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Advise a bootable PCI SATA II controller with drivers for DOS and 98SE?

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First post, by Lylat1an

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I want to convert my retro rig's storage to SATA for better airflow, cable management, and less latency compared to converting parallel data to SD cards.

However, I'm having trouble finding a bootable controller card that supports DOS in addition to Windows 98SE.

I would prefer a SATA II interface (Or even SATA III if a PCI controller exists) But my motherboard only supports PCI 2.1, please inform me whether that will be an issue.

I Might want to use a RAID 0 array as well, I haven't made up my mind on that yet. But if I do, I want a hardware-based solution.

Reply 2 of 6, by Repo Man11

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kixs wrote on 2021-12-16, 18:58:

Check PCI SATA cards from Promise. I doubt there is support for SATA-II or III - it will work but at SATA-150 speeds.

Agreed. Promise TX2 cards are cheap and work fine with SATA to IDE converters. One of those converters will add to the overall cost, but it's still likely to be cheaper than one of the more in demand Promise PCI SATA cards. Avoid the siren song of the SIL 3114 cards because odds are it won't work; I've one that has failed to work on more motherboards than it has worked on (though it does work fine in my Asus TXP4).

"I'd rather be rich than stupid" - Jack Handey

Reply 4 of 6, by Repo Man11

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Lylat1an wrote on 2021-12-16, 19:46:

I'm not seeing any DOS drivers on Promise's site...

I'm not a DOS user myself, so I've no experience using a Promise card with that OS, but according to this Vogons thread they work well with DOS: Promise FastTrak66/Ultra66 ATA/66 PCI and MS-DOS

"I'd rather be rich than stupid" - Jack Handey

Reply 5 of 6, by dionb

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Repo Man11 wrote on 2021-12-16, 19:07:
kixs wrote on 2021-12-16, 18:58:

Check PCI SATA cards from Promise. I doubt there is support for SATA-II or III - it will work but at SATA-150 speeds.

Agreed. Promise TX2 cards are cheap and work fine with SATA to IDE converters. One of those converters will add to the overall cost, but it's still likely to be cheaper than one of the more in demand Promise PCI SATA cards. Avoid the siren song of the SIL 3114 cards because odds are it won't work; I've one that has failed to work on more motherboards than it has worked on (though it does work fine in my Asus TXP4).

More accurately: Promise SATA150-TX2 (or TX2Plus or TX4). No Win98 support for the SATA300- versions.

Lylat1an wrote on 2021-12-16, 19:46:

I'm not seeing any DOS drivers on Promise's site...

Not needed for basic hard disk functionality - DOS just leans on BIOS and this card has a BIOS option ROM. Note that DOS could well have issues with HDD size, so I'd recommend DOS 7.x so you get FAT32, and don't go wild with Terabytes of HDD.

Reply 6 of 6, by Repo Man11

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As an example, here's my Asus TXP4 with a K6-3+ @ 500 MHz and an SSD on a Promise TX2 with an IDE to SATA converter.

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"I'd rather be rich than stupid" - Jack Handey

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