wbahnassi wrote on 2024-06-30, 22:53:

I find myself becoming less and less impressed by CF cards for retro machines. Not even for Pentium 4.

chinny22 wrote on 2024-07-01, 03:01:

I only use mine in Pentium and below, and on dos focused builds.

I use them as HDDs in P1 and 486. Usually accessible in a slot cover.
With later builds, I can access them via USB2.0 and mobile card reader if I want to transfer stuff that way.
With a P3, I clearly prefer smaller SSDs in a swap bay.

Preferred 3) but couldn't acquire locally (i.e. required international shipping fees) so I bought two 2) for my two DOS / Win98SE hybrid builds (Sockets 5 and 7, respectively).

wbahnassi wrote on 2024-06-30, 22:53:

I find myself becoming less and less impressed by CF cards for retro machines. Not even for Pentium 4. Always something wrong...

I wouldn't use a CF to IDE adapter as primary storage on anything past Socket 7. They are fine for DOS or Win95, but an SSD paired with a SATA to IDE adapter will likely serve you better on Slot 1 and above.

As for the reliability of CF cards, I got the best results with a StarTech adapter and an industrial grade CF card. This combination works without any fuss for me. With non-industrial CF cards, I sometimes had weird issues.

crusher wrote on 2024-06-28, 06:16:

#5 :) […]
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#5 😀

I use #3 but put the 3.5" converter device in a mobile rack.
The reason is that I like my CF card accessable from the front for data transfers on modern PC.
But I don't want that black color which doesn't fit to my beige PC case.
That way it looks very nice like a swappable HDD. But inside I have my CF card.

I can post photos if wanted.

I'd like to see how you did yours. I had one ziptied like a gimbal & put weatherstrip foam under it. But this was using a CF card adapter that could accomodate that.

I also planned to use this arrangement for anything up to and including P4. I'm a bit worried about reliability or compatibility issues since they've been raised in here.

ToastyBox wrote on 2024-07-01, 08:49:

crusher wrote on 2024-06-28, 06:16:

#5 :) […]
Show full quote

#5 😀

I use #3 but put the 3.5" converter device in a mobile rack.
The reason is that I like my CF card accessable from the front for data transfers on modern PC.
But I don't want that black color which doesn't fit to my beige PC case.
That way it looks very nice like a swappable HDD. But inside I have my CF card.

I can post photos if wanted.

I'd like to see how you did yours. I had one ziptied like a gimbal & put weatherstrip foam under it. But this was using a CF card adapter that could accomodate that.

I also planned to use this arrangement for anything up to and including P4. I'm a bit worried about reliability or compatibility issues since they've been raised in here.

IMHO, you are overdoing it: A swap bay in a swap bay?
Given the specs of the card, why not just get a 32GB SSD in a bay like this:
https://www.sharkoon.com/ImgSrv/1000/1000/SAT … _single-bay.jpg
You can stick an adapter to IDE to the bay. I use that in a P3 with IDE adapter and in later boards directly.

ux-3 wrote on 2024-07-01, 09:27:

IMHO, you are overdoing it: A swap bay in a swap bay? Given the specs of the card, why not just get a 32GB SSD in a bay like thi […]
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IMHO, you are overdoing it: A swap bay in a swap bay?
Given the specs of the card, why not just get a 32GB SSD in a bay like this:
https://www.sharkoon.com/ImgSrv/1000/1000/SAT … _single-bay.jpg
You can stick an adapter to IDE to the bay. I use that in a P3 with IDE adapter and in later boards directly.

You can take what I made out of the front of one machine and plug it straight into the card reader on the front of a different machine. I don't know if the sharkoon hotswap lets you do that. Also... it's not beige

ToastyBox wrote on 2024-07-01, 12:57:

You can take what I made out of the front of one machine and plug it straight into the card reader on the front of a different machine.

Sure, you can use these SATA SSDs like giant floppy disks. But you can take just the CF-card out and stick it into another machine too. Problem with using a USB card reader for it is the performance reduction of the machine with the USB2 card reader. USB2 gobbles up performance in a big way. I have abandoned that approach.

Also... it's not beige

If that is the problem, you can get the SSD bays as rear slot mounts too. Unless you have too many other ISA/PCI cards in use.

ux-3 wrote on 2024-07-01, 13:32:

Sure, you can use these SATA SSDs like giant floppy disks. But you can take just the CF-card out and stick it into another machine too. Problem with using a USB card reader for it is the performance reduction of the machine with the USB2 card reader. USB2 gobbles up performance in a big way. I have abandoned that approach.

There's a lot to unpack there. I'm not sure that performance is the only tradeoff. And one doesn't always simply stick a CF into another machine. Here is a list of the different tradeoffs that I can think of:

• For DOS systems, powering down to change volumes is easy, so pulling a fixed drive is pretty simple, but removable read/write media (other than floppy disks) can cause some serious driver headaches.
• For Win98 systems, frequent restarting can be a time consuming chore, but drivers for removable storage in Win98 are often pretty straight forward
• If you have a BIOS that can autodetect IDE devices, swapping drives is easier because you don't need to go into the BIOS, you only need to reboot, but if your BIOS doesn't support autodetect, things are less pleasant without an option rom or a good drive overlay.
• If your BIOS works with LBA28, moving between vintage computers and contemporary USB readers is not a big deal because they will using the same addressing scheme. But if your BIOS doesn't support LBA, reading a fixed IDE storage on a contemporary USB adapter can be even more difficult than trying to read large LBA volumes on a system that lacks BIOS or OS support for LBA28.
• From a durability standpoint, CF's are more rugged & uhhh ... compact than Msata devices or spinning disks, so CF's may have an advantage for some people that often move fixed drives between systems

ToastyBox wrote on 2024-07-01, 08:49:

I'd like to see how you did yours

I will post pictures when I'm at home today evening.
But it's simply #3 from first entry directly screwed into the mobile rack.
Normally you would mount #3 into a 3.5" slot in your case.
But because it's 3.5" it fits perfectly well in the mobile rack as a 3.5" hard drive would do.

Anyway yesterday I switched from the CF solution to SSD 😀
The reason is that I like to max out my DOS 7.10 system and have a 128GB FAT32 system drive.
128GB CF cards are very expensive and hard to get.
I'm having the impression they're less and less available.
SSDs you can have for cheap. Especially the smaller ones with 128GB or 256GB.
Nobody wants them anymore in their modern systems and sell for cheap.
I think they are even available in next 5-10 years.
So...

I'm using this 2.5" to 3.5" caddy which also fits perfectly well in the mobile rack and looks very nice 😀
https://www.orico.cc/us/product/detail/3323.html

Will post pictures of this as well...

Yeah I don't know how many new CF cards are still manifactured per year.

There's also nothing really in the way of doing what I did but with a SATA-to-IDE and some kind of tray instead of zipties everywhere.

Coupled with a PCI hole in the back for a SATA drive in a more modern machine, and it's probably "swappable enough". Except I'd be delicate doing it because I've seen the SATA connectors sheer off before.

ToastyBox wrote on 2024-07-02, 07:37:

Yeah I don't know how many new CF cards are still manifactured per year.

Industrial grade CF cards are still being manufactured, and can be purchased brand new. It's possible that some legacy systems used by large corporations or banks still need those (via CF to IDE adapters). They are not exactly cheap though.

As for consumer grade CF cards, (used in old digital cameras and such) those are likely getting phased out.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-07-02, 07:41:

ToastyBox wrote on 2024-07-02, 07:37:

Yeah I don't know how many new CF cards are still manifactured per year.

Industrial grade CF cards are still being manufactured, and can be purchased brand new. It's possible that some legacy systems used by large corporations or banks still need those (via CF to IDE adapters). They are not exactly cheap though.

As for consumer grade CF cards, (used in old digital cameras and such) those are likely getting phased out.

These no-name industrial cards are really common in the on-line market places today:

I recently got some 8 & 16GB SanDisk Ultra Industrials that claim to do 50MB/s

I'll do some comparisons later on and post them.

douglar wrote on 2024-07-02, 13:04:

I recently got some 8 & 16GB SanDisk Ultra Industrials that claim to do 50MB/s

I'll do some comparisons later today

I use CF cards on an ATA-33 system (430TX chipset) so I don't care about their speed all that much. To me, stability and reliability are more important, and industrial grade cards provide that.

From my experience, most consumer CF cards manufactured from the mid 2000s and onward identify themselves as "removable media". This can cause issues on retro machines, especially under Windows, but I've had occasional short freezes (1-2 seconds) even in pure DOS. In contrast, industrial grade CF cards identify themselves as a "fixed disk" and I had no freezing issues with them, regardless of operating system.

How can you differentiate between industrial and consumer grade CF cards?

crusher wrote on 2024-07-02, 13:20:

How can you differentiate between industrial and consumer grade CF cards?

Industrial grade CF cards are labeled as such on the packaging, and they are usually sold at a higher price.

Here's one on Transcend's website, for reference purposes.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-07-02, 13:16:

From my experience, most consumer CF cards manufactured from the mid 2000s and onward identify themselves as "removable media". This can cause issues on retro machines, especially under Windows

Here are some additional detail about that. Compact Flash devices have two operating modes, "Memory Mapped Mode" and legacy "True IDE mode". When a CF is powered up on a CF-IDE adapter, pin 9 will be grounded, and the CF should start up in "True IDE mode" where it acts like a Legacy ATA device instead of directly mapped memory. Some devices have firmware that responds to an ATA IDENTIFY DEVICE command with bit 7 = 1 which indicates that the media is "removable". There are only two programs that I know of that are bothered by this, but unfortunately they are the installation programs for Windows 2000 and Windows XP. If you are using other versions of windows, this isn't going to be a problem.

douglar wrote on 2024-07-02, 14:47:

There are only two programs that I know of that are bothered by this, but unfortunately they are the installation programs for Windows 2000 and Windows XP. If you are using other versions of windows, this isn't going to be a problem.

I don't think it's just the Win2K and WinXP installers. For example, I had issues installing IDE drivers on a motherboard using the SiS 5598 chipset under Win95 with a consumer grade CF card that would identify itself as "removable media". I also remember the Recycle Bin not working properly in some cases.

To clarify, I'm not saying these issues will pop up on every single system, but sometimes a particular combination of hardware and software simply doesn't like consumer grade CF cards. Speaking purely from personal experience, industrial grade CF cards tend to "just work" as if I had put an IDE hard drive in there.

crusher wrote on 2024-07-02, 13:20:

How can you differentiate between industrial and consumer grade CF cards?

As far as I know, "Industrial CF" is just a marketing term that doesn't necessarily mean anything, but it practice, end users that purchase an "Industrial CF" expect:

• Increase lifespan under heavy continuous use through some combination of higher flash over provisioning, wear leveling, enhanced garbage collection, and better error detection/correction
• Firmware optimized for low latency, random access on many small files instead of high throughput access on fewer large files
• Better compatibility with early ATA standards that are more often found in industrial equipment that they are in consumer electronics
• Higher tolerance for heat, shock and vibration
• Doesn't report itself as a removable device

@Joseph_Joestar,
@douglar:

Thanks for your useful information regarding industrial and consumer grade CF cards.
--
As promised here are pics of my CF as well as SSD solution.
First I had the CF solution with StarTech 3.5" IDE to CF adapter (35BAYCF2IDE), #3 in initial post mounted into a mobile rack.
For mentioned reasons I switched to SSD using StarTech IDE to SATA adapter (IDE2SAT2) in Orico 2.5" to 3.5" caddy mounted into the mobile rack as well.
I think the SSD solution looks much nicer.
I will stay with the SSD method.

Using a 128GB SSD under MS-DOS 7.10 gives me no problems on an Asus P5A board with ALi Alladdin V chipset.
BIOS detects the full 128GB, as well as all diagnostics tools and scandisk is working correctly.
As with all modern HDDs/SSDs effective capacity is less. In this case about 120GB.
The only downside is that R. Loew's TRIM.EXE is not working for reasons I did not found out yet.
The SSD model, a Samsung 850 Pro supports Trim by firmware. So that should not be the problem.

For a Samsung 870 EVO 256GB (max LBA limited to 128GB) in my Win98 machine TRIM.EXE works correctly.
So I experimented with a Samsung 850 Pro 256GB drive (also max LBA limited to 128GB) in that DOS machine.
TRIM.EXE doesn't work either.
Maybe it's the difference in SSD model (850 Pro vs. 870 EVO).
Good thing would have been that I would have been able to use the full effective capacity of 128GB instead of "only" 120GB.

But I had some negative effects with that drive:
- BIOS reports 80GB capacity (found out that this is the CHS capacity)
- some diagnostics tools also report that 80GB (assume they show the CHS value) whereas others report the 128GB (LBA capacity)
- scandisk is not working and reports sector problems with the drive
- as mentioned TRIM.EXE is not working

So I didn't follow this route any further and am now using 128GB SSD without Trim possibility so far.
I'm making regular Ghost image backups. So if the SSD fails I just put in another SSD (cheap to have) and restore my backup on it.

crusher wrote on 2024-07-02, 17:54:

But I had some negative effects with that drive: - BIOS reports 80GB capacity (found out that this is the CHS capacity) - some d […]
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But I had some negative effects with that drive:
- BIOS reports 80GB capacity (found out that this is the CHS capacity)
- some diagnostics tools also report that 80GB (assume they show the CHS value) whereas others report the 128GB (LBA capacity)
- scandisk is not working and reports sector problems with the drive
- as mentioned TRIM.EXE is not working

I'd be concerned that the drive works fine for the first 80GB but starts corrupting data after that point, where the addresses used by DOS after 80GB start overwriting locations under 80GB.

Here's my $6 mSata device that I put together yesterday.

I'll publish the STL after I make a few enhancements.