Sintechi needs the external power.

Thanks for clarifying that just a quick update I tried again using the 8 gig so card
This time but still the same issue message saying scanning for id busses then it
Just hangs

What's it do with the sintechi disconnected?

As in, 'nothing connected to the ide card'

I’ve got a windows 95 Pentium 3 system but I think it would be to hard to attach the card adapter
To this system as I haven’t got the confidence I suppose to try it I don’t know
Maybe I could give it a go and see how the adapter works with this system

I want to rule out 'other', less fun potential issues.

It's a diagnostic step. Just humor me.

Disconnect the sintechi adapter from the IDE card, and let it try to boot. I am curious how far into the detection process this card goes.

Hi it’s all very interesting I tried what you suggested I took out the sd card adapter
And just left the ide data card in and even with the sd card adapter out
It still did the same thing scanning ide busses messages and just hangs
Don’t continue to boot so it can’t be the sd card adapter that’s causing the
Issue it must be something else

Did you change the memory address of the rom to D800?

If you didn't, please do.

Hi no I didn’t how do I do that as I’m not really sure how to change the memory address of the rom to
D800

Pull the jumper marked ROM off the card.

Success so far I tried what you suggested I pulled the jumper off the rom
On the card and the pc now boots it now shows a message saying scanning
Scanning ide busses 162 system options not set run setup in reference disk resume f1 key
I’ll try and put the sd card adapter back in and see what happens and let you know

For the benefit of other eyeballs:

This is an enlarged view of the jumperblock, and the card's silkscreening for how to set the adapter's ROM bios location.

In this block, we can see that we are able to set this card up in some very fun ways, like tertiary and quaternary IDE. (Or, to addresses and IRQs that would be friendly coexisting with an MFM controller, etc.)

The "162 System Options not set" error means you need to run the CMOS setup program.
In our DMs, I linked where you can get generic AT Setup from a Simtel mirror. That should be sufficient, if you can get a dos diskette booted.

For reference, here it is again:
https://ftp.sunet.se/mirror/archive/ftp.sunet … tl/gsetup31.zip

Looking back on page 1 of this thread, and looking inside your system, this board uses a Dallas RTC chip. If the board does not retain system configuration data after a power off, the baked-in battery inside the dallas RTC may be bad.

just a thought but i wonder if that ide bios has 386 op codes

Pickle wrote on 2026-07-11, 02:56:

just a thought but i wonder if that ide bios has 386 op codes

I had that thought too ... it's seems so hard to tell actual "problems" these days from arbitrary ones.

Just a quick update I’ve put in the sd card adapter to ide data card
I’ve tried to run dos 3.3 I’ve tried to run fdisk but it gives a message can’t find drive
Paremettas I’ve also tried running gsetup program witch is a cmos program
To change cmos options when I setup the CMOs options I exit the program
And still no luck running fdisk to part ion the sd card
One thing to note is when I run gsetup program it says cmos battery needs replaceing
So I can’t save the cmos options would this be why I’m having trouble and can I still run
Fdisk and partition the sd card without a working CMOs battery

CMOS in a PC is just a very small and low power RAM and CLOCK chip that a small battery can keep from losing it's content for years.
It is used to hold the BIOS settings, the BIOS loads them from CMOS at startup, and CMOS is not referenced again.

If CMOS battery is depleted, you will lose the current time, as well as any custom changes you have made to BIOS configuration (various optional options ON or OFF, custom hard drive type etc)

Most BIOS will have some reasonable default settings which will be established if it is unable to verify the content of CMOS.

Assuming these defaults are suitable for booting an OS. Where you can run things like FDISK.
Remember when I said "CMOS is not referenced again" - The system will run fine without CMOS content.
FDISK, Partitions don't use CMOS - this information is stored in the root sectors of the hard drive.

Oh so do you think the reason I can’t run fdisk and partition the sd card is some other reason
If it’s not the CMOs if so would you have any ideas what reason could be causing
This issue

Also after trying to set the hard drive settings in bio settings using the gsetup program
When I exit and go back to the a prompt in dos if I try getting the c prompt it
Won’t go to c prompt

BIOS probably has to be setup with the right drive configuration in order to access/setup the card.

If dos can't accesses it's drive because it's config changes - it cam get stuck.

But... Wthout a CMOS battery, nothing will "stick"

It gives me a option in bios settings for hard drive cylinders and so on
But because I’m using a sd card adapter with a 8 gig sd card I’m not Shure
What settings I should choose