VOGONS


First post, by Johan-NL79

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Hi everyone,

The harddisk of my PIII-800 recently died so I decided to get a (no-name) CF to IDE adaptor. The CF card is 4GB. I created 3 partitions, one primary, active partition of 512MB, and one extended partition of about 3300MB with two logical partitions on it. The DOS 6.22 setup program formatted the disks then installed to C:\DOS. After a reboot, the pc starts booting of off the "hard disk" but there's a blinking cursor and nothing happens. Sometimes you can see config.sys is being processed but also gets stuck with the blinking cursor. I've googled a bit and read something about the partition shouldn't be bigger than 504MB but that seems small for a socket 370 system. Does anyone has any pointers to get this working?

Thanks!

Reply 2 of 22, by Ryccardo

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Johan-NL79 wrote on 2024-10-26, 21:24:

After a reboot, the pc starts booting of off the "hard disk" but there's a blinking cursor and nothing happens.

This would be a classic case of "reinstall the MBR as Fdisk won't do it by default on a disk it considers used", BUT the next sentence implies this cannot be the case as to get to

Johan-NL79 wrote on 2024-10-26, 21:24:

config.sys is being processed

would mean the MBR, the VBR, io.sys and msdos.sys are all working…

Johan-NL79 wrote on 2024-10-26, 21:24:

I've googled a bit and read something about the partition shouldn't be bigger than 504MB but that seems small for a socket 370 system.

Agreed (there's likely a CHS = ~8 GB limit, but following it is easy in your case!)

I would try a third party IDE detection program to see what possibly insane CHS the card recommends - though this too would be an 8+ GB problem

So yeah, I would be trying to lower all the performance options (speed mode, block access, etc) - and understand that not all CFs are designed for, or even tested, in IDE mode (yet again at 4 GB it's likely not designed for super pro cameras of the late 2000s, but it might be a """cheap""" consumer product from when those used CFs?)

Reply 3 of 22, by Johan-NL79

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Thanks for the replies. I can confirm that PIO mode 4 is being used, but that doesn't seem to be a setting which can be changed in the BIOS, same for the multiblock transfer. I can turn LBA on or off, that's it. I've got a 4GB and a 8GB Transcend CF card, the idea was to use the 4GB with DOS and the 8GB with Win98.

I've used HwInfo to look at the drive, and another program, they gave different info when it comes to cylinders and heads. I can sometimes boot but often, when opening a file for example, the system freezes. Sometimes Ctrl+Alt+Del works to reboot, other times I need to press the Reset button on the case.

When the IDE harddisk was still working, I didn't have any of these issues. And when installing DOS 6.22 from floppy it just finishes the install, so apparently writing to the disk isn't an issue, maybe reading is?

Reply 4 of 22, by mscdex

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Johan-NL79 wrote on 2024-10-27, 08:44:

When the IDE harddisk was still working, I didn't have any of these issues.

What size was the IDE hard disk? Did it just have DOS installed or Windows or ?

Also, have you tried using DOS 7.1 and then optionally formatting the CF card as FAT32 to see if that makes any difference (7.1 was the first to support FAT32)?

Reply 5 of 22, by Jo22

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Re: IDE to Compact Flash as MS-DOS boot drive.

S0Kill can clear track 0 and the MBR/PBR.
It will make the HDD appear as if it's fresh from factory.

It's in German, but usage is simple.
It asks for drive letter, then it asks if you want change default settings.
You can use an Android phone to translate the text, though, if you wish.

A few infos:
504 MB was a typical limit of CHS on 286/386/486 PCs.
MS-DOS 6.22 doesn't care about CHS, E-CHS or LBA, but has a 1024 cylinder limit (BIOS may count from 0 to 1023 here).
MS-DOS 6.22 can use 2 GB partitions just fine (FAT16B).
MS-DOS 6.22 can see 8 GB of total capacity, so 8 GB CFs are fine (they are a bit smaller than 8 GB in capacity usually).
HDDs bigger than 8 GB are hit and miss, though. FDISK can easily be getting confused then.

Edit: The idea of trying out MS-DOS 7.x isn’t bad, I think.
MS-DOS 7 has a more intelligent boot loader and is LBA-aware.
So it's really good for troubleshooting. 😃👍

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 7 of 22, by Johan-NL79

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Unfortunately nothing happens after I booted with a 7.1 bootdisk and did sys a: c: . The files are there, like io.sys etc, but the pc doesn't boot from IDE-0. When booting from the floppy there doesn't seem to be an issue accessing the disk though.

Reply 10 of 22, by Nemo1985

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I kindly doubt it will solve your issues. The newer the motherboard more is necessary to limit the pio mode of the cfcard, even worse if you go for older (and usually smaller) cf card as you did.
I checked the bios of the motherboard and it should have the options we talked before, I've used the V1.9 bios from theretroweb, it was weird enough that there was not visible options about pio mode and udma, I also have them on newer pentium 4 motherboards.

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Reply 12 of 22, by Nemo1985

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Johan-NL79 wrote on 2024-10-29, 12:23:

I see a BIOS file for this motherboard on this site, I can give that a try. Can't remember if I ever updated a BIOS on a 90s/early 2000s pc, is it as simple as running the .exe file in DOS?

Honestly you do not need to update the bios, those options are very basic and available in any bios version even in the rare chance that you have a branded version of the motherboard (quite unlikely).
If you want to update the bios, I'd advise to use uniflash.

Reply 14 of 22, by Johan-NL79

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Well, that didn't go as planned...motherboard now dead after using the MSI BIOS update 🙁 And no, there really was no option to set the PIO mode, I checked every screen in the BIOS. I did try fdisk /mbr and yes, the partition was active. I'm now in the market for another socket 370 motherboard, have my eyes on a 440BX one, or would anyone have a recommendation?

Reply 16 of 22, by Nemo1985

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According to the msi website, there are two revisions of this board:
v1: https://it.msi.com/Motherboard/MS6309/support
v2: https://it.msi.com/Motherboard/MS6309_V2.x/support

Have you checked the version prior to update the bios?
I don't know why\how you could have used the so called msi bios update, I tried to download the latest version of the bios and it comes an ami executable file to use under dos.
Good luck in your journey.

Reply 17 of 22, by Johan-NL79

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I have the v2 motherboard. I can actually get the pc to boot again after shorting the CMOS battery with the jumper. However, if I go into the BIOS setup and change stuff , then Save & Exit the screen stays black again. I can skip setting up the BIOS after shorting the batter again and I was hoping I could boot into DOS and try another BIOS version, but it gets stuck at the screen after the first POST screen (sorry), right before it would normally boot the OS.

Reply 18 of 22, by Nemo1985

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Johan-NL79 wrote on 2024-10-31, 19:05:

I have the v2 motherboard. I can actually get the pc to boot again after shorting the CMOS battery with the jumper. However, if I go into the BIOS setup and change stuff , then Save & Exit the screen stays black again. I can skip setting up the BIOS after shorting the batter again and I was hoping I could boot into DOS and try another BIOS version, but it gets stuck at the screen after the first POST screen (sorry), right before it would normally boot the OS.

After resetting the bios your best hope is to boot with a floppy, have you tried it?
You would need a booting floppy, i'd also try a minimal config: ram, cpu, video card and floppy, nothing more connected to te motherboard.
If the boot screen stucks without any error (about unable to find system files or a similar error), you need to try an hot swap to recover the bios or have a bios programmer.

Reply 19 of 22, by Johan-NL79

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Yeah there's a bootable floppy in the drive, but the system doesn't get that far. Literally one screen further than the initial POST screen. I know someone with a programming device so I will ask if I can borrow it and attempt to fix the BIOS.