Welcome to the forum! 😀
If your BIOS has HDD size limits using another CF-IDE adaptor won't help you. You need either a BIOS update that removes the limitations or a drive controller card with its own boot BIOS that does not have the limitations or you may want to look into the XTIDE project.

Here's some more info on BIOS IDE HDD size limitations: http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/bioslim.htm

I forgot: drive overlay software is another solution to run larger drives on PCs that can't recognise them correctly.

What HDD are you trying to connect? Usually there an option in the BIOS for autodetecting HDD.

Hello, thank you very much for details, almost forgot this entire thread 😀

I have year 1995 AST Advantage 611s computer (cyrix 586 100mhz) and would be very excited to make it working, maybe it has the HDD limitation since tried bunch of HDD's and I'm stuck at the boot "searching for HDD" and I can't enter anywhere, with Windows 98 bootdisk I'm able to log dos, but can't do much there since computer doesn't have HDD recognized 😁

This machine had windows 95 when it was new and I haven't found bios updates for it.
I need to check is there any slots where I could put this "drive controller card ", I think on motherboard there's only ISA-sockets those black long bars, could be also extensions slots not sure.

Bios has autodetection mode but doesn't seem to work, not sure if there's something broken with the machine, or maybe it requires exact cycles and heads.
Should it work if I attach for example 40gb drive but it only recognizes it as 504 mb ? if it should recognize it, maybe there's some other issues then.

Should find about 500mb or less HDD and test it out.

Hi

Download this util https://archive.org/details/whatide
and run it from floppy

dataino.it wrote on 2021-05-04, 10:54:

Hi

Download this util https://archive.org/details/whatide
and run it from floppy

Thank you, need to give this a shot, maybe I need to use this on my other retro computer, since this AST doesnt recognize the hdd at all.
this AST bios doesn't allow high cycle numbers either, so maybe it should be ancient hdd to try with 😁

Doornkaat wrote on 2021-03-24, 10:59:

Welcome to the forum! 😀
If your BIOS has HDD size limits using another CF-IDE adaptor won't help you. You need either a BIOS update that removes the limitations or a drive controller card with its own boot BIOS that does not have the limitations or you may want to look into the XTIDE project.

Here's some more info on BIOS IDE HDD size limitations: http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/bioslim.htm

Hello, is this driver controller card ? any idea would HDD work with this http://www.cablesonline.com/enideconcar.html
OR maybe this one at ebay https://www.ebay.com/itm/233357862812?hash=it … 2QAAOSwpsBcmoTj

paavosalomaki wrote on 2021-05-07, 07:07:

Doornkaat wrote on 2021-03-24, 10:59:

Welcome to the forum! 😀
If your BIOS has HDD size limits using another CF-IDE adaptor won't help you. You need either a BIOS update that removes the limitations or a drive controller card with its own boot BIOS that does not have the limitations or you may want to look into the XTIDE project.

Here's some more info on BIOS IDE HDD size limitations: http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/bioslim.htm

Hello, is this driver controller card ? any idea would HDD work with this http://www.cablesonline.com/enideconcar.html
OR maybe this one at ebay https://www.ebay.com/itm/233357862812?hash=it … 2QAAOSwpsBcmoTj

Unfortunately almost all IDE controllers using the ISA bus are pretty much dumb (including both those you linked to). It's down to the motherboard BIOS to provide support for the various disk types, and if it doesn't support the capacity of disk you want, then you really only have the following choices:

1. Stick to a supported disk size
2. Find a (rare) ISA IDE controller with on-board BIOS that supports LBA type disks
3. Install an alternative BIOS, either using the XT-IDE controller and ROM, or the XT-IDE ROM itself on another card (like a network card)

megatron-uk wrote on 2021-05-07, 08:45:

Unfortunately almost all IDE controllers using the ISA bus are pretty much dumb (including both those you linked to). It's down […]
Show full quote

paavosalomaki wrote on 2021-05-07, 07:07:

Doornkaat wrote on 2021-03-24, 10:59:

Welcome to the forum! 😀
If your BIOS has HDD size limits using another CF-IDE adaptor won't help you. You need either a BIOS update that removes the limitations or a drive controller card with its own boot BIOS that does not have the limitations or you may want to look into the XTIDE project.

Here's some more info on BIOS IDE HDD size limitations: http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/bioslim.htm

Hello, is this driver controller card ? any idea would HDD work with this http://www.cablesonline.com/enideconcar.html
OR maybe this one at ebay https://www.ebay.com/itm/233357862812?hash=it … 2QAAOSwpsBcmoTj

Unfortunately almost all IDE controllers using the ISA bus are pretty much dumb (including both those you linked to). It's down to the motherboard BIOS to provide support for the various disk types, and if it doesn't support the capacity of disk you want, then you really only have the following choices:

1. Stick to a supported disk size
2. Find a (rare) ISA IDE controller with on-board BIOS that supports LBA type disks
3. Install an alternative BIOS, either using the XT-IDE controller and ROM, or the XT-IDE ROM itself on another card (like a network card)

Thanks for reply! XT-IDE controller and ROM sounds too difficult, so I need to find low capacity HDD 😀

Do you have the 1-slot or 2-slot memory version?
https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/718
https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/717

we would love to have board pictures and a bios dump.

evasive wrote on 2021-05-17, 10:00:

Do you have the 1-slot or 2-slot memory version? https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/718 https://www.ultimateretro.net […]
Show full quote

Do you have the 1-slot or 2-slot memory version?
https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/718
https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/717

we would love to have board pictures and a bios dump.

Hello, yea its exactly this version "https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/ast-ad … -486-202728-101"
Do you need more pictures ? I dont have no idea how to take bios dump, do I use some software for it ?

I got HDD working. Solution for this problem was that CD drive also had to be connected to IDE cable, otherwise it wouldn't recognize any hdd.
Since normal hdd started working then I swapped it to Cf-Card setup.

Also restored the original AST settings from LGR's upload
https://archive.org/details/ast-advantage-600-restore

edit: looks like I have two accounts here 😁

Harddisk:
Sounds like that is a Western Digital harddisk set for Master mode. If so, it will look forever for a slave device until the bios detection times out. It can be set for Single Drive mode, then it will not search until oblivion.

Pictures:
We would like back (solder side) and port pictures.

Bios dump:
You can use Uniflash: https://www.rainbow-software.org/uniflash/
Instructions: https://www.rainbow-software.org/uniflash.txt

Thank you in advance.