lmttn wrote on 2022-07-12, 04:38:

Hello, all. The hard drive in my Windows 98SE machine has very little time left, and so I've been considering the possibility of using something like an IDE -> Compact Flash or SD card adapter as a replacement. My motherboard is an ASUS P2B-F with the latest BIOS installed. Are there any potential snags I may hit when trying to set up one of these storage solutions in place of a mechanical HDD? Thanks in advance.

You should stick to cf/ssd sizes below 127gb, other than that it should work just fine out of the gate.

Trying to use a drive larger than 127Gb can work but you will need to patch Win98 system files to avoid issues with data corruption.

Personally I find that there isn’t a big reason to use large drives with 98.

The biggest gotcha is that some CF cards don't have a boot sector. In general, "industrial" CF cards are more likely to work. That said, if you use one of those for a separate data drive, any card should work fine.

As far as the CF readers: more boards seem to support the readers that use an IDE cable, rather than the ones that fit into the IDE connector. My preferred setup is one of the card slot mounted CF readers: you can change the hard disk by changing the CF card. There's also a 3.5" drive bay version from Startech, which is really nice if you are playing around with a lot of CF cards, but is 2-3x more expensive than the card slot version.

From what I've seen, most SD/MicroSD card readers are CF card readers that also speak SD. You may have better luck with SD cards, but I've run into similar boot issues with both types of cards.

timw4mail wrote on 2022-07-12, 13:16:

The biggest gotcha is that some CF cards don't have a boot sector. In general, "industrial" CF cards are more likely to work.

Are there any brands in particular that tend to be a safe bet?

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-07-12, 04:51:

You should stick to cf/ssd sizes below 127gb, other than that it should work just fine out of the gate.

Trying to use a drive larger than 127Gb can work but you will need to patch Win98 system files to avoid issues with data corruption.

Personally I find that there isn’t a big reason to use large drives with 98.

Good point. I don't think I could see myself going larger than 32 or 64GB anyway.

LBA can be a problem when using Compact Flash - even when partitioning/formatting in a different machine. I often can't see the entire drive from Windows, though the BIOS says it's all there. Or Windows will hang up during boot (something like you're experiencing). Manually tweaking LBA settings in the BIOS usually clears up the situation for me.

lmttn wrote on 2022-07-12, 22:31:

timw4mail wrote on 2022-07-12, 13:16:

The biggest gotcha is that some CF cards don't have a boot sector. In general, "industrial" CF cards are more likely to work.

Are there any brands in particular that tend to be a safe bet?

While Trendnet Industrial, or SanDisk Industrial are pretty much guaranteed, the prices are horrendous. Even with the issue of some not working (for boot drives), I personally tend to go with off-brand "industrial" cards off of Amazon. For what it's worth, 2GB CF cards seem to work more than other sizes for whatever reason.

SD cards are cheaper for good brands, but I find the existing options for actually mounting the readers much more lacking.

There is also this option . Here's an idea: using high endurance (micro)SD cards meant for continuous video recording as storage for retro gear .

Though, I would consider getting a JMicron based IDE to SATA adapter and a SATA SSD to go with it . Reducing a 120GB or bigger SSD to look smaller can be done to avoid BIOS drive size limitations . The above linked thread goes into that as well.

timw4mail wrote on 2022-07-12, 13:16:

The biggest gotcha is that some CF cards don't have a boot sector. In general, "industrial" CF cards are more likely to work. That said, if you use one of those for a separate data drive, any card should work fine.

Partition, I think they normally have no partition. 😁
When they're shipping pre-formatted from factory, they're formatted with FAT32 and no partition.
Just like it's typical for removable media.

For DOS, that's no problem. It can run off floppies, too, which don't have partitions either.
So if we install DOS on a CF card without reformatting (-I'm thinking of Win98 DOS; doing SYS X: from a DOS window-), it works.
The CF card then is used as a super floppy. Like a bootable ZIP disk.

The Media Bit.. CF cards hold a media bit (low/high or 1/0) that says if a CF card is removable or fixed.
On most consumer cards, it's set to removable and cannot be changed.
The old Sandisk tool nolonger works, likely.

Anyway, from my experience, the state of the bit is totally irrelevant for the card itself. It won't behave any different in either case.
Windows 9x, 3.x or DOS can't read it, because their code base predate it. They don't even know about it.
In practice (to us), only Windows NT based systems do care about it.
That's an annoying situation, but can be circumvented by installing INF files
that make Windows XP think the CF card is an HDD.
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1020293

Edit: The matter is quite confusing, I admit, because there's no official documentation that explains the things for us retro people.

To complicate the matter even further, CF cards do have three (3!) different modes.

- Native IDE Mode ("True IDE")
- Programmed I/O Mode
- Memory Mapped Mode

http://www.interfacebus.com/CompactFlash_Memo … ule_pinout.html

That's relevant if a CF to PCMCIA adapter is used, for example.
It may not use IDE mode, but one of the other modes.
Or USB card readers.. They likely don't use IDE mode, either.
That's why we see different behaviors with different CF reader types, not sure. 🤷‍♂️

Edit: I don't know everything, of course and am merely speaking under correction here.
I'm just a tinkerer, after all.
Though seriously, most if not all CF cards I had tested were at least able to boot MS-DOS 6.2x.
The issues I saw all came from buggy BIOSes, broken CF-IDE adapters or weird IDE ports with stability issues.

Some cards also ran more stable with 5v or 3.3v.
For the newer cards, I made sure 3.3v was what they got.
That involved installing two silicon diodes (0.7v drop) in series (3.6v outcome from 5v) in the power cable or
using a fully featured CF adapter with 3.3v voltafe regulator and DMA lines.

And then there's ATA-2 from 1996.. It changed a few bits (pun intended).
Old systems sometimes nolonger can correctly talk/listen to ATA-2 devices and later.
http://www.os2museum.com/wp/how-to-please-wdctrl/

That's why I had to use XTIDE Universal BIOS in a 286.
The CF card would hang the 80s era BIOS. The antique hard disk code in the BIOS stalled after it communicated with a modern CF card.
After disabling the HDD type in CMOS Setup and using XUB, it worked fine.
It was no hardware problem, really.

Also appending XTIDE to a P2B-F main BIOS is likely possible as it is on on the P3B-F . See Adding XT-IDE option ROM to Asus P3B-F BIOS [Thanks to DenizOezmen, it actually works!!!]

darry wrote on 2022-07-13, 16:48:

Also appending XTIDE to a P2B-F main BIOS is likely possible as it is on on the P3B-F . See Adding XT-IDE option ROM to Asus P3B-F BIOS [Thanks to DenizOezmen, it actually works!!!]

That's cool! 😎👍

I've been using one the IDE-SD card adapters which can be found on amazon for $15, they are all pretty much copies of one another. Coupled with 8 GB microcenter SD cards. Works fine, been running that way for years, in multiple builds.

drosse1meyer wrote on 2022-07-13, 18:39:

I've been using one the IDE-SD card adapters which can be found on amazon for $15, they are all pretty much copies of one another. Coupled with 8 GB microcenter SD cards. Works fine, been running that way for years, in multiple builds.

They practically all use an FC1307 chip (older ones used an Fc1306). There used to be other options, but they are no longer easy to find .

Anyway, that's exactly what I used in the previously linked Here's an idea: using high endurance (micro)SD cards meant for continuous video recording as storage for retro gear .

Other than the relatively low performance (aforementioned link has some benchmarks), there are some potential caveats with the FC1307 based adapters, but they can be worked around in retro PC use case scenarios at least, see Re: Using a vintage multi-track recorder as a mixer, namely the Roland VS-880EX - might apply to other Roland VS- units

darry wrote on 2022-07-13, 18:51:

They practically all use an FC1307 chip (older ones used an Fc1306). There used to be other options, but they are no longer easy […]
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drosse1meyer wrote on 2022-07-13, 18:39:

I've been using one the IDE-SD card adapters which can be found on amazon for $15, they are all pretty much copies of one another. Coupled with 8 GB microcenter SD cards. Works fine, been running that way for years, in multiple builds.

They practically all use an FC1307 chip (older ones used an Fc1306). There used to be other options, but they are no longer easy to find .

Anyway, that's exactly what I used in the previously linked Here's an idea: using high endurance (micro)SD cards meant for continuous video recording as storage for retro gear .

Other than the relatively low performance (aforementioned link has some benchmarks), there are some potential caveats with the FC1307 based adapters, but they can be worked around in retro PC use case scenarios at least, see Re: Using a vintage multi-track recorder as a mixer, namely the Roland VS-880EX - might apply to other Roland VS- units

True, the throughput is somewhat balanced out by the low seek speeds. Also, at least in my socket 7 win95 build, it DOES NOT like DMA being enabled 😁

Jo22 wrote on 2022-07-13, 14:54:

Partition, I think they normally have no partition. 😁

No, I mean sector zero, the boot sector. Every formatted drive has a partition, often just 1.

Consider using industrial DOM, disk on module, should be more reliable than sd/cf.

Jura Tastatura wrote on 2022-07-14, 16:00:

Consider using industrial DOM, disk on module, should be more reliable than sd/cf.

That's also an option, although a DOM lacks flexibility if you want to switch out the OS compared to SD or CF. They also take over an IDE port.

That said, a DOM is probably the least hassle to set up. They also tend to be more expensive and/or difficult to find compared to an equivalent size of SD or CF card.