Your CD drive jumps from being jumpered as CS, to slave, back to CS between posts. Which is it? Since the CF is master it should be set to slave. Imho this (explicit jumpering) is always the preferred option. Or you could set both to CS, and let the drives(' position on the cable) decide. But do not mix.

Why did the CD drive get assigned 'E:' when you claimed you only made a single partition on the CF? Should have gotten 'D:' then. Can you double check that there is one, and only one, partition, and zero extended or logical ones?

Also, a 32mb partition? Bit tight for a Win98 install. I'll assume that's a typo. I don't see how an extremely large HDD partition would interfere with the CD driver, but still - if you find yourself repartitioning anyways you might think about allocating something smaller, 8GB or less, for now, just to remove another potential source of issues.

elszgensa wrote on 2023-10-03, 10:24:

Your CD drive jumps from being jumpered as CS, to slave, back to CS between posts. Which is it? Since the CF is master it should be set to slave. Imho this (explicit jumpering) is always the preferred option. Or you could set both to CS, and let the drives(' position on the cable) decide. But do not mix.

Why did the CD drive get assigned 'E:' when you claimed you only made a single partition on the CF? Should have gotten 'D:' then. Can you double check that there is one, and only one, partition, and zero extended or logical ones?

Also, a 32mb partition? Bit tight for a Win98 install. I'll assume that's a typo. I don't see how an extremely large HDD partition would interfere with the CD driver, but still - if you find yourself repartitioning anyways you might think about allocating something smaller, 8GB or less, for now, just to remove another potential source of issues.

The CD drive is jumpered as CS. I said slave a few times because it is on the slave 40 pin IDE connection.

I would assume the CD drive is mapped to E: because of the ramdisk being mapped to D: ? The setup program looks to E by itself. This isn’t anything I’ve changed.

No other partitions or extended partitions. Regarding why I selected 32mb that’s for Whatever reason the boot files are detecting as the “maximum space”. The CF shows as 64gb in bios but that capacity isn’t picked up by the boot software to enable “large drive support”. No prompt.

I’ll post more information and photos later today once I’m back from work. Thank you all for your help.

wutang61 wrote on 2023-10-03, 11:03:

because of the ramdisk being mapped to D:

Alright, now where the fRAINBOWS AND UNICORNSk did this ramdisk come from all of a sudden? Please show the contents (directory listing) of your boot disk when you can - I don't remember ever seeing a(n untouched) MS boot floppy create any ram drives. Yours might be an OEM one with god-knows-what changes, or maybe the previous owner did something to it.

That CF size mismatch issue definitely needs solving too. Off the top of my head, you might have to use fdisk/format from WinME instead to deal with partitions that large? Or maybe FreeDOS? But that's for later, after the CD access issue gets sorted out.

Both standard Win98SE and WinME DOS mode (boot floppy) have a 32GB max FAT32 partition size iirc not 32mb.

LieboOSBA wrote on 2023-10-03, 10:18:

You can stop Windows writing the System Volume Information folder to removable media via the registry. This is what I did on my Windows 10 machine that I use with a USB Floppy Drive to write images to real floppies (I don't have a floppy emulator). It only fails if the disk is bad.

https://winaero.com/how-to-disable-system-vol … movable-drives/

for some reason that did not work with my version of Win 10 Home, not sure why yet.....

If youre using cable select then both devices need to be set to cable select.

I cant be arsed with this.
There are a number of reasons why you floppy drive wont do what you want, it could be any number of problems with the disk drive itself, it could be the cable, it could be the floppy controller, maybe the pins on the motherboard...

If you dont want to do it the old fashioned way, which is what I thought you wanted. Then what you really need to do is sys the drive on a Win98 PC but as you dont have one there are other ways.

It looks like your floppy drive such as it is is getting you far enough along the process to no longer need it once its booted.
So format the CF card in another PC using GUIFormat, that will allow you to format it with FAT32 if the partition is larger than Windows would allow you to do. (Windows will partition the drive, guiformat will format those partitions)
Copy the Win98 folder to the CF card together with any drivers you will need and then put it into the Win98 PC and boot it using the floppy disk.
Once at the A: prompt you will need to sys the CF card so type A:\ sys C:
That will copy over the system files.
Then you type
fdisk /mbr (you dont need this step, hopefully your floppy disk will read the files on the floppy required to do it)
C:
cd Win98
setup

Oh and when you do use guiformat make sure you do the following first.

Use Windows disk manager to wipe any and all partitions off the disk and create a new one then get guiformat to do a long slow format not a quick one.
That will find any errors if there are any.

If you do that you will use as much as you can get out of your floppy drive and you wont need your Windows 98 CD so the problems above like the RAM drive will all become mute.

Okay. So like anything with technology, nothing ever repeats itself. Which is great because I have no interest in the mind games of the previous issue. I will attach a screen by screen grab of this post. So everyone can see what is going on.

You can clearly see that a Factory W98SE disk unpacks diagnostic tools to a Ramdrive, targets E: and loads the setup. Glad I’m not Fackin crazy.

Everything I posted about previously has magically fixed itself. Okay. Appreciate that my little shitbox pc. Deleted the partition from last night and made a new one. Screenshots tell the story.

But one problem remains. Drive C: is showing as FAT 16 32mb when it is in fact a 64gb CF In fat32. As a result, windows 98 will not install. (Obviously). I am going to pull the CF out and attempt to format it with the previously recommended method using GUI.

I have attached pictures for review and input. Thank you all once again for hanging with me here. This stupid thing is going to work. The right way. One way or another.

Continued. Not sure if a 64gb is just too large. But I figured I would be prompted for large disk support? Maybe the external format will fix the issue.

Completely insane question: are you sure it's a 64GB CF? and not some fraudy counterfeit no-name thing that's actually a 32 meg card just labelled as 64GB?

Agree something is borked !! Even DOS 6.22 will create a 2GB FAT16 partition on 60GB HD as long as the geometry is correct in BIOS for the HD. You cannot rely on the motherboard detecting the proper CHS on some CF using "Auto Detect" in BIOS on some motherboards. Using a diff motherboard to actually read the CHS can usually cure that issue but think something else is a foot.

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-04, 01:14:

Completely insane question: are you sure it's a 64GB CF? and not some fraudy counterfeit no-name thing that's actually a 32 meg card just labelled as 64GB?

It is a legit CF. I didn’t play into the Chinese knockoff “industrial” branded options on scamazon.

Horun wrote on 2023-10-04, 01:24:

Agree something is borked !! Even DOS 6.22 will create a 2GB FAT16 partition on 60GB HD as long as the geometry is correct in BIOS for the HD. You cannot rely on the motherboard detecting the proper CHS on some CF using "Auto Detect" in BIOS on some motherboards. Using a diff motherboard to actually read the CHS can usually cure that issue but think something else is a foot.

Something indeed. And it has to be a format problem. The bios detects it just as it would a standard platter abit with the device ID that’s appropriate for what it is. I have to play with it some more. Maybe GUI will solve this what is now an easier problem to solve.

wutang61 wrote on 2023-10-04, 02:03:

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-04, 01:14:

Completely insane question: are you sure it's a 64GB CF? and not some fraudy counterfeit no-name thing that's actually a 32 meg card just labelled as 64GB?

It is a legit CF. I didn’t play into the Chinese knockoff “industrial” branded options on scamazon.

And you're sure Amazon's sometimes shady warehousing practices didn't cause you to receive a knock-off card?

Dumb question - can you put it in a modern system, partition it, format it NTFS or whatever file system the modern system feels like, and see the full 64 gigs and fill it up?

Thats exactly what I would do.
Put the card into a modern PC, partition and format it as FAT32 and fill it up with files and then try and read those files from the card.

Well, if theres a reward for most problems possible, I think i'm in the running. Drive reads as 31.xMB! as a side note, this will be the second defective flash drive from Amazon. the first one wouldn't even recognize as a device when it was connected.

Crazy. Stay tuned for the next problem!

wutang61 wrote on 2023-10-05, 00:13:

Well, if theres a reward for most problems possible, I think i'm in the running. Drive reads as 31.xMB! as a side note, this will be the second defective flash drive from Amazon. the first one wouldn't even recognize as a device when it was connected.

Crazy. Stay tuned for the next problem!

Can you show a screenshot of "Disk Management"? This just means there's a 31 meg partition, it doesn't show how the whole drive is recognized...

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-05, 00:28:

wutang61 wrote on 2023-10-05, 00:13:

Well, if theres a reward for most problems possible, I think i'm in the running. Drive reads as 31.xMB! as a side note, this will be the second defective flash drive from Amazon. the first one wouldn't even recognize as a device when it was connected.

Crazy. Stay tuned for the next problem!

Can you show a screenshot of "Disk Management"? This just means there's a 31 meg partition, it doesn't show how the whole drive is recognized...

As Requested. Volume showed 31mb partition with the real cap unallocated. Deleted the the existing 31mb partition via DM drive is now unrecognizable.

Interesting.

Any chance my card reader is the disk bricker 3000? would explain why both cards are now FUBAR.

wutang61 wrote on 2023-10-05, 01:10:

As Requested. Volume showed 31mb partition with the real cap unallocated. Deleted the the existing 31mb partition via DM drive i […]
Show full quote

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-05, 00:28:

wutang61 wrote on 2023-10-05, 00:13:

Well, if theres a reward for most problems possible, I think i'm in the running. Drive reads as 31.xMB! as a side note, this will be the second defective flash drive from Amazon. the first one wouldn't even recognize as a device when it was connected.

Crazy. Stay tuned for the next problem!

Can you show a screenshot of "Disk Management"? This just means there's a 31 meg partition, it doesn't show how the whole drive is recognized...

As Requested. Volume showed 31mb partition with the real cap unallocated. Deleted the the existing 31mb partition via DM drive is now unrecognizable.

Interesting.

Any chance my card reader is the disk bricker 3000? would explain why both cards are now FUBAR.

What happens if you try to create a 64 gig partition in Disk Management? If you delete the partition and don't create a new one, the volume being seen as unrecognizable is... expected.

Keep in mind that there are multiple levels of abstraction in storage. You have... drives, partitions, volumes, etc. (Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, I'm typing this on a Mac, but I am pretty sure that Windows disk management/diskpart has both volumes and partitions) Normally when you buy a flash drive or card, you expect it to ship with one volume on one partition that's preformatted FAT32/exFAT/something. But that's just a convention and if you blow up that partition, you'll have nothing until you recreate a partition/volume/filesystem/etc.

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-05, 01:23:

wutang61 wrote on 2023-10-05, 01:10:

As Requested. Volume showed 31mb partition with the real cap unallocated. Deleted the the existing 31mb partition via DM drive i […]
Show full quote

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-05, 00:28:

Can you show a screenshot of "Disk Management"? This just means there's a 31 meg partition, it doesn't show how the whole drive is recognized...

As Requested. Volume showed 31mb partition with the real cap unallocated. Deleted the the existing 31mb partition via DM drive is now unrecognizable.

Interesting.

Any chance my card reader is the disk bricker 3000? would explain why both cards are now FUBAR.

What happens if you try to create a 64 gig partition in Disk Management? If you delete the partition and don't create a new one, the volume being seen as unrecognizable is... expected.

Keep in mind that there are multiple levels of abstraction in storage. You have... drives, partitions, volumes, etc. (Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, I'm typing this on a Mac, but I am pretty sure that Windows disk management/diskpart has both volumes and partitions) Normally when you buy a flash drive or card, you expect it to ship with one volume on one partition that's preformatted FAT32/exFAT/something. But that's just a convention and if you blow up that partition, you'll have nothing until you recreate a partition/volume/filesystem/etc.

Don’t even have the option. The drive doesn’t show up at all. When you insert the disk it attempts to read and acts like you pulled the drive out in the middle of access. Instructing to insert media. “Drive G:” in this instance disappears from the system as if it wasn’t connected. It should show up as unallocated space and have a drive letter. But it does not.

wutang61 wrote on 2023-10-05, 01:28:

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-05, 01:23:

wutang61 wrote on 2023-10-05, 01:10:

As Requested. Volume showed 31mb partition with the real cap unallocated. Deleted the the existing 31mb partition via DM drive is now unrecognizable.

Interesting.

Any chance my card reader is the disk bricker 3000? would explain why both cards are now FUBAR.

What happens if you try to create a 64 gig partition in Disk Management? If you delete the partition and don't create a new one, the volume being seen as unrecognizable is... expected.

Keep in mind that there are multiple levels of abstraction in storage. You have... drives, partitions, volumes, etc. (Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, I'm typing this on a Mac, but I am pretty sure that Windows disk management/diskpart has both volumes and partitions) Normally when you buy a flash drive or card, you expect it to ship with one volume on one partition that's preformatted FAT32/exFAT/something. But that's just a convention and if you blow up that partition, you'll have nothing until you recreate a partition/volume/filesystem/etc.

Don’t even have the option. The drive doesn’t show up at all. When you insert the disk it attempts to read and acts like you pulled the drive out in the middle of access. Instructing to insert media. “Drive G:” in this instance disappears from the system as if it wasn’t connected. It should show up as unallocated space and have a drive letter. But it does not.

Right, you need to partition it in Disk Management. You should see Disk 3 at the bottom, right click on it and click "New Partition" or something like that. It will only get a drive letter that is formattable once the partition is set up...

Ok so it came with a 32MB partition (seems I had a PNY like that and it had some tool/util in that part). I was able to remove partitions and create a whole 128GB part.
To me it sounds like your card reader may in fact have an issue because you should be able to delete everything off it and recreate if a standard CF card OR if it is like those xD "flash guard" CF's then it can lock it self iirc.
Another option (too late now) would be create a new Primary/Active 31GB in the unallocated. Then delete the 31Mb part. The Partition table should then reflect a just one active part and not show the 31Mb (negligable to the full size) and you then should be able to format as FAT32.....of course assuming those CF are actually usable as CF HD's, some are not....

Added: just read the WD website on those, they are not designed for general file use but specific for Digital camera use if I read the page and pdf correctly. No where does it mention anything but video.....
https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/ … ompactflash.pdf
You should have looked for a more generic or Industrial grade CF card that is aimed at a specific usage such as wide application and standard file usage IMHO. One example:
https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/ … -sd-microsd.pdf

added2: you should search this forum as others have used CF for XT thru soc478+ with good success..