have you tried different sata drives?

that1crzywhtguy wrote on 2026-09-01, 07:52:

Has anyone actually gotten a SATA SSD running with working DMA (not just PIO) on a 430HX or 430VX board? Curious whether this chip specifically has known issues on PIIX3, or if anyone's seen the same JP103-5 board behave differently unit to unit.

Hello,
I use the JMicron with a 1TB Toshiba SATA HDD (that I just treat as if it were an 8.4GB).
Indeed, if the DMA checkbox is checked, there is crashing and data corruption on the next boot.
Digging into the issue, including booting Linux and NetBSD, I discovered it is only DMA writes that have the problem, and not every time, and reads always work.
By building a NetBSD kernel that used DMA for reading but never for writing, it was completely stable.
It was possible to accomplish the same thing on Windows 95C by hand-patching esdi_506.pdr so that it skipped the test for DMA support when doing writes. All writes will be PIO.
In addition, I found that I needed a small .COM program in autoexec.bat to set the drive to MWDMA2 on boot.
Details are here: Re: DMA on PIIX3?

that1crzywhtguy wrote on 2026-09-01, 07:52:

Has anyone actually gotten a SATA SSD running with working DMA (not just PIO) on a 430HX or 430VX board? Curious whether this chip specifically has known issues on PIIX3, or if anyone's seen the same JP103-5 board behave differently unit to unit.

Thanks so much!

I've used the JP103-5 on the same 430hx motherboard using a SATA-HD and it works fine in MW-DMA2 mode, so the adapter is definitely not your problem. Also used the startech adapters IDE2SAT2 and IDE2SAT25, both work well.
MW-DMA2 mode made a big difference in speed and cpu usage in Win98.

The only difference you have to my setup is you're using an SATA SSD and i'm using a SATA HD.

I think the problem might be SSDs in general themselves, not your specific SSD. It would be trivial to rule it out by testing on a more modern motherboard with native sata ports. Using a Linux boot usb stick with a test SSD connected to the computers native sata ports and force it into MW-DMA2 mode using hdparm command line program, then test it with read and writes by copying files. If it still crashes or corrupts files then SSDs have a problem in MW-DMA modes. The issue could be submitted to an issue tracker and the cause determined.
SSD datasheets all show they still support MW-DMA2 but i vaguely remember reading problems about this a few years ago.

It seems the SATA-IDE success is highly dependent on the SATA drive, yes.
The Toshiba 1TB HDD works (though with the MWDMA2 write issue I described above).
I have a WD 1TB HDD that is so broken going through it that autodetection does not even see the right values.
I have a PNY 240GB SSD that seemingly works enough to install DOS, but you soon find massive filesystem corruption if you run scandisk after copying some files.
My hope is that someday, solutions like ZuluIDE are so successful that we can e-waste these SATA-IDE adapters for good.
It's something like Roman concrete, where late spinning IDE disks are backward compatible with everything (32GB bug and such aside), but how to do that was seemingly forgotten and every whatever-to-IDE adapter or converter is always bound to have some random issue.

Ha, i completely forgot now i posted this a few years ago :
SSDs not working in MW-DMA modes
SSDs not working in any MW-DMA mode

So you're screwed with a 430FX/HX/VX and Pentium Pro 440FX chipset motherboard that only support MW-DMA2. SSDs will only work in PIO modes on those chipsets' own controllers.

Thanks everyone for the help here. This has been really useful!

I did come across a cheap VIA VT6421A PCI SATA card, along with a PCI riser since all my slots are currently occupied. Will a splitter like this likely work?

Do folks with experience think this would be a reasonable way around the problem? Basically, have the VT6421A handle the Patriot SSD instead of the onboard PIIX3 IDE controller, while leaving the onboard IDE for the CD-ROM. My understanding is that the VT6421A would handle DMA independently of the PIIX3's IDE controller. Maybe the RLoew AHCI patch in the mix? Do I have that right?

Has anyone tried a VT6421A specifically on a 430HX with a SATA SSD?

Thanks again for all the help!

I ordered the SATA card, cause worst case I can bump the USB... But I'd really rather not... Anyone with any info on whether a splitter like that would work?

I'm not sure, but as to your prior message as to whether it's a reasonable solution... I would've given up and would just be using PIO by now. Particularly since you have such a fast CPU, have you benchmarked it with speedsys? If you're getting 12+ mb/sec you're competitive with MWDMA2 anyway.

Is PIO ceiling the thing here though? The thing I'd most like to avoid is CPU stall/hitching during game loads and saves and other situations where I use cpu and file operations. If splitter can work, maybe I have my cake and eat it too?

I wanted to use sata-ide adapter too which I found from ebay at 2 gb for ms-dos usage.Currently I have a 6gb hdd which is fit for windows95 but not for ms-dos/win3.11 regardless of my effort to partition it to 2 gbs at 3 volume.

My case is atx so it can fit second hdd but I doubt if it will crash with current one.

MustiFB82 wrote on Today, 06:32:

I wanted to use sata-ide adapter too which I found from ebay at 2 gb for ms-dos usage.Currently I have a 6gb hdd which is fit for windows95 but not for ms-dos/win3.11 regardless of my effort to partition it to 2 gbs at 3 volume.

My case is atx so it can fit second hdd but I doubt if it will crash with current one.

Sounds like a different setup/issue than what's going on in this thread—might get better traction starting a new thread with your hardware specifics (board, chipset, HDD, adapter model, exact partition scheme). Good luck with it!

Still hoping someone weighs in on the splitter question above—trying to confirm if PIO ceiling is the thing here though, still with a priority of avoiding CPU stall/hitching during game loads and saves and other situations where I use cpu and file operations. As above, If splitter can work, maybe I have my cake and eat it too.