Hi there! 🙂

I know these freezes, had them on a thinclient with some CF card models, too.

Enabling DMA for the HDD in System/Device Manager helped me a bit.

However, it's important to make a backup first.
If DMA fails, Windows 98SE won't boot anymore.
And unchecking in safe mode doesn't work, either.

You can use Win32 Disk Imager to make a dump of your SD card on a modern PC.
If something goes wrong, you can restore the dump on same card again.

Gopher666 wrote on 2022-10-15, 19:01:

I got this cheapo SDcard to IDE adapter: […]
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I got this cheapo SDcard to IDE adapter:

Identifies as FC-1307.

The box is a newer hw build with 1.7Ghz CPU and 1GB ram so that cannot be a bottleneck. Os Win98SE.

What this thing does is the whole system rots in at FS operations randomly quite often for 2-3 seconds then continues going on.

In games when the games are loaded it's not annoying anymore but just playing around in Windows it is.

Any thing I can tune on this to stop doing it?

The quality/speed/compatibility of the SD card plays a role here as well as, potentially, compatibility with the IDE controller with FC1307.
Another variable is the the SATA to IDE adapter (if you are using one).

With DMA enabled and a good SD card, performance can be quite good on these things, as longer as you don't expect anything faster than Ultra DMA/33 (the FC1307 does not even reach that kind of speed).

For an example, see points [5] and [6] Re: Here's an idea: using high endurance (micro)SD cards meant for continuous video recording as storage for retro gear .

EDIT : I haven't felt any spikes during my limited testing . It subjectively feels much faster than the 1998 vintage 4.3GB HDD the laptop came with .

Thanks, indeed enabling the dma for the CF adapter did help. I don't care about the speed but if your system freezes randomly for 2-3 seconds after using that box for a couple of hours you want to throw it out from the 10th floor or smash it with a sledgehammer.

Without the DMA that poor disk was pretty much choked at 6MB/s max with DMA 25MB/s.

Have you tried disabling write-behind caching for the drive?

It would be interesting to see if you could isolate where the issue is.

Here are the steps that I go through to try to isolate storage issues like this in a methodical way:

1) Faulty SD card or SD card incompatible with the FC1307 SD adapter
- Try a different SD card if you have a spare
- Try the SD card in another system
2) SD adapter is malfunctioning
- Try the 4 pin Molex HD power connector if you are using the Berg floppy power connector
- Try a different power cable or power supply
- Swap out the FC1307 SD adapter if you have a spare or try the adapter in another system
- Try the SD Adapter in another system
3) ATA signaling issue or improperly negotiated ATA protocol
- Swap PATA cables
- Remove any Slave devices
- Physically separate the PATA cable from power cords
- Try an old 40 conductor PATA cable to force ATA/33 operation or force ATA/33 in the BIOS
- Try a different storage device
4) Faulty or Incompatible IDE controller
- Try an add in PCI card if you have one
5) IRQ Storm or Faulty DMA controller
- Remove or disable unnecessary devices
- Enable DMA
- Try your storage device in a different sysyem
6) Windows Driver, BIOS, or Background Software
- Test the device in DOS
- Look for newer BIOS
- Look for older or newer windows drivers
- Make sure all devices are in protected mode

Gopher666 wrote on 2022-10-18, 15:56:

Thanks, indeed enabling the dma for the CF adapter did help. I don't care about the speed but if your system freezes randomly fo […]
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Thanks, indeed enabling the dma for the CF adapter did help. I don't care about the speed but if your system freezes randomly for 2-3 seconds after using that box for a couple of hours you want to throw it out from the 10th floor or smash it with a sledgehammer.

Without the DMA that poor disk was pretty much choked at 6MB/s max with DMA 25MB/s.

Do you mean to say the issue is resolved, or just improved somewhat ?

Yes it's resolved I enabled it on ME, works good yo. On XP wasn't an issue because it enabled it by default.