Weird CF behavior \ VOGONS

Weird CF behavior

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First post, by lizardmonkey

Posted on 2021-09-21, 14:50

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Just recently inherited acquired an NEC LX 486 desktop PC. Hard drive of course was dead so I got a CF adapter and a CF card (this one https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0927B7TG3/ … 0?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

Everything worked great..... once....
I was able to run and play epic pinball; once. Now it just hangs while loading.
I was able to run and play Doom; once. Now it just hangs while loading.

Windows 3.1 will load; but will hang maybe every 5 times saying its unable to read from disk.

Any suggested troubleshooting? Should I get a different card? Could I have potentially messed up the card putting it into a Linux machine to add files?

Thanks in advance.

Reply 1 of 8, by dataino.it

Posted on 2021-09-21, 16:10

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Try changing the cable.

With linux there are no problems I do it regularly

Reply 2 of 8, by lizardmonkey

Posted on 2021-09-21, 16:24

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That was the first thing I tried. Tried another 40 wire cable and an 80 wire; same behavior.

Reply 3 of 8, by RetroGamer4Ever

Posted on 2021-09-21, 17:51

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Other than the fact that they are cheap, I don't understand why people keep using the flash card-2-whatever adapters. The proper choice for a PC would be an IDE flash module like what you'd find in this list of Amazon stuff....

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=IDE+flash+module&i … ef=nb_sb_noss_2

Reply 4 of 8, by dataino.it

Posted on 2021-09-21, 19:00

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RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2021-09-21, 17:51:

Other than the fact that they are cheap, I don't understand why people keep using the flash card-2-whatever adapters. The proper choice for a PC would be an IDE flash module like what you'd find in this list of Amazon stuff....

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=IDE+flash+module&i … ef=nb_sb_noss_2

Yes, they are actually not the best but they are cheap. try to post a photo .
For me on 4 that I have two I had to resolder.

Reply 5 of 8, by keenerb

Posted on 2021-09-21, 19:11

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I switched from CF to IDE disk-on-modules for almost all of my machines.

What you're describing sounds like it could be a LBA or C/H/S change after you've written data to the drive. Upgrading xt-ide bios can cause this in some circumstances.

Reply 6 of 8, by cyclone3d

Posted on 2021-09-21, 21:11

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I bet the parameters are wrong in the BIOS for the CF card to work properly.

What I have done that works is connect the adapter to a newer computer that will autodetect the correct parameters and then manually enter those same parameters in the BIOS of the computer you want to use the card with.

I had some CF cards that were the same brand and model but they all had slightly different parameters.

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Reply 7 of 8, by lizardmonkey

Posted on 2021-09-23, 13:56

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Just bought a disk on module; honestly didn't know they even existed. We will see if it solves my troubles.

Reply 8 of 8, by keenerb

Posted on 2021-09-23, 14:31

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lizardmonkey wrote on 2021-09-23, 13:56:

Just bought a disk on module; honestly didn't know they even existed. We will see if it solves my troubles.

You may still have CHS issues.

There is a utility bundled with xt-ide bios that will tell you what the device itself reports for C/H/S.

for some reason the xtideuniversalbios site seems to be down, but I think the advice is to unconfigure any hard drives in bios, and run the "biosdrvs.exe" and it'll identify your drive and it's reported c/h/s values.

The version from https://code.google.com/archive/p/xtideuniver … lbios/downloads should still work.

There's also a way to load XT-IDE bios from a floppy disk: https://github.com/rvalles/optromloader

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