In the Asus P3B-F go for SSD. There are quite a big difference between CF card on IDE compared to a real S-ATA SSD drive!

Drop the idea of using an IDE to S-ATA adapter and instead use a PCI S-ATA card. Just remember to get a S-ATA PCI card that has a bootable BIOS. The Silicon Image cards sold very cheap on Ebay (new from China) works fine. (http://www.ebay.com/itm/4-SATA-S-ATA-Port-RAI … =item2556a904ec)

Thanks Vetz,

that seems to be the optimal solution for the 440BX.

How about the 486? All my small drives have bad sectors. They are about to die (sooner or later). A CF card adapter, able to accept two CF cards will save the day for me, because the board is with one IDE.

486 motherboard questions

It's a "frozen" project for the moment, until I get my cache and VRAM chips.

I use CF cards for my 386 and 486 gear.

The IDE to CF adapters are dirt cheap. But do buy 5 or so because sometimes 1 or 2 are DOA 😀

I have various CF cards, ranging from 2 to 32GB and various brands. The old boards have BIOS limitations so I use a single 500MB FAT16 partition and that works without issues.

On newer machines I use a FAT32 partition.

I have the same CF-IDE adapter. It works normally and suits your conditions well. It's limited to UDMA33 mode because of pin 34 in it's IDE connector strapped to corresponding pin of CF card, so system recognizes the adapter as connected through 40-wire cable. This can be easily fixed by desoldering pin 34 from adapter's board and connecting it to the nearest ground (pin30). Of course for P3B-F and 486 it's unnecessary.

I've had problems when I connected an SSD to Promise TX2000 through JM20330-based IDE-SATA adapter: the drive was becoming inacessible after testing it's write speed. So for SSD it's better to go with PCI SATA adapter IMO.

Space Cowboy wrote:

All my small drives have bad sectors. They are about to die (sooner or later)

Have you tried Low-Level formatting these drives? I ask because I have had drives that had bad sectors which returned to normal operation, and scanned perfectly clean after a LLF.

Logistics wrote:

Space Cowboy wrote:

All my small drives have bad sectors. They are about to die (sooner or later)

Have you tried Low-Level formatting these drives? I ask because I have had drives that had bad sectors which returned to normal operation, and scanned perfectly clean after a LLF.

Nope, as a matter of fact. I'll try and give them a go with MHDD.

I'm still trying to think in 486 scales 😀

I have 2x520 MB and one 820MB disk, and they look incredibly small to me, though I'm sure I had everything on 500MB, games included. Running Windows 95.

I just got an unopened copy of 98SE, so I'll give it a fresh install at Christmas ... Hope it will run well on DX4-120@100, and 64MB of RAM.

Cold weather, hot drinks and a 486, laying on my desk .... that's what I have in mind 😀

But anyway, another reason to ask for CF Card is, that the case is very slim, and there is no room for a second HDD. My only option for a second drive is a CF Card.

I would recommend spinrite6 to revive the harddisk sectors anyday, i use it alot to keep old hdd surface alive and must say works excellent.
Since most bad sectors are corrupted ecc/data sectors and no hard errors they probably can be fixed after several times using spinrite they would have to disappear and fully work. even with data retained on it, since it does not low level format (LLF is a bad thing to excisting sector layout and can make the bad sectors worser) you can even recover unusable data since it trials the heads analog signal levels readout and predict the original data.
But the magnetic field is old and can be unreliable after years again after, make backups is always ok to do.

I too have the same cf adapters and work great, also upto udma4 somehow wit 16gb extreme iv.
No udma33 restricted at my side, probably also depends on used cf cards.

Also check here:
http://www.ebay.nl/itm/180700617340?ssPageNam … 984.m1423.l2649
http://www.ebay.nl/itm/170715265801?ssPageNam … 984.m1423.l2649
5 pcs of each for cheap, i have the top one 5 pcs and work ok, also with udma. the leds are also nice to see in action.
There is room for one CF card, and on backside you can solder a second cf pin slot to support master slave cf cards on one channel.
I have soldered extra cf slots and master slave works fine.But of course you cannot front load them from your case.

There are also dual types for 2 CF cards per IDE channel. They cost like a dollar more 😀

Havent found the ones that really have two slots on them.
So i did it myself, if someone has these and need some extra soldered on, i can help out for free.
Only postage req. to and back from NL

JaNoZ wrote:

Havent found the ones that really have two slots on them.
So i did it myself, if someone has these and need some extra soldered on, i can help out for free.
Only postage req. to and back from NL

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Dual-Compact-Flash … a461158d&_uhb=1

I got a couple of these. I believe they show up as UDMA5 on the POST screen if this means something. It was a Socket 7 board I believe.

I see now.
But are not a bit more expensiver a whole lot.
You can have 5 instead of one, soldering extra to dual was my preference and fun too.
They are still all made in china, soldering looks like shit but i guess they made it by inspection and tests somehow.

$2 😀

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/DUAL-CF-to-40Pin-I … 41bce09d&_uhb=1

Cheap enough?

Yes sir.
But i am good for now.

This thing worked fine on a 440BX connected directly to IDE in the past, and works fine now connected to a Promise FastTrak TX2000 onboard a GA-5AX SS7 board:

Thanks a lot for the answers. I'll try this dual CF

Damn, I'm trying to find this GA-5AX board for 3 months 😀

Any ATX SS7 board will work a decent Time-Machine project 😀

There is a MSI and an IWILL from eBay Germany with international shipping. Asus, DFI also made good boards.

I just got one of these in the mail today. It's using a 4GB Card. Do I just partition the card into 2 2GB drives at FAT16? Will Windows 7 let me do that?

EDIT: Disk Managment isn't allowing me to partition this. What is the trusted method here? I tried checking Mau1wurf1977's youtube channel but it looks like he only did a review for one.

Best thing to do is to plug it into the target machine, boot a DOS floppy, and format it as if it were a real hard disk.

What about the BIOS settings for Primary Master? I don't have an auto feature. Only about 40 default ones and a user created. So I have no idea what the settings are for the HDD (CF Card).
But I ran fdisk on it anyways. It saw the CF Card. Formated and rebooted. Stuck in POST now

EDIT: I got it the 486 to boot from the CF Card using FDISK /MBR Would still like to know the best way to partition this CF into multiple 500MB Drives so there are no compatability issues with DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11. I wonder if I should just connect the adapter to a Windows 98 machine and partition it away there. Would still need to learn what the BIOS settings are. Perhaps the Windows 98 machine's BIOS will automatically tell me?

EDIT: Plugged the IDE Adapter into one of my AthlonXP machines. The BIOS says the following:

Capacity: 4000MB
Cylinder: 7751
Head: 16
Precomp: 0
Landing Zone: 7750
Sector 63

I'm going ahead and getting ready to boot from a Win98 Startup disk and run fdisk and get this drive partitioned down to 4 500MB drives. Here's hoping.