LGR 486 Update! Installing CompactFlash Storage
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Date: 2022-04-14
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Comments and reviews: 10
Carlos
I think these cards only support ATA-2 and up. I have a very old (386) laptop from Zenith and it works perfectly with a 200Mb Seagate ATA drive. I had a heck of a time reading a old hard drive that I pulled out to image it. All my IDE to sata interface type converters could not read the drive and any -modern- machine with a PATA/SATA combo because they use the same type bridge adapters in the motherboard. I even considered raspberry pi and such embedded devices that may have software to read the ATA-1. No dice.
To read the hard drive I went to the local thrift store and purchase the oldest most ugly machine they had. Made a bootable linux floppy and imaged the hard drive with success to a newer IDE drive that I used as an intermediate drive. I put the drive back in the laptop and did all this without breaking anything, and that is a miracle because no instructions exist how to take laptop apart. I can tell you it was not nearly as easy as modern laptops to access the hard drive.
Now my question. Do you know of any of these CF card / flash hard drive converters support ATA-1? it would be nice to use this old laptop but I would rather put the hard drive away rather then run it and risk it's failure.
Also would be nice to have a USB to MFM, RLL, ESDI, and ATA-1 converter! Such a converter would require a lot of smarts to determine the parameters for these drives used by the controller that low level formatted them. Edit: I wonder if any market in building one of of these, at least for ATA-1 if no such device exists? For example a PI device that would act as bridge to USB.
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I think these cards only support ATA-2 and up. I have a very old (386) laptop from Zenith and it works perfectly with a 200Mb Seagate ATA drive. I had a heck of a time reading a old hard drive that I pulled out to image it. All my IDE to sata interface type converters could not read the drive and any -modern- machine with a PATA/SATA combo because they use the same type bridge adapters in the motherboard. I even considered raspberry pi and such embedded devices that may have software to read the ATA-1. No dice.
To read the hard drive I went to the local thrift store and purchase the oldest most ugly machine they had. Made a bootable linux floppy and imaged the hard drive with success to a newer IDE drive that I used as an intermediate drive. I put the drive back in the laptop and did all this without breaking anything, and that is a miracle because no instructions exist how to take laptop apart. I can tell you it was not nearly as easy as modern laptops to access the hard drive.
Now my question. Do you know of any of these CF card / flash hard drive converters support ATA-1? it would be nice to use this old laptop but I would rather put the hard drive away rather then run it and risk it's failure.
Also would be nice to have a USB to MFM, RLL, ESDI, and ATA-1 converter! Such a converter would require a lot of smarts to determine the parameters for these drives used by the controller that low level formatted them. Edit: I wonder if any market in building one of of these, at least for ATA-1 if no such device exists? For example a PI device that would act as bridge to USB.
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Steve
Looking for ideas.
I'm trying to install an IDE to CF card and Compact Flash in my 486DX33 VLB computer (has Promise caching controller. Motherboard bios does NOT support LBA, but shows full capacity of the 2gb or 4gb Compact Flash. I am going to be running Dos 6. 2 and Win 3. 1. I tried installing just using the Dos disk but it only saw 500ish (504mb, so I downloaded an old version of OnTrack Disk Manager, and was able to partition out 4 equal drives. I backed all 4 IDE drives up to Zip100 disks, and got the OS running on the new Compact Flash drive and was able to see and read/write small files to all 4 drives.
I was able to restore all the data to the 4 drives from the Zip100, but on reboot I lost the last partition, and it was only showing 3 drive letters. I created a new logical partition and restored to the 4th (F: ) drive again. After reboot, it lost 2 of the 4 drive letters. I've tried a 2gb, and a 4gb drive, but randomly lose drive letters after restoring data and sometimes before I even get to the point of restoring. its totally random.
I bought a 4gb disk-on-module and installed using OnTrack again thinking something might not like the removable drive, but I am still having the same issue. I've disabled the cache on board the Promise controller, which also sees the drive(s) correctly. I'm not sure what steps to try next. I don't have another ISA IDE controller to try and there is no on board IDE controller on the motherboard. Anyone have any great ideas?
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Looking for ideas.
I'm trying to install an IDE to CF card and Compact Flash in my 486DX33 VLB computer (has Promise caching controller. Motherboard bios does NOT support LBA, but shows full capacity of the 2gb or 4gb Compact Flash. I am going to be running Dos 6. 2 and Win 3. 1. I tried installing just using the Dos disk but it only saw 500ish (504mb, so I downloaded an old version of OnTrack Disk Manager, and was able to partition out 4 equal drives. I backed all 4 IDE drives up to Zip100 disks, and got the OS running on the new Compact Flash drive and was able to see and read/write small files to all 4 drives.
I was able to restore all the data to the 4 drives from the Zip100, but on reboot I lost the last partition, and it was only showing 3 drive letters. I created a new logical partition and restored to the 4th (F: ) drive again. After reboot, it lost 2 of the 4 drive letters. I've tried a 2gb, and a 4gb drive, but randomly lose drive letters after restoring data and sometimes before I even get to the point of restoring. its totally random.
I bought a 4gb disk-on-module and installed using OnTrack again thinking something might not like the removable drive, but I am still having the same issue. I've disabled the cache on board the Promise controller, which also sees the drive(s) correctly. I'm not sure what steps to try next. I don't have another ISA IDE controller to try and there is no on board IDE controller on the motherboard. Anyone have any great ideas?
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Waltkat
I-m hearing sounds I haven-t heard in literally decades. It-s great. And seeing DOS commands that I haven-t seen in an equal amount of time. Sure wish I didn-t get rid of all my 286, 386, and 486 computers/motherboards and other period hardware. At least I still have my 1983 IBM 8086 PC clone that I built in 1983. It uses one of the very first PC clone motherboards and used all discrete logic chips. No -chip sets- as used in modern motherboards. It also uses a set of EPROMs copied from a set of original IBM PC ROMs as there were no clone companies like AMI at the time. The motherboard came as a bare board with NO parts installed. It did come with a schematic and a BOM list for all the logic chips, resistors, capacitors, etc that would be needed to put it together. I maxed the memory at 64K bytes and got fancy and installed a 5 megabyte IBM harddrive that is the size of half a loaf of bread. Hmm, I should dig that out and set it up again, if I can find a compatible monitor for it.
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I-m hearing sounds I haven-t heard in literally decades. It-s great. And seeing DOS commands that I haven-t seen in an equal amount of time. Sure wish I didn-t get rid of all my 286, 386, and 486 computers/motherboards and other period hardware. At least I still have my 1983 IBM 8086 PC clone that I built in 1983. It uses one of the very first PC clone motherboards and used all discrete logic chips. No -chip sets- as used in modern motherboards. It also uses a set of EPROMs copied from a set of original IBM PC ROMs as there were no clone companies like AMI at the time. The motherboard came as a bare board with NO parts installed. It did come with a schematic and a BOM list for all the logic chips, resistors, capacitors, etc that would be needed to put it together. I maxed the memory at 64K bytes and got fancy and installed a 5 megabyte IBM harddrive that is the size of half a loaf of bread. Hmm, I should dig that out and set it up again, if I can find a compatible monitor for it.
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Mark
Clint we should hook up. In 1985, I purchased a Commodore 64. I started writing my own software and games, which led me to buy the floppy drive. I wrote ( with the help of a algebra genius) a spiral graph style screen saver, each line plotted was in a random color and was quite dazzling in the day, and a early G U. I. When the program was loaded and ran, it spilt the main screen with a 4 square window box. In the center of each box was lettering. I figured out how to write ' strig- commands as the controller for the Atrari 2600 fit the port on the Commodore. So all you had to do was move the joystick to the corresponding window and click the red fire button to execute the program of choice. I gotta tell you, I did not know what I had! When Windows 3. 0 launched yes it was better, but I had the mouse and the G U. I. concept long before Bill Gates. I look back and I love the glory days! You are the the offical keeper of nerd records my man.
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Clint we should hook up. In 1985, I purchased a Commodore 64. I started writing my own software and games, which led me to buy the floppy drive. I wrote ( with the help of a algebra genius) a spiral graph style screen saver, each line plotted was in a random color and was quite dazzling in the day, and a early G U. I. When the program was loaded and ran, it spilt the main screen with a 4 square window box. In the center of each box was lettering. I figured out how to write ' strig- commands as the controller for the Atrari 2600 fit the port on the Commodore. So all you had to do was move the joystick to the corresponding window and click the red fire button to execute the program of choice. I gotta tell you, I did not know what I had! When Windows 3. 0 launched yes it was better, but I had the mouse and the G U. I. concept long before Bill Gates. I look back and I love the glory days! You are the the offical keeper of nerd records my man.
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turborunner
I bought the cheap cf2ide cards from china and my 486 won't read the cf card, In my 386 it reads it just like yours and has the occasional write errors and you click retry and it writes. I then bought a startech cf2ide card v4, which is alot more expensive. I can now read and write to the cf card in the 486 and have not come across the write errors when using it on the 386. but there is a difference on the two adapters. The cheap ones don't have any capacitors or resistors and the Startech has one capacitor and a few other little things that i don't know what they are on board. Which i presume is why it is more compatible with my two old pc's. I'm yet to see if the cheap adapters have any problems with the newer Pentium based machines. Also I'm using a Kingston 600x ultimate 32gb cf card. Maybe a slower/smaller capacity cf card might be more forgiving when using those cheap adapters.
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I bought the cheap cf2ide cards from china and my 486 won't read the cf card, In my 386 it reads it just like yours and has the occasional write errors and you click retry and it writes. I then bought a startech cf2ide card v4, which is alot more expensive. I can now read and write to the cf card in the 486 and have not come across the write errors when using it on the 386. but there is a difference on the two adapters. The cheap ones don't have any capacitors or resistors and the Startech has one capacitor and a few other little things that i don't know what they are on board. Which i presume is why it is more compatible with my two old pc's. I'm yet to see if the cheap adapters have any problems with the newer Pentium based machines. Also I'm using a Kingston 600x ultimate 32gb cf card. Maybe a slower/smaller capacity cf card might be more forgiving when using those cheap adapters.
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KraziAgentAdam
i have some older systems i wanna setup an old 486 with pci & isa im got an Intel DX-4 100mhz OD & a Pentium 63/83 Overdrive. & evergreen 5x86 133mhz, 2x PCs (for Win 9x) a Pentium 166 OD (socket 5 upgrade)and a super7 k6-2 450/500mhz for win 9x (win 95-98se & or Me- -Yes I liked Windows Millennium Edition, I own the retail disc an still have it and the coa key): )
I got the dos bench, and i have MS-Dos 7. 1 install cd(can do 32bit & Large ram 3GB - 3. 5gb I think & can do Large HDDs up to 120GB+ depending on MB / IDE ctrl /bios support
i have dos 6. 22 /win 3. 1 but and goot old software that can be dowloaded? lost all my older games i have need for speed Se & nfs2 se with 3dfx support(all nfs games up do underground II /Most wanted 2005 (but thats xp support)
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i have some older systems i wanna setup an old 486 with pci & isa im got an Intel DX-4 100mhz OD & a Pentium 63/83 Overdrive. & evergreen 5x86 133mhz, 2x PCs (for Win 9x) a Pentium 166 OD (socket 5 upgrade)and a super7 k6-2 450/500mhz for win 9x (win 95-98se & or Me- -Yes I liked Windows Millennium Edition, I own the retail disc an still have it and the coa key): )
I got the dos bench, and i have MS-Dos 7. 1 install cd(can do 32bit & Large ram 3GB - 3. 5gb I think & can do Large HDDs up to 120GB+ depending on MB / IDE ctrl /bios support
i have dos 6. 22 /win 3. 1 but and goot old software that can be dowloaded? lost all my older games i have need for speed Se & nfs2 se with 3dfx support(all nfs games up do underground II /Most wanted 2005 (but thats xp support)
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Jonnn21
Ok here I go. I have an old 1994 Toshiba T1960CS. I purchased a Compactflash to 2. 5 IDE Adapter. I figured, great I can use this instead of the old drive in the laptop. Nope! I put the Adapter and card in a new Dell IDE laptop and the bios doesn't even see it either. Apparently it needs to be set to fixed disk instead of removable. I have the utility to do this but if the bios doesn't even see it then how am I suppose to make it work.
Anyways, did you have to do anything special to make it work in yours that you didn't show us? I for the life of me ant get to work in the 1994 model or even the 2000+ model.
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Ok here I go. I have an old 1994 Toshiba T1960CS. I purchased a Compactflash to 2. 5 IDE Adapter. I figured, great I can use this instead of the old drive in the laptop. Nope! I put the Adapter and card in a new Dell IDE laptop and the bios doesn't even see it either. Apparently it needs to be set to fixed disk instead of removable. I have the utility to do this but if the bios doesn't even see it then how am I suppose to make it work.
Anyways, did you have to do anything special to make it work in yours that you didn't show us? I for the life of me ant get to work in the 1994 model or even the 2000+ model.
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Ivan
Great video as ever! One tiny suggestion: Use more partitions with less size. FAT16 partitions are indeed max 2 GB in size, but that comes at a cost of having 32 kb clusters which creates an insane amount of slack space. For example, you have a file of 1 kb, it still uses 32 kb storage on the drive. So, I'd recommend actually to use 4 partitions of 500 MB each, which will use 8 kb clusters, a lot less slack space. Or 2 500 MB partitions and one of 1 GB. :-)
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Great video as ever! One tiny suggestion: Use more partitions with less size. FAT16 partitions are indeed max 2 GB in size, but that comes at a cost of having 32 kb clusters which creates an insane amount of slack space. For example, you have a file of 1 kb, it still uses 32 kb storage on the drive. So, I'd recommend actually to use 4 partitions of 500 MB each, which will use 8 kb clusters, a lot less slack space. Or 2 500 MB partitions and one of 1 GB. :-)
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The
I-m struggling to get it to work with more than 500mb but a tip if you-re not having luck, I had to format one of my cards to FAT16 first. I did so in XP going to Start>Run and typing -COMPMGMT. MSC- then right clicking the card and formatting to FAT. Some cards didn-t need this, some did and some just won-t work, they-re all identical new Transcend 4gb so idk but I hope that helps someone: ) now to figure out how Clint got his to format to the max 2gb!
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I-m struggling to get it to work with more than 500mb but a tip if you-re not having luck, I had to format one of my cards to FAT16 first. I did so in XP going to Start>Run and typing -COMPMGMT. MSC- then right clicking the card and formatting to FAT. Some cards didn-t need this, some did and some just won-t work, they-re all identical new Transcend 4gb so idk but I hope that helps someone: ) now to figure out how Clint got his to format to the max 2gb!
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Charles
Back in the days of DOS, I used QEMM to help move things to high memory. It was sometimes challenging to get things to run in the base memory because it was usually 640K. I couldn't find the floppy for it any more, when something is sitting so long unused it is sometimes mysteriously lost. Sometimes it get put in some weird place you usually wouldn't look or sometimes things get thrown out accidentally. It was at least 30 years since I used DOS.
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Back in the days of DOS, I used QEMM to help move things to high memory. It was sometimes challenging to get things to run in the base memory because it was usually 640K. I couldn't find the floppy for it any more, when something is sitting so long unused it is sometimes mysteriously lost. Sometimes it get put in some weird place you usually wouldn't look or sometimes things get thrown out accidentally. It was at least 30 years since I used DOS.
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