A Future Pilot wrote:...If I have the adapter set to master mode and no CF card in it, everything works fine, and I can boot from a floppy. However when I try to boot with a CF card in, I get a black screen and no beeps or anything. Normally the TVGA bios boots before the PC bios, but with the CF card in, absolutely nothing happens...
Any problem that "normally" happens related to IDE controller/drive combo (like BIOS does not support the size/geometry of the drive, resource conflicts, master/slave mishaps, etc.) should happen during the "booting from HDD" step of the entire boot process. These kind of problems as far as I know should not result in a total loss of boot process. If you don't even see the VGA BIOS messages at the start of the boot up process, there should be something more fundementally bad in a deeper level. Like a defective part (IDE controller? Card? IDE/CF Adapter?, Cable?) or a deeper incopatibility, not just a resource conflict or a setup mishap.
A Future Pilot wrote:...If I start booting without the card in, then attach it, the boot sequence freezes. If I then pull out the card the boot sequences continues for a bit then gives a memory address error...
Don't do this, it serves no purpose. IDE/CF adapter is not a card reader,you cannot take the card out or reinsert it while the machine is running. Normally IDE devices are not hot plug, they should be connected before powering up.
A Future Pilot wrote:.. Do y’all have any idea what’s happening or what I might can do?
First thing I would do will be checking somehow if that 286 has BIOS level support for IDE devices. IDE controllers of the type you most probably using have generally no on board BIOS, so they depend on the system BIOS to support IDE devices. Actually did you even set your system BIOS with the correct parameters (cylinder/head/sector) for your CF card? I never seen an 286 which detects HDDs automatically. You need to define them what kind of HDD (or CF card) you have, thru BIOS setup.
The second thing I would do is testing the controller/cable/adapter/card combo in a more modern PC like a 486 or Pentium. See if it detects the card as it should be detected. This will make you sure that you have no ongoing defective hardware problems.
One other poster said that you need to use a smaller card bacuse of the 504 MB limit of the old (even later) BIOSes, this is not correct, your 512MB card is ok for this limit. But I've seen 286s in the past which have no option for "user defined" HDD parameters, so you might be dealing with another kind of "limit" problem, anyway.
If this is the case, I suggest you go for "XT-IDE in a NIC boot ROM socket" approach. It also solves any problem related to "my computer have no idea about what IDE is" kind of situations.
You can of course try to find a controller with it's own on board BIOS, but In my opinion XT-IDE approach is much more easier and satisfactory.
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Diamond Monster 3D 12MB SLI
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Adaptec AHA29160
3com 3C905B-TX
Gotek+CF Reader
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