Poor quality CF adapter probably connects pin 28 to ground.

i need answer , of this too 😀

not poor quality, simply ATA compliant.
Re: "Fixed" 386sx motherboard works but not with 16-bit VGA card Re: IDE/CF adapter causing screen corruption/missing characters

There is absolutely no reason for a HDD to short pin 28 to GND (it shouldn't be driven by the drive at all, it's an input signal) and it's definitely not ATA compliant.

So I am guessing simply snipping pin 28 off the cf ide connector will do the trick?

That is often suggested. I have seen it done. JUST VERY CAREFULLY VERIFY THAT IT IS INDEED PIN 28 before you cut.

Removing Pin 28 from the CF-IDE adapter did not fix the issue..

i have a 486 that really doesnt like 80wire ide cables and refuses to identify my cf card with it.
As soon as i use a regular old 40 wire ide cable it intantly sees the cf card.

Have you tried another cable?

DerBaum wrote on 2023-09-11, 13:00:

i have a 486 that really doesnt like 80wire ide cables and refuses to identify my cf card with it.
As soon as i use a regular old 40 wire ide cable it intantly sees the cf card.

Have you tried another cable?

A 40 stripe cable improves the situation somewhat, but there is still mising text.

appiah4 wrote on 2023-09-11, 13:41:

A 40 stripe cable improves the situation somewhat, but there is still mising text.

Another thing i had problems while using cf cards is the auto detect of the bios.
I cant remember if i had to set the card from LBA to CHS or the other way around to make it work.
I also cant remember if i had missing letters. The main issue was that the system ran a "dir" fine when booted from a floppy but at a regular boot it hang while executing the drivers in autoexec.bat/config.sys .
In the end i configured the card manually in the bios and ran a low level format from the bios. Then Fdisk/format the card from dos 6.22 .

DerBaum wrote on 2023-09-11, 14:28:

Another thing i had problems while using cf cards is the auto detect of the bios. I cant remember if i had to set the card from […]
Show full quote

appiah4 wrote on 2023-09-11, 13:41:

A 40 stripe cable improves the situation somewhat, but there is still mising text.

Another thing i had problems while using cf cards is the auto detect of the bios.
I cant remember if i had to set the card from LBA to CHS or the other way around to make it work.
I also cant remember if i had missing letters. The main issue was that the system ran a "dir" fine when booted from a floppy but at a regular boot it hang while executing the drivers in autoexec.bat/config.sys .
In the end i configured the card manually in the bios and ran a low level format from the bios. Then Fdisk/format the card from dos 6.22 .

This BIOS has no auto detect, the CHS values are set as Type 47..

DerBaum wrote on 2023-09-11, 14:28:

In the end i configured the card manually in the bios and ran a low level format from the bios. Then Fdisk/format the card from dos 6.22 .

Be careful with low-level format feature in BIOS.
It's dangerous under most circumstances. It's not like a soft format, at all.
The feature is there for 16-Bit MFM/RLL controller boards without an on-board BIOS.
- On 8-Bit systems debug was used to call low-level routines stored in ROM.
On an IDE HDD or a CF card, a low-level format can have unpredictable effects.
It can be that the firmware does weird things with the sectors, rendering the hardware unusable.
I rendered at least one CF unusable that way.

appiah4 wrote on 2023-09-11, 12:30:

Removing Pin 28 from the CF-IDE adapter did not fix the issue..

It's just an idea, but if it's not a hardware issue, then maybe it's a software issue?

The ATA-2 specification (Fast ATA, Enhanced IDE) changed a lot of things back then.
It could be that the HDD routines in the BIOS have issues with that.
Edit: https://www.os2museum.com/wp/how-to-please-wdctrl/

It's essentially IBM's AT Fixed Disk Adapter (WD1003 command set) and/or ATA (IDE, AT Bus) all they know.
That's why "HDD Auto Detection" is missing, also, it's a future ATA feature and not available on MFM/RLL controllers yet.

If BIOS is the issue, using XTIDE Universal BIOS could help here.
I had a similar issue in which it did, at least. It was a Schneider Tower AT with an outdated BIOS..
Whenever it was meant to boot DOS, it hung.

Anyway, this is just an idea, of course. 😅

I dont think DOS (therefore bios) touches disk while displaying "enter new date".

>Removing Pin 28 from the CF-IDE adapter did not fix the issue.

Just to make sure, storage still works? Try older CF card.