First post, by Scythifuge
- Rank
- Oldbie
Greetings,
I have successfully used 3.5" bay CF-to-IDE drives to replace mechanical hard drives, and I have also successfully used an SD-to-CF adapter in said drives. The system is based around an Asus P2B, with the last bios ever released which allows for drives up to 128GB.
Now I am playing with Gateway Tabor III motherboards. These motherboards will successfully read true CF cards in the drive (I have only x2 4GB cards, but for some reason, they will not see SD-to-CF w/ANY size SD card )tried from 2gb SD cards on up.)
What could be causing this? I have considered buying SD-to-IDE drives and removing the CF adapter from the equation. However, I'm concerned over whether or not it would work, because I don't know why the SD card set up is working in one 440BX board, but not the other. I have a Rosewill RC-200 on the way (should be here in three days,) and I am hoping that it resolves the issue, though I still want to eliminate CF cards, if possible. Each SD card is set up with a different OS or with an OS with different drivers installed, and they will be labeled and used like cartridges. Using CF adapters reminds me of the original CDROM drives with the caddies, and that is the only thing that makes using these adapters tolerable.
Another idea is buying an mSATA drive. I think that the Tabor boards, depending on BIOS revision, have a limit of up to 27GB, and research in the final revision reveals conflicting information - a possible 64GB limit, maybe more, or the existence of a bug which allows only 32GB to be seen. I found a 20GB mSATA and an enclosure that makes it into a 2.5" SATA drive, and I could use a SATA-to-IDE adapter. This would be for the recreated 1999 Gateway (with upgrades,) not the main Gateway with the ATA133 card.
Has anyone had success with large drives on a Tabor III? Has anyone used an SD-to-IDE adapter/drive? What is the best and cheapest course of action to get the largest drives possible on a Tabor III board? I currently have two of them, I can get about 2-4 more of them, and I have 1 Tabor II and can get two more Tabor II boards (all with 20-21" CRT monitors, complete PC with Gateway cases, and Gateway keyboards - for SUPER cheap.)
Thanks!
Scythifuge
