CompactFlash cards support IDE commands natively, the adapters are mostly just there to convert the pins from one layout to another. SD on the other hand is completely different, requires a chip in between to handle translation and in nearly all cases ends up being far slower.

jmarsh wrote on 2022-11-20, 13:22:

CompactFlash cards support IDE commands natively, the adapters are mostly just there to convert the pins from one layout to another. SD on the other hand is completely different, requires a chip in between to handle translation and in nearly all cases ends up being far slower.

Thanks, I also heard about "industrials" CF cards ? What's the difference between the normal consumer ones ?

_StIwY_ wrote on 2022-11-20, 13:48:

jmarsh wrote on 2022-11-20, 13:22:

CompactFlash cards support IDE commands natively, the adapters are mostly just there to convert the pins from one layout to another. SD on the other hand is completely different, requires a chip in between to handle translation and in nearly all cases ends up being far slower.

Thanks, I also heard about "industrials" CF cards ? What's the difference between the normal consumer ones ?

Industrial CF cards are typically built for running embedded operating systems or handling lots of read/write cycles, such as in Cisco routers/firewalls, etc.

Consumer cards are not usually designed to handle the constant reads and writes demanded by an operating system and can (and typically do) fail far more prematurely than expected when using them for the likes of Windows 9x/ME.

I’ve had bad luck with consumer/prosumer CF cards, killing a number of Sandisk ones in quick succession. All my builds that use repurposed Cisco cards are running fine.

Consumer cards do not include bookable functions anymore, that's the big reason for industrial.

Some cf cards need a flash tool to convert them to fixed ide mode.

Many modern cards I've found don't have this functionality (eg canvas)

https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/CompactFlash_boot_drive

I wrote up a summary here:

https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/Storage# … Retro_Computers

Let me know if anyone thinks I should add more detail

_StIwY_ wrote on 2022-11-20, 13:48:

Thanks, I also heard about "industrials" CF cards ? What's the difference between the normal consumer ones ?

Usually the label indicates how the device is optimized. Industrials are usually tuned for application, general purpose computer style work loads with faster access times, and possibly additional over provisioning for a longer life. Consumer ones tend to be optimized to handle few large files with higher throughput but slower access times. While Consumer drives often have some high performance specs printed on them, they are often not as fast for general purpose computer like tasks and the high performance requires a host that does UDMA-7 and isn't achievable with legacy IDE controllers that only go up to UDMA-6.

Sometimes people have trouble booting from the "consumer" devices or "industrial" devices.

In some consumer devices cases, people need to change the settings in the device so that the device declares itself to be fixed storage instead of removable storage, but that's pretty rare in my experience. You need to find a device that reports itself as removable and have a computer that's new enough to look at that kind of thing, but not so new that it can roll with it.

More often the issues with CF booting that cause people troubles come down to one of three things:
1) write a new MBR to the device
2) repartitioning the device to work with the currently configured drive geometry
3) your computer can't handle the geometry or addressing scheme reported by the storage device. Fix this with a mainboard firmware upgrade in some cases, but for computers older than 1998, it often comes down to adding an option rom like XTide Universal BIOS or SIIG Enhanced BIOS, or installing dynamic drive overlay software on your storage device like EZ drive.

To answer your first question, yes, you can use use a usb card reader to make a CF/SD bootable and copy Windows install files and whichever drivers you need for your retro machine, than start the install on the latter.

Thanks @all, tomorrow i'll keep you updated. Just for the record, in the meanwhile i managed to format and install on two mechanical hdd, without using floppy disk boot.

I burned a DVD-RW with CDBurnerXP ( which contains some boot options for Win95/9X i didn't even know... ), loaded the "Windows98_SE.img" from here: https://www.allbootdisks.com/download/98.html then the normal .iso with the operating system and worked.....is that correct ??

I've never had a normal (non DOM) compact flash card become unusable, but have had multiple cards lose data (random corruption) if they go unpowered for a substantial length of time. So don't leave anything important on them if they're going to be put in storage.

I just did an experimental build that probably fits what you're doing. Prior to this weekend, all of my retro builds consisted entire of components that I would have used 25 years ago.

This weekend, I did a fresh build that went like this:

Pass 1: 512MB Compact Flash card plugged directly into the IDE1 channel. With a GoTek Floppy emulator, I loaded DOS 6.22 and a ton of games. Everything JUST WORKS. And it's fast. Disk performance is incredible. It's compact (The only ribbon cables are for the Floppy Drive and the CD-ROM).

Okay, so that worked, but next, I went a little weirder. I made a science experiment (called it Frankenstein's monster in another thread where I was asking for help).

Pass 2: 128GB mSATA SSD (from a 2013 laptop that died). Here's how this got hooked up:
(mSATA) -> (mSATA-2-SATA card) -> (SATA-2-IDE) converter
Here's the second part of the experiment. I wanted to install Windows without using my Windows 98 CD. So, I partitioned the 128GB hard drive into two partitions in FreeDOS, copied the install media onto the second partition (so I guess I technically used the CD at one point), and installed Windows on the first partition using the installation files on the second partition. I learned a lot from this process. This setup works as expected and it's extremely fast. The only issue with this one is that my Startech SATA to IDE converter is male, so I needed to use a ribbon cable with this.

Anyhow, both of these setups worked without any compatibility issues and they perform really well. I would recommend either of them depending on what you have available to you.

These are going to set me up for another science experiment in the future with a Fasttrak 100 RAID controller card.

If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer or try to take a picture of my storage devices (although I put the CF one away since that experiment is over).

HI, there is a guy nearby which sells these second hand CF cards, i want two of them but, what to pick ?

_StIwY_ wrote on 2022-11-20, 13:11:

1- It is possible to install Windows 98 SE on a SD / CF card with a modern PC without using any CD / DVD / Floppy, but a simple USB card reader ?

Well, you can partition and format it, install DOS on it, copy the Win98 folder from the disc, and run the installer from there; as Douglar said, you still get to deal with the limitations of geometry remapping 🙁

_StIwY_ wrote on 2022-11-20, 13:11:

2- It is possible to make a bootable CD / DVD .ISO with Windows 98 SE without any floppy boot disk, but entirely bootable from the disc ?

The one I have already is (would that be an OEM or retail version? for either ME or 2000 it's the opposite, I've read...) but in general, if you can make a bootable floppy with the right content (in this case some DOS and CD + ISO9660 drivers), you can tack it on to a standard data CD/DVD/BD (El Torito floppy emulation mode)!

_StIwY_ wrote on 2022-11-20, 13:11:

3- I didn't understand the question about DMA mode....some people have problems while some others didn't have...it depends on the adapters chip ? Which one is better among these ?

Basically, DMA requires a few more pins than PIO to work at all, and some older CF/IDE adapters (which don't have active electronics) skipped them (for which reason, one would wonder? PCBs are, all other things equal, cheaper and more reliable the more copper is left on them...)

[the 3 options in the first post]

Definitely CF for small capacities, SATA (whether mSATA or a disassembled 2.5" SSD with the right shape of converter) for larger ones 😀

[fixed vs removable disk]

Big annoyance (but bypassable, in fact I prefer to not use the microdrive driver on XP), but conveniently, it doesn't matter for most operating systems!
That means "all except the Windows NT series", possibly up to some version of 10 when they removed the stupid restriction on removable drives which up to then were expected to be MBR with a single partition or superfloppy

[buying recommendations]

Of the 4 I'd get one 2 GB (nearly universally compatible size, and they might be old enough to be compatible with ATCFWCHG if you'll ever want/need it to appear as a fixed disk, but then I would get an industrial card directly), then... for your specific use case probably an 8GB

All right i got one 8Gb and one CF Reader USB, it is sufficient to format it under Windows 11 Disk Managment or do i have to do it under Windows 98 SE ( with USB MAss Storage enabled ) ?

Shouldn't be very different - on your modern system use Rufus to format as MBR/FAT32 with FreeDOS, on 9x partition/reboot/format /S as usual, the result should be equivalent as all CF-USB adapters use LBA (I think...)

Installing right now, but the installation is like x3 times slower than the mechanical hdd. Dunno why, UDMA 2 is on like on the hdd

_StIwY_ wrote on 2022-11-21, 17:19:

Installing right now, but the installation is like x3 times slower than the mechanical hdd. Dunno why, UDMA 2 is on like on the hdd

That's not a good sign. What are you installing when it is slow?

I know it's a little late in the process, but it would be interesting to boot from another drive and run speedsys write tests on it, once under DOS and once under Windows. The write tests are destructive to data, but they can be illuminating.

douglar wrote on 2022-11-22, 01:45:

_StIwY_ wrote on 2022-11-21, 17:19:

Installing right now, but the installation is like x3 times slower than the mechanical hdd. Dunno why, UDMA 2 is on like on the hdd

That's not a good sign. What are you installing when it is slow?

I know it's a little late in the process, but it would be interesting to boot from another drive and run speedsys write tests on it, once under DOS and once under Windows. The write tests are destructive to data, but they can be illuminating.

Hello, just the official full WIndows 98 SE iso + the bootdisk ( in the same DVD-RW, so no floppy ).

After the complete installation everything looks fine, the general speed it's like the mechanical hdd, just the installation was much slower ( DMA is On of course but is stuck at UDMA 2, and yes i'm using a 80 pole cable........is that normal ? )

I also disabled the swap file, since 128Mb RAM is sufficient for almost anything ( i have some 256Mb sticks but it's like an overkill to me )

Anyway, today i will try another CF card with a Pentium 3 450Mhz + Asus P3B-F and i will see if something changes. I'll do also some benchmarks

EDIT:1 Everything is working fine.

EDIT 2: I was thinking to stick with mechanical hdd and returning the CF adapter. After all I want to have the closest vintage experience as possible, so i'm gonna order some second hand hdds just to be sure in the future or build other vintage PC

_StIwY_ wrote on 2022-11-22, 09:24:

After the complete installation everything looks fine, the general speed it's like the mechanical hdd, just the installation was much slower ( DMA is On of course but is stuck at UDMA 2, and yes i'm using a 80 pole cable........is that normal ? )

I also disabled the swap file, since 128Mb RAM is sufficient for almost anything ( i have some 256Mb sticks but it's like an overkill to me )

Could be your device defaults to ATA-1 under DOS. While there are some bios that try to go faster than that (like Nvidia) , it's not uncommon that the real mode BIOS won't try to negotiate faster than ATA-1. The protected mode drivers take over from the BIOS after you boot Windows 98 and then things can go faster.

You have a 440BX board which means you probably have a PIIX4 IO controller. Those don't go any faster than ATA-4 / UDMA-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_IDE_ISA_Xcelerator#PIIX4

128MB of ram should be plenty for windows 98. If you wanted a swapfile in Win98 you could put "ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1" to your system.ini . It reduces unnecessary swap file usage from the "preemptive swapping" that windows 98 does.

douglar wrote on 2022-11-23, 19:13:

Could be your device defaults to ATA-1 under DOS. While there are some bios that try to go faster than that (like Nvidia) , i […]
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_StIwY_ wrote on 2022-11-22, 09:24:

After the complete installation everything looks fine, the general speed it's like the mechanical hdd, just the installation was much slower ( DMA is On of course but is stuck at UDMA 2, and yes i'm using a 80 pole cable........is that normal ? )

I also disabled the swap file, since 128Mb RAM is sufficient for almost anything ( i have some 256Mb sticks but it's like an overkill to me )

Could be your device defaults to ATA-1 under DOS. While there are some bios that try to go faster than that (like Nvidia) , it's not uncommon that the real mode BIOS won't try to negotiate faster than ATA-1. The protected mode drivers take over from the BIOS after you boot Windows 98 and then things can go faster.

You have a 440BX board which means you probably have a PIIX4 IO controller. Those don't go any faster than ATA-4 / UDMA-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_IDE_ISA_Xcelerator#PIIX4

128MB of ram should be plenty for windows 98. If you wanted a swapfile in Win98 you could put "ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1" to your system.ini . It reduces unnecessary swap file usage from the "preemptive swapping" that windows 98 does.

Oh, true! I thought i was "stuck" with UDMA 2 for some problems, but you are right, i440BX does not support a faster interface.