Did you write the HD image to the flash card, you don't mention that step and going from an 1GB disk to an 1.9GB partition suggests you haven't? Did you install DOS on the CF card?

BIOS limits aren't like OS limits, you can't just use a smaller partition and ignore the rest of the drive - BIOS won't either. Exactly what goes wrong depends on the BIOS, but at best it crashes without losing your data, at worst the data gets fully corrupted.

If your BIOS can't handle >2GB (very plausible on a P75), you have three choices:
- a newer BIOS that can manage bigger drives (unlikely, but find out which motherboard you have and see what's out there, most elegant option if available)
- swap that 4GB CF for one that does fit.
- get a bootROM that handles HDDs like XTIDE. This does require some card (eg. NIC) with a socket for a bootROM, and some way to flash this.

You should check to see if said system has a newer bios
If not
I would attempt partitioning the cf drive in the p75 to see if it even can and what you get.

Occasionally you can partition and format on the system and just end up with less space than you bargained for, then clone data over on said system.

Also could do the same but use a drive overlay to get the full capacity.

Good Luck

Oetker wrote on 2021-02-01, 21:40:

Did you write the HD image to the flash card, you don't mention that step and going from an 1GB disk to an 1.9GB partition suggests you haven't? Did you install DOS on the CF card?

Sorry, I did yes. My steps were: I partitioned CF card with PARTDISK to a 1.9 GB partition. I just left the rest of the space unpartitioned. After that I went through Macrium Reflect, resized image to fit the partition and put it on the CF card. I then put the CF card in the Pentium 75. BIOS detected the card in its totality, but I couldn't select the specific partition I had made before. Or boot for that matter.

I figured beforehand that installing DOS would not be useful as I was trying to basically restore the original image on the CF card and it would overwrite the DOS installation. Also, I don't have DOS installation disks.

Can you connect the HD at the same time, and boot from it and then use fdisk and format the CF card? If that works, try if you can access it after imaging it but still booting from the HD. The other posters could be right about it still being a size issue but I would take smaller steps than expecting an imaged drive to work and be bootable.

dionb wrote on 2021-02-01, 21:57:

BIOS limits aren't like OS limits, you can't just use a smaller partition and ignore the rest of the drive - BIOS won't either. […]
Show full quote

BIOS limits aren't like OS limits, you can't just use a smaller partition and ignore the rest of the drive - BIOS won't either. Exactly what goes wrong depends on the BIOS, but at best it crashes without losing your data, at worst the data gets fully corrupted.

If your BIOS can't handle >2GB (very plausible on a P75), you have three choices:
- a newer BIOS that can manage bigger drives (unlikely, but find out which motherboard you have and see what's out there, most elegant option if available)
- swap that 4GB CF for one that does fit.
- get a bootROM that handles HDDs like XTIDE. This does require some card (eg. NIC) with a socket for a bootROM, and some way to flash this.

I figured because the LGR guy on YouTube was using the exact same card and it worked on an older 486 with original parts, I would use the same one. Obviously I knew I couldn't use the card space entirely but I was prepared for that. Also, the BIOS does detect the whole 4 GB's of the card. I don't know exactly what you mean by crash... Do you mean the card? Or the Pentium 75? I haven't checked the card in another computer since trying to boot it. And the Pentium 75 seems to be fine, except for the not wanting to boot the card of course.

I'm sorry, but I actually don't understand your third suggestion. I'm not that well versed into this world yet.

Oetker wrote on 2021-02-01, 22:58:

Can you connect the HD at the same time, and boot from it and then use fdisk and format the CF card? If that works, try if you can access it after imaging it but still booting from the HD. The other posters could be right about it still being a size issue but I would take smaller steps than expecting an imaged drive to work and be bootable.

I cannot at this time. I don't actually own a IDE cable that supports two drives at one. The cable it came with only has 2 connectors at each end.

You may be having the same problems I have been having. Turns out on my pentium motherboard it was acting rather glitchy with the cf adapter installed.

I haven’t totally resolved the problem and am now not using the cf adapter. Something I will try is instead of a ide to cf adapter I will now try a xd-ide card with cf slot. (It’s a lot slower fyi)

But, if your worry is the hard drive going out while that may happen I wouldn’t be too worried about it.

Something that seemed to help and I eventually got it to boot to plop bootloader was resetting bios to defaults past that I haven’t been able to get anything on it to boot like windows. (I have kind of been distracted though)

The xd-ide would possibly help with any bios incompatibility though so if you had both and that was the issue it may help get your ide adapter working.

Oh also, try messing with the master slave jumper on the adapter.

If you're game to try re-partitioning and re-formatting the Compact Flash card, here's a thought that might help:

Like some of the others have said, partitioning the drive in the PC is probably your best bet. That being said, if you have a CF-USB adapter, you can always try running a Virtual Machine with VMware or VirtualBox or some other hypervisor of that sort, whereby you create an MS-DOS VM with its hard drive as the CF card on the CF-USB adapter. You could then do the same steps below, as if you were formatting on the PC itself. This might be a good option if you don't have blank/overwritable floppies that you don't care about losing the data on, or if you can't write to floppies on your main PC.

Try FDISK from a DOS boot floppy. MS-DOS 6.22 would be an acceptable version to start with. There are numerous websites out there that have pre-made DOS boot floppy images, if you need one. If you're going the VM->CF-USB route, you can just use the image on a virtual floppy drive in VirtualBox or VMware and call it a day.

Either way, after creating the partition, run the command "fdisk /mbr" or "fdisk/mbr." This rewrites the master boot record, and generally seems to solve any ails that come from trying to boot off CF cards. Then, format and you should be good to go.

I've used this with both SD->CF->CF-IDE systems, as well as CF->CF-IDE systems, and found it remedies the booting issues. One other nice thing is that, once you've created the FAT partition under MS-DOS, it's totally readable in any modern PC if you use a CF-USB adapter.

At that point, you should be able to copy the HDD image over.

I hope that this helps!

You could install 95 from
Cd on it then delete it and copy over your backup files without disturbing the partition so the boot sector was how it needed to be

WJG6260 wrote on 2021-02-02, 00:02:

If you're game to try re-partitioning and re-formatting the Compact Flash card, here's a thought that might help: […]
Show full quote

If you're game to try re-partitioning and re-formatting the Compact Flash card, here's a thought that might help:

Like some of the others have said, partitioning the drive in the PC is probably your best bet. That being said, if you have a CF-USB adapter, you can always try running a Virtual Machine with VMware or VirtualBox or some other hypervisor of that sort, whereby you create an MS-DOS VM with its hard drive as the CF card on the CF-USB adapter. You could then do the same steps below, as if you were formatting on the PC itself. This might be a good option if you don't have blank/overwritable floppies that you don't care about losing the data on, or if you can't write to floppies on your main PC.

Try FDISK from a DOS boot floppy. MS-DOS 6.22 would be an acceptable version to start with. There are numerous websites out there that have pre-made DOS boot floppy images, if you need one. If you're going the VM->CF-USB route, you can just use the image on a virtual floppy drive in VirtualBox or VMware and call it a day.

Either way, after creating the partition, run the command "fdisk /mbr" or "fdisk/mbr." This rewrites the master boot record, and generally seems to solve any ails that come from trying to boot off CF cards. Then, format and you should be good to go.

I've used this with both SD->CF->CF-IDE systems, as well as CF->CF-IDE systems, and found it remedies the booting issues. One other nice thing is that, once you've created the FAT partition under MS-DOS, it's totally readable in any modern PC if you use a CF-USB adapter.

At that point, you should be able to copy the HDD image over.

I hope that this helps!

I have tried your suggestion. Here is how it went. I used the following link to do all the steps: https://www.dreamcast.nu/en/how-to-install-ms … using-a-floppy/

After completing all the steps I put the CF card in the Pentium 75 and it booted DOS without a problem.

I then restored the image I made from the original HDD on the CF. After putting the image on there, it wouldn't boot anymore.

It seems to me that the problem is not so much the card itself, because I got it to work without the image. But apparently restoring the image somehow makes the CF card unbootable again?

You say you created a partition on the CF card... did you mark it as boot/active/... because if it isn't marked. it won't try to boot from it. Second thing I'd look at would be to see if the MBR and PBR have appropriate boot code.
anyway, just a guess.

Chaosfuel wrote on 2021-02-02, 22:13:

I have tried your suggestion. Here is how it went. I used the following link to do all the steps: https://www.dreamcast.nu/en/ho […]
Show full quote

WJG6260 wrote on 2021-02-02, 00:02:

If you're game to try re-partitioning and re-formatting the Compact Flash card, here's a thought that might help: […]
Show full quote

If you're game to try re-partitioning and re-formatting the Compact Flash card, here's a thought that might help:

Like some of the others have said, partitioning the drive in the PC is probably your best bet. That being said, if you have a CF-USB adapter, you can always try running a Virtual Machine with VMware or VirtualBox or some other hypervisor of that sort, whereby you create an MS-DOS VM with its hard drive as the CF card on the CF-USB adapter. You could then do the same steps below, as if you were formatting on the PC itself. This might be a good option if you don't have blank/overwritable floppies that you don't care about losing the data on, or if you can't write to floppies on your main PC.

Try FDISK from a DOS boot floppy. MS-DOS 6.22 would be an acceptable version to start with. There are numerous websites out there that have pre-made DOS boot floppy images, if you need one. If you're going the VM->CF-USB route, you can just use the image on a virtual floppy drive in VirtualBox or VMware and call it a day.

Either way, after creating the partition, run the command "fdisk /mbr" or "fdisk/mbr." This rewrites the master boot record, and generally seems to solve any ails that come from trying to boot off CF cards. Then, format and you should be good to go.

I've used this with both SD->CF->CF-IDE systems, as well as CF->CF-IDE systems, and found it remedies the booting issues. One other nice thing is that, once you've created the FAT partition under MS-DOS, it's totally readable in any modern PC if you use a CF-USB adapter.

At that point, you should be able to copy the HDD image over.

I hope that this helps!

I have tried your suggestion. Here is how it went. I used the following link to do all the steps: https://www.dreamcast.nu/en/how-to-install-ms … using-a-floppy/

After completing all the steps I put the CF card in the Pentium 75 and it booted DOS without a problem.

I then restored the image I made from the original HDD on the CF. After putting the image on there, it wouldn't boot anymore.

It seems to me that the problem is not so much the card itself, because I got it to work without the image. But apparently restoring the image somehow makes the CF card unbootable again?

Interesting. Well, getting it to boot to DOS without the image is definitely a step in the right direction, so I'm at the very least glad to hear that you were able to get it running!

Since you cannot boot after restoring the image, I'd wager a guess that the image restoration process is modifying the boot record of the CF card. Either that, or as weedeewee pointed out, the drive might not be marked bootable/active after the you restore the CF card from the original drive image.

Have you tried running FDISK /mbr on the disk after restoring the image? It might be worth re-connecting the card to your system and trying the VM method, except instead using just a DOS boot disk and skipping the install steps. Once you get to a DOS prompt, switch to C:/ and run FDISK/mbr.

If it's not that, I'd also check via FDISK that the partition is marked active. For your convenience, the process for that would be running FDISK, selecting option 2, and then the partition number (presumably 1?), whereupon you'd mark it active if it isn't already.

I think there is something screwy with these compact flash adapters guys, I'm having trouble booting to them on a pentium 1 motherboard also I've only yet been able to get plop and freedos to boot from it

Have you tried fdisk/mbr by the some version of Dos after transferring the image to the CF card?