Fziffle wrote on 2025-07-27, 00:35:

I have a PCI 3c905-tx Rev B 10/100 board, and I'm wondering about the ROM - it is a 32 pin socket. I need XT-IDE to add SSD type boot drives as the hard disk is getting some errors (to the point of locking up Spinright 5.0). The biggest complication is that the boot drive is muliboot via partition magic, and has ez-bios on it for drive size, existing bios is the first LBA type. Boot drive is 1.5 GB, but has hidden partitions and such because of partition magic; Not sure if it is safe to remove ez-boot nor not.

Trying to decide if I should forget the existing drive all together (dual boot dos 6.22 and win98) or start over.

My personal preference, for the last 30+ years, has been one OS per physical drive.

I also hate disk overlays with an undying passion.

Personally, I would

a) backup any useful data
b) get XT-IDE working
c) start over