... no joy.
I connected the CDROM to IDE0 as master... found the drive.

This makes me think my old K6-2 board isn't broken.

I dug the old motherboard... pretty sure it's a super socket 7.

I saw the two power inputs there by the keyboard socket... does that mean this motherboard could take an ATX power supply?

Hamby wrote:

Well, I used the same two old IDE cables. Connected the CDROM to the IDE1 as master and the CF card to IDE0 as master... and it […]
Show full quote

Well, I used the same two old IDE cables. Connected the CDROM to the IDE1 as master and the CF card to IDE0 as master... and it found the CDROM.
But with both on IDE0 with the CDROM as slave... no joy.
I connected the CDROM to IDE0 as master... found the drive.

This makes me think my old K6-2 board isn't broken.

I dug the old motherboard... pretty sure it's a super socket 7.

20190709_091639.jpg

I saw the two power inputs there by the keyboard socket... does that mean this motherboard could take an ATX power supply?

Looks like a 20-pin ATX power input, modern PSUs have 24-pins but may have the last 4-pins separately or you can use an adapter.

The common denominator looks like the hard drive from what you say but I'd probably give it a bit more testing than just BIOS detection appearing once.

I've got an ATX power supply in the closet, so I guess I could use that.

I noticed that the bios recognizes the CF as 32GB, but the Win98 boot floppy thought it was 8GB.
Windows 98SE is installing now, I'm hoping it recognized the full 32GB.
If not, I'll fall back to the 8GB drive and try to be happy.

Nope. Win98SE only recognized 8GB.

Maybe just use the 8GB card if that was working before. Getting everything up and running, know it's all good before trying to address the 32GB card and assessing any potential problems with it.

Yeah... if you want to use the whole card, you will need to partition it - probably on a newer computer.

cyclone3d wrote:

Yeah... if you want to use the whole card, you will need to partition it - probably on a newer computer.

I thought Win98SE recognized up to 128gb drives?

You can have glitches if your C: drive is larger than 20GB in Win98 but there's definitely something odd with it being detected as 8GB.
If your system is running and stable after install on the 8GB card, make a ghost image of the whole drive so you have that as a clean, known good state. Get all you drivers and software installed the way you want it, still stable? Make a Ghost image you can also return to if you're having problems and want to eliminate software as a cause. You could try writing that Ghost image to the 32GB card and see what happens, won't do any harm.
There are various partitioning tools / ways to blank a drive and start afresh. I'm a fan of Acronis Disk Director and the built in, command line diskpart utility in Windows 7 / Win7PE. If you have a copy of Hiren's Boot CD 10.6 you have all the tools you need without learning how to make your own boot media.

EDIT: I removed my own link to the newer hirensbootcd.org site, the 10.6 iso they have isn't identical to the original and may contain some nasties.
EDIT2: I've verified the contents of the iso to be identical, I would not touch the other files in the .zip However, it's probably best I don't link to a massive collection of commercial software.

I would try using a program like DBAN to write zeroes to the CF card. This will erase the MBR, effectively completely resetting the drive. Sometimes DOS can be sensitive about that kind of thing. You can also try formatting the CF card on a modern windows machine using diskpart, and then plug it back in and see if it will take.

The CF to IDE adapters are almost always passive. The trouble is most CF cards are not 100% compatible with the IDE protocols. On one computer it might be fine, plug it into a different computer with a different IDE controller and you can get a different result. I haven't found a reliable way of telling how retro friendly a CF card is. It seems like the older the card is, the better chance you have of it working.

Something else you can try, I have had a lot of success with cheap SATA to IDE adapters with my 20$ kingston SSD drive. As it turns out, you can still buy 32gb 2.5 SSD drives, or use a NVMe (AHCI) SSD to SATA adapter with one of the plentiful 16gb and 32gb sticks out there. Since the IDE adapter uses active circuitry (I think) they might be more reliable than compact flash.

As for your CD ROM Drive, I would make sure the pins on the back of the drive are set to master, and then give it its own IDE channel. Put the hard drive on a separate channel and you shouldn't have any issues.

CF cards are not always confirm to FIxed Disk Mode. Sandisk only sells them as removable mode. for example there are 2 kinds of CFs.

The CF card has to be partitioned with and formatted with linux or something because you are trying to use a removable CF card as a hard drive instead of a industrial CF card. I already wrote about this on the forum, http://wp.xin.at/archives/1449

You may also need to use utility like Bootice to wipe out some wierd MBR that is on the CF card, then use FDISK /MBR switch to put a dos mbr on it.

I found this with a quick search, might be worth a try:

https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-set … d-to-fixed-mode

Well, I used the same two old IDE cables. Connected the CDROM to the IDE1 as master and the CF card to IDE0 as master... and it found the CDROM.
But with both on IDE0 with the CDROM as slave... no joy.

As you discovered, some devices do not play well with others, and they will unfortunately not coexist on the same cable. Always good to try separate cables where possible, for better compatibility and performance.

As with PCs are different to Amiga during this time period. The problem with PCs during the vintage time period is yes there are standards for compatibility, but there are standards within standards within standards. Best way I can put it. Manufactures may of chose to implement things different using only a subset of a standard, or things may not be fully compliant you see. When trying to work on any kinda retro rig details are extremely important and sometimes well most of the time can't have the mind set that things will just work. Especially with Ram and expansion cards. Certain things you want them to be to a spec to guarantee to work, other things you want the most generic implementation for it to work. Its pretty much like working on cars.

Oh man... I can see why you're frustrated. I know everyone here is well-meaning, but it's like watching a tug-o-war of advice, and not all of it is correct.

BTW, I saw your post asking about 30-pin sockets and offered to send you a set. I have like 20 of them, already replaced the ones on my AWE32 so I know they're a perfect fit. Would have been happy to drop them in the mail on my own dime, but you never answered. 😉

I've done a couple of motherboard barrel-to-coin cell conversions as well. It's not trivial, as you kind of have to trace out the charging circuit and the part where it goes from the battery to the RTC. Well, you don't HAVE to, but they're not all entirely the same, and IMO, it's a lot better to know what's going on than just chucking a diode at it. That'll probably always work, and if you did it right, it should be safe. It's just not very elegant, and I always feel like you should know what the circuit does before modifying it.

Here's the post in my RTC saga where I modified two 486 boards: Re: Tick tock

I've also had issues with CF cards. I used to boot Linux "appliances" from them. (Stuff like home-built NAS or firewalls that I treat like dedicated hardware vs. computers.) Even using decent SanDisk media, I would often have to add the card's ID to the kernel DMA black-list, otherwise it would hang for a while during I/O ops. I've read that different IDE-to-CF interface boards might resolve that, as it could be an issue with the interface pinout, but I never tested that theory.

The MBR on existing disks -- particularly ones released and used around the time where BIOS limitations would hinder detection of the full disk capacity -- might also be a problem. I had one WD Caviar that looked dead, and just hung the PC on boot. There were two problems:

One, WD uses a different jumper setting for "Master" and "Single Drive". Most drives combine those two options into one jumper setting, but in at least that one case, the difference matters.

Second, the MBR had a drive overlay installed. Well, partially installed. The PO had removed the partitions but I hadn't yet zeroed the drive, so while I could boot from a floppy (like the DOS installation disk) and create partitions, format them, and install DOS, it would just hang on boot. Sometimes while beeping at me. All I had to do was boot from the floppy, run fdisk /mbr, reboot, and all was well. There's no need to zero the drive with DBAN or (in my typical case) badblocks, or similar.

So.. yes... the retro road is fraught with peril. Old parts, sometimes cranky parts, from a period where "compatibility" was not always awesome, combined with rusty memories from a lot of us that grew up during that period. Incomplete knowledge, cargo-cult wisdom, rumors, false positive (and negative) results... it's all there.

Hang in there. When you run into a problem, just slow down. Post a thread about that one problem and let's dig into it. Don't just throw money at it, or throw ideas at the wall to see what sticks. You'll just end up frustrated. Let's do this methodically, and get you through it and on to the next issue. But you have to do your part too, like checking in after you post. 😉

mothergoose729 wrote:

I found this with a quick search, might be worth a try:

https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-set … d-to-fixed-mode

BTW, I tried this utility on a 64GB CF card that I put WinXP onto, and it didn't work with that card. But I installed this driver (need to select it manually) for the CF card and then I was able to setup a swapfile as normal: https://matthieu.yiptong.ca/2012/03/16/window … ildrvr1224-zip/

Hamby wrote:

Well, I used the same two old IDE cables. Connected the CDROM to the IDE1 as master and the CF card to IDE0 as master... and it […]
Show full quote

Well, I used the same two old IDE cables. Connected the CDROM to the IDE1 as master and the CF card to IDE0 as master... and it found the CDROM.
But with both on IDE0 with the CDROM as slave... no joy.
I connected the CDROM to IDE0 as master... found the drive.

This makes me think my old K6-2 board isn't broken.

I dug the old motherboard... pretty sure it's a super socket 7.

20190709_091639.jpg

I saw the two power inputs there by the keyboard socket... does that mean this motherboard could take an ATX power supply?

Yeah. I am reminded of some bad old days. I had a lot of old hardware coming in and I tested everything. What didn't work went in the trash. Likely everything was working or close to it, it was all in excellent condition physically. But those cables were SO inconsistent. I frequently ended up with some odd illogical combination of jumpers to get two devices on an IDE working (one device much easier, but no guarantee, I think one time, somehow, a device on a separate cable, somehow, managed to interfere with another).

And my point, I had these nice Epson 5.25 drives, spring loaded. I loved them but I couldn't get them working. And for me that meant the trash. You can't buy this stuff today. My experience since then has been that they're very, very sensitive about connections and cables. They're keyed but sometimes they just refuse to work (once they're set up they are fine, but they just seem to love to pretend they're broken when you're connecting them). I super regret all the clean stuff I threw away, but I probably couldn't have held on to it all anyway.

Today's policy is more of a die hard "if it doesn't work, set it aside and if I can't help it, sell it to someone who can." Anyway...

that is indeed a cross compatible AT/ATX board. You might have to configure it or it might just be plug and play. Always a good idea to find the manual for your board if possible so you have a clue of what you're doing and what the choices are.

SirNickity wrote:

Oh man... I can see why you're frustrated. I know everyone here is well-meaning, but it's like watching a tug-o-war of advice, […]
Show full quote

Oh man... I can see why you're frustrated. I know everyone here is well-meaning, but it's like watching a tug-o-war of advice, and not all of it is correct.

BTW, I saw your post asking about 30-pin sockets and offered to send you a set. I have like 20 of them, already replaced the ones on my AWE32 so I know they're a perfect fit. Would have been happy to drop them in the mail on my own dime, but you never answered. 😉

I've done a couple of motherboard barrel-to-coin cell conversions as well. It's not trivial, as you kind of have to trace out the charging circuit and the part where it goes from the battery to the RTC. Well, you don't HAVE to, but they're not all entirely the same, and IMO, it's a lot better to know what's going on than just chucking a diode at it. That'll probably always work, and if you did it right, it should be safe. It's just not very elegant, and I always feel like you should know what the circuit does before modifying it.

Here's the post in my RTC saga where I modified two 486 boards: Re: Tick tock

I've also had issues with CF cards. I used to boot Linux "appliances" from them. (Stuff like home-built NAS or firewalls that I treat like dedicated hardware vs. computers.) Even using decent SanDisk media, I would often have to add the card's ID to the kernel DMA black-list, otherwise it would hang for a while during I/O ops. I've read that different IDE-to-CF interface boards might resolve that, as it could be an issue with the interface pinout, but I never tested that theory.

The MBR on existing disks -- particularly ones released and used around the time where BIOS limitations would hinder detection of the full disk capacity -- might also be a problem. I had one WD Caviar that looked dead, and just hung the PC on boot. There were two problems:

One, WD uses a different jumper setting for "Master" and "Single Drive". Most drives combine those two options into one jumper setting, but in at least that one case, the difference matters.

Second, the MBR had a drive overlay installed. Well, partially installed. The PO had removed the partitions but I hadn't yet zeroed the drive, so while I could boot from a floppy (like the DOS installation disk) and create partitions, format them, and install DOS, it would just hang on boot. Sometimes while beeping at me. All I had to do was boot from the floppy, run fdisk /mbr, reboot, and all was well. There's no need to zero the drive with DBAN or (in my typical case) badblocks, or similar.

So.. yes... the retro road is fraught with peril. Old parts, sometimes cranky parts, from a period where "compatibility" was not always awesome, combined with rusty memories from a lot of us that grew up during that period. Incomplete knowledge, cargo-cult wisdom, rumors, false positive (and negative) results... it's all there.

Hang in there. When you run into a problem, just slow down. Post a thread about that one problem and let's dig into it. Don't just throw money at it, or throw ideas at the wall to see what sticks. You'll just end up frustrated. Let's do this methodically, and get you through it and on to the next issue. But you have to do your part too, like checking in after you post. 😉

Thanks for the advice. I'm sorry I didn't get back to you, I didn't see your offer for some reason?
I have two more sets that just arrived in the mail. They look like a match to the AWE32 (angled and everything) and they have metal clips which will be a plus.

Well, she boots off the 8GB card (which is enough, I'd just like more. Maybe I'll stick a regular HD as a secondary drive for more storage).
Since I installed the driver software for the Voodoo 3 video card... she hangs, seemingly randomly.
I noticed when I first boot, only sometimes, that I get scrambled looking characters. And when I installed the 3DFX drivers, the splash screen had verticle lines in it. So I'm guessing that video card is toast 🙁
Seeing what's being sold on ebay, seems a lot of the old 3DFX cards are dying.

Can you advise me on an era-appropriate VGA card? I'll need 2D and 3D acceleration, OpenGL support, DOS and Win95 support. I know only 3DFX cards would have Glide support, but that's okay, I've a voodoo2 accelerator I plan to put on my 486 when I build it, assuming *it* isn't also dead. It will be a DOS 6.22 / WFW 3.11 system. I've gathered that something like a 256mb ATI 9700 would still work with Win98, and the overkill would be wonderful for some of what I want to do, but I'd like something more realistic and more assuredly compatible. I was thinking of maybe a TNT2, or S3 Savage.

While I'm at it, can you advise me of a good 2D vga card that I could pair up with the Voodoo 2 in that 486 build?