cyclone3d wrote on 2021-07-18, 01:38:

I've have nothing but major issues with the SIL based SATA cards. I won't use them anymore. I kinda don't relish the though of e […]
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I've have nothing but major issues with the SIL based SATA cards. I won't use them anymore. I kinda don't relish the though of even trying to resell them and then the next person having problems with them as well.

They were super buggy and trashy back in the day when they came on motherboards as well.

The Promise SATA 1 150 cards always work and have Windows 9x drivers to boot. The Promise SATA 2 150 and 300 cards do not have Windows 9x drivers.

There are also a few other brands I have found and bought that also have Windows 9x drivers but I haven't done any testing with them yet.

For SATA to IDE adapters, I've been using the cheap Chinese ones off of eBay and they seem to work fine. You will just be limited by what the motherboard BIOS supports.

i looked in ebay every promise card i see are sata 2 150 or 300 i dont see any that dont say II. can u direct me to the one that has windows 98 drivers if its cheap enough ill order one to try.

Sheesh... The couple Promise branded ones I saw were priced through the roof.

However, these were also sold by Maxtor and I did find a few that were a decent price.

Here is the cheapest I found:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/194170347833

It is SATA and IDE

A pci SATA controller with drivers for dos windows has their drivers but maybe they are for smaller capacity disks or run in compatability mode?
I assume the SSD was set to boot from the PCI controller.
AHCI mode might be the key.
vogons downloads have R. Loews offerings in an archive it includes SATA patches and high capacity patches for all dos windows real SATA mode and not compatability mode.
Worth a go i mean 120gb isnt 128 gb but its all capacity theories vs hardware support.
I use a silicon 4 port RAID card my issue with them is the port connectors do not support lockable SATA cables and prone to let cables slip off. (probably the cheap price reason)

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-07-18, 04:07:

Sheesh... The couple Promise branded ones I saw were priced through the roof. […]
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Sheesh... The couple Promise branded ones I saw were priced through the roof.

However, these were also sold by Maxtor and I did find a few that were a decent price.

Here is the cheapest I found:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/194170347833

It is SATA and IDE

ok can u tell me were the windows 98 driver would be to get that going i mean with maxtor long gone and i don't think promise even has drivers for this old stuff on there site any more?

zapbuzz wrote on 2021-07-18, 04:59:

A pci SATA controller with drivers for dos windows has their drivers but maybe they are for smaller capacity disks or run in com […]
Show full quote

A pci SATA controller with drivers for dos windows has their drivers but maybe they are for smaller capacity disks or run in compatability mode?
I assume the SSD was set to boot from the PCI controller.
AHCI mode might be the key.
vogons downloads have R. Loews offerings in an archive it includes SATA patches and high capacity patches for all dos windows real SATA mode and not compatability mode.
Worth a go i mean 120gb isnt 128 gb but its all capacity theories vs hardware support.
I use a silicon 4 port RAID card my issue with them is the port connectors do not support lockable SATA cables and prone to let cables slip off. (probably the cheap price reason)

it had to be i mean its not like it would boot off anything else. the card has no settings menu so i can't really turn on or off ahci. i went though tonight and installed 6 dif bios on the card ranging from 2003 up to 2008 only the oldest bios for the card works with 98 at all any newer bios and the setup freezes instantly. the oldest bios i found isn't even listed on the silicon image site someone provided via a post on here were someone was looking for old bios for the card.

i tired the r low driver i tired doing it several dif ways at first boot going in to dos running the patch and putting the inf file in to the inf folder did nothing driver in windows after file boot was still and ide driver for the card. trying to force install the driver from within windows also did not work. only drivers silicon image has for the card are for windows 2k and up even though the readme file for the oldest ones talk about installing it on 98 when u try to force install the driver 98 just says the driver don't contain any files for this device.

aaron158 wrote on 2021-07-18, 06:19:

zapbuzz wrote on 2021-07-18, 04:59:

A pci SATA controller with drivers for dos windows has their drivers but maybe they are for smaller capacity disks or run in com […]
Show full quote

A pci SATA controller with drivers for dos windows has their drivers but maybe they are for smaller capacity disks or run in compatability mode?
I assume the SSD was set to boot from the PCI controller.
AHCI mode might be the key.
vogons downloads have R. Loews offerings in an archive it includes SATA patches and high capacity patches for all dos windows real SATA mode and not compatability mode.
Worth a go i mean 120gb isnt 128 gb but its all capacity theories vs hardware support.
I use a silicon 4 port RAID card my issue with them is the port connectors do not support lockable SATA cables and prone to let cables slip off. (probably the cheap price reason)

it had to be i mean its not like it would boot off anything else. the card has no settings menu so i can't really turn on or off ahci. i went though tonight and installed 6 dif bios on the card ranging from 2003 up to 2008 only the oldest bios for the card works with 98 at all any newer bios and the setup freezes instantly. the oldest bios i found isn't even listed on the silicon image site someone provided via a post on here were someone was looking for old bios for the card.

i tired the r low driver i tired doing it several dif ways at first boot going in to dos running the patch and putting the inf file in to the inf folder did nothing driver in windows after file boot was still and ide driver for the card. trying to force install the driver from within windows also did not work. only drivers silicon image has for the card are for windows 2k and up even though the readme file for the oldest ones talk about installing it on 98 when u try to force install the driver 98 just says the driver don't contain any files for this device.

I had the same issue of no sata card setup menu issue but i found if i changed my motherboards IDE controllers IRQ it started showing its menu, you know, system bios set resources manually after finding the IRQ from system summary i changed my IDE controller to IRQ15 pure random the SATA card worked proper. (Also an IDE RAID card i have too)
I think the motherboards ide takes priority over other pci cards but the SATA card comes up as a serial device but now strangely it doesnt matter again. I must had loose sdram sticks

https://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definiti … oller-Interface

on here it says ahci didn't come out till 2004 and with the card bios being from 2003 i have to use it probably don't even have ahci also seems to sound like it was part of the sata II standard and this is a sata I card.

aaron158 wrote on 2021-07-18, 06:12:

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-07-18, 04:07:

Sheesh... The couple Promise branded ones I saw were priced through the roof. […]
Show full quote

Sheesh... The couple Promise branded ones I saw were priced through the roof.

However, these were also sold by Maxtor and I did find a few that were a decent price.

Here is the cheapest I found:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/194170347833

It is SATA and IDE

ok can u tell me were the windows 98 driver would be to get that going i mean with maxtor long gone and i don't think promise even has drivers for this old stuff on there site any more?

Promise still has the drivers on their site. They are listed under legacy products on their download site.

also seems to sound like it was part of the sata II standard

No, AHCI protocol and SATAII are not tied together. For example, Nforce 4 didn't had it. It is safe to assume that any external SATA before 2005 also didn't had AHCI.

Was about to buy a Sil3114 SATA card too but eventually found a Promise card, these prices have also gone up unless you are lucky to find one locally.

I would not bother with SATA PCI cards for older builds, an old IDE would make life easier, and the controller might also prevent EMS for some games that need it.

I also had to change the boot order on my motherboard (FIC PA-2013) to A, C, SCSI instead of what I normally used: C, CDROM, A. The card's BIOS showed on reboot and was able to format using fdisk, then proceed to install 98SE on a 80GB SATA2 drive, then I installed the Promise drivers once it's done.

ok so update on things i've tired.

i tired all versions of bios on the sil3112 card from the silicon image site with any bios beyond the oldest one from 2003 1 of 2 things happens the machine either freezes when it is doing the drive detection or freezes at format or if u format with another machine freezes when scan disk starts. the oldest bios "works" up till u get windows installed u can start installing stuff if u do soft reboots for the most part its fine but as soon as u do a full shut down windows gets corrupted and it wont boot up anymore. dont matter if i format with fdisk/super fdisk or plug the drive into a windows 10 machine and format with a tool in fat32 also using the sata patch don't help.

i tired with this ide to sata https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00310MFPY?p … &ref_=pd_gw_unk and bios picks up the drive but u can't run fdisk or super fdisk and if u pre format it u can't access c: when u run fdisk it just says error reading hard disk. if u do fdisk /status on it with it pre formatted it showed the drive and the partition but u can't get to c: it says it cant access it.

so amazon exchanged the ide to sata for this other version https://www.amazon.ca/StarTech-com-Drive-Opti … E%20motherboard and its no dif same errors. it makes no dif if i put it on master slave or cable select or if i put a jumper on the one for optical drive compatibly.

the asus bios shows a drive no issue there but u can't do nothing with the drive once u boot into dos.

is there some setting in the TUSL2-C that could lock a drive from being usable i can't see anything out of the ordinary in the settings.

now i'm not sure what to do. could it be this ocz vector 180 drive its brandnew and windows 10 has no issues with it and the ocz tool box says everything looks fine there is no firmware updates for it.

i ordered a new old stock 40 gb ide HDD off ebay and i also put in an order for the maxtor version of that promise card that cyclone3d suggested guess now i play the waiting game for those to show up from the us and hopefully the sata card works or we go full old skool with an 40gb ide hdd.

To further help those in search of SSD SATA solution please be sure the drivers for your programmable bios SATA RAID controller match in version to the drivers you use as they make changes per revision. For example a 2002 BIOS will misbehave for a driver made in 2003 because in 2003 they discovered newtons law of physics and that blew 2002 bios away so it broke its stripe in due process. My point is there are bios out there but i recommend don't update it and use the driver that it came with or track down the proper release which is usually the same year.

MY 40gig new old stock hdd came in today from ebay and windows installed to it no problem no corruption yet that i can see. i got all drivers installed however i seem to be having 1 issue with the intel chipset drivers. first i downloaded the one off that asus website witch was version 5.03 it installed fine but in device the intel ide controller is conflicting with the standard ide controller. so i went to see if a newer driver was available phills computer lab had 6.3.0.1007.zip as the newest so downloaded and installed that no dif. so i went into the intel driver to try to manually change the settings and it refused to let me change any of them from there. so i went in the standard ide and i was able to change from there and i got rid of the input output conflict but the interrupt one i can only set it to 14 or 15 or it conflicts with other devices but weather i set 14 or 15 it don't matter because once i reboot then the number that the intel one is conflicting with just changes to the new number.

shouldn't the intel driver have over wrote that standard one i mean there is only 1 ide controller on the board and i don't have an ide card installed

the maxtor version of the promise sata150 card showed up today.

So it has a bios a little newer then the ones offered on the promise website but it seems to just work so not going to mess with that. i used the lastest driver on the promise website windows 98 IDs it as a scsi controller unlike the silicon one that was being ID as IDE. but windows boots up perfectly and i can shut down without windows corrupting.

as for the intel chipset driver the conflict i was having yesterday when i installed it on the ide hdd came up again. seems the only way around it is u have boot up in safe mode then remove both the intel and standard ide controllers then reboot in normal mode then it just re-detects only the intel one and everything is good to go. also the HDD light even works on the promise card witch it wouldn't when plugged in to the jumpers on the silicon card.

so i guess the moral of this store is if u want an ssd with an asus TUSL2-C mobo and windows 98 don't waste your time with ide to sata adapters they wont work for u and don't waste your money on silicon image sata cards there trash.

u need either the promise sata 150 or the maxtor sata 150 witch is just a rebrand of the promise one. the sata II 150s or 300s may not work since they only seem to have win2k and up drivers as far as i could see witch sucks since those ones were alot more available on ebay.

My Promise Ultra 100 TX2 works fine with a StarTech bi directional SATA to IDE adapter and a SATA 120 GB SSD running Windows 98 on my TXP4 and these cards are easily available.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2021-07-29, 23:22:

My Promise Ultra 100 TX2 works fine with a StarTech bi directional SATA to IDE adapter and a SATA 120 GB SSD running Windows 98 on my TXP4 and these cards are easily available.

if u have to get a card plus the sata to ide. u might as well just get the sata card.

aaron158 wrote on 2021-07-30, 00:07:

Repo Man11 wrote on 2021-07-29, 23:22:

My Promise Ultra 100 TX2 works fine with a StarTech bi directional SATA to IDE adapter and a SATA 120 GB SSD running Windows 98 on my TXP4 and these cards are easily available.

if u have to get a card plus the sata to ide. u might as well just get the sata card.

Except that the Ultra 100 can be had for such a low price that it's often cheaper to buy the card and adapter. I have a SIL3114 that works in that same board, but that card will not work in the other two boards (both have Via chipsets) I've tried it in. And it's SATA 150 but the difference in speed between it and the Ultra 100 isn't that big. But if you can buy a Promise SATA 150 for a good price, that's the best way to go.