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    #41
    Re: Change old low HDD to a CF card?

    fzabkar - great find! Now... how we can use that information to write a tool, that do just that... but for my CF card type?

    What the code says when it report "Fail (error #20)"...? What is wrong there?


    Short report:

    Once I managed to run the card using the Hitachi CF card driver with DMA and I get pretty nice 20MB/sec speed:
    http://postimg.org/image/qx7kmwknx/
    http://postimg.org/image/j9tltdttn/
    ...but on next reboot it fails to PIO mode again and the speed is about 2MB/sec with *HUGE* CPU load

    Hopefully could someone help me out, because that suxx
    "It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong." - Voltaire
    "I believe that all the people who stand to profit by a war and who help provoke it should be shot on the first day it starts..." - Hemingway my config - my caps

    Comment


      #42
      Re: Change old low HDD to a CF card?

      Originally posted by trodas View Post
      What the code says when it report "Fail (error #20)"...?
      Failure to execute the Identify Device command. Check the port settings.

      Comment


        #43
        Re: Change old low HDD to a CF card?

        Will do... but... what exactly I should be doing? On both machines I tried the switch it reported this and that was in real dos, booted from floppy...

        Okay, I disconnect all other devices and as soon, as SuperPi end the run (15+h from now), I try it again.

        What are the chances that the device configuration can be changed on my CF card? ... The question is somewhat important, because I noticed several problems with the driver "solution", namely and mainly the DMA off problem - hence the poor performance.

        Since I optimizing and exchanging the OS (for example WinNT4.0 SP1 cannot survive change from Pentium 90 to AMD K5 PR75 CPU!) require backups of partition to file, I need the DriveImage to work. And it does not. It sees (boot from CD) the CF card only as source device, never as device that can be used to write the data on...!

        Another problem is the WinNT install... and the open question on whatever it will work with the CF card or not.
        "It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong." - Voltaire
        "I believe that all the people who stand to profit by a war and who help provoke it should be shot on the first day it starts..." - Hemingway my config - my caps

        Comment


          #44
          Re: Change old low HDD to a CF card?

          I have explained what you need to do at HDD Guru. If you cannot obtain the output of a standard ATA Identify Drive command, then I can't help you. Sorry.

          Anyway, set your CF adapter's jumper to master.

          Determine which IDE port your card is on. Do not share the port with a slave drive.

          If primary IDE port, then type "atcfwchg.com /P /F".

          If secondary IDE port, then type "atcfwchg.com /S /F".

          If you have done everything correctly and you still get error #20, then I propose to increase the timeout delay.

          Comment


            #45
            Re: Change old low HDD to a CF card?

            computers boot from removable media, so the problem is a windows one anyway.

            i have dos on a cf-card and it boots just fine.
            i use it on embedded systems where i need to set the clock after a battery change without knowing the bios password.

            i have also installed Linux on CF-cards.

            Comment


              #46
              Re: Change old low HDD to a CF card?

              Well, I must say that I have a terrible experience with the CF card booting. Just one of the very odd things: once the card was formated on the secondary channel, it did not work (it did not even get detected!) on primary one (Asus TXP4-X).

              Another crazy thing it, that when I use the card with AMD K5 PR75 CPU, then I exchange the CPU to P90 ... and suddently the card is not detected during post...! Not once, but all the time. This behaviour is in direct contradiction to how my old HDD (13G old Seagate ST313021A) behave: it get detected always, no matter of CPU used. For WinXP the CPU exchange did not hurt at all. For WinNT it does hurt... but that is another story.

              To have HDD that become CPU-dependant is unbelievable and I quess that for some I would need to record a video of this behaviour to believe me...

              Yes, it works fine with AMD K5 PR75 @ 90MHz, but at same clock (60MHz FSB) when P90 is used, it fail to get even detected by bios. I lost words on how weird this thing is...
              "It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong." - Voltaire
              "I believe that all the people who stand to profit by a war and who help provoke it should be shot on the first day it starts..." - Hemingway my config - my caps

              Comment


                #47
                Re: Change old low HDD to a CF card?

                windows again probably.

                back when i actually used that shit the thing that pissed me off the most was you cant format a secondary drive and make it bootable simply because windows / dos wont flag the drive as bootable.
                you had to do it from a floppy with fdisk!

                these days you *may* find 3rd party tools that can set a drive as bootable.
                just dont expect any of micro$oft's products to do it.


                as for your strange cpu problem,
                was it changing the speed of the base clock and effecting the super-i/o chip?
                i would be looking at the base clock and pci multiplier in the bios.
                Last edited by stj; 09-29-2015, 10:19 AM.

                Comment


                  #48
                  Re: Change old low HDD to a CF card?

                  Originally posted by trodas View Post
                  Well, I must say that I have a terrible experience with the CF card booting. Just one of the very odd things: once the card was formated on the secondary channel, it did not work (it did not even get detected!) on primary one (Asus TXP4-X).
                  Do you have the adapter set for 5V?

                  There was another recent thread where a SATA-PATA adapter was dropping bits at the IDE interface, possibly due to a mismatch in the TTL levels. That is, I suspect that the motherboard's 5V I/O couldn't handle the adapter's 3.3V I/O.

                  Comment


                    #49
                    Re: Change old low HDD to a CF card?

                    No, I used 3.3V settings and I sort of give up. It just does not work at all w/o the ability to change it into fixed drive, it is hopeless. There are countless of problems with it and I have done nothing wrong and nothing seems to fix this...

                    For example when setting up the CF card with Pentium CPU, it fail to even show up in bios, when I switch to AMD K5...! Sure, after total format and clean in my camera and prepping in another machine, it worked, but... this is terrible.
                    And I swear that when I run the utility to change, there is NO WRONG SETTINGS, like master / slave... so the utility did not wait and immediatelly report the error. What more can I do? I give up for now, this is useless and VERY, VERY disturbing...


                    ...

                    I bought a SSD (SanDisk Ultra II 120G (SDSSDHII-120G)) and PATA to SATA (it can do even reverse connection!) bi-derectional adapter from Gembird, chipset JM20330, should do hot-swap for non bootable devices) and while the SSD works neat, I cannot manage to boot from it! That suxx beyond words!

                    That is second time when PATA - SATA conversion proved unbootable for me. First case - Dell OptiPlex GX110. Same result, different convertor used. Working, but NOT booting...

                    Curse these "adapters"... thed don't work at all.
                    Last edited by trodas; 10-12-2015, 04:12 PM.
                    "It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong." - Voltaire
                    "I believe that all the people who stand to profit by a war and who help provoke it should be shot on the first day it starts..." - Hemingway my config - my caps

                    Comment


                      #50
                      Re: Change old low HDD to a CF card?

                      Originally posted by trodas View Post
                      No, I used 3.3V settings and I sort of give up. It just does not work at all w/o the ability to change it into fixed drive, it is hopeless. There are countless of problems with it and I have done nothing wrong and nothing seems to fix this...
                      The motherboard's IDE port is using 5V TTL levels whereas your card is configured for 3.3V. Can't you see that this is wrong?

                      Comment


                        #51
                        Re: Change old low HDD to a CF card?

                        Originally posted by trodas View Post
                        I bought a SSD (SanDisk Ultra II 120G (SDSSDHII-120G)) and PATA to SATA (it can do even reverse connection!) bi-derectional adapter from Gembird, chipset JM20330, should do hot-swap for non bootable devices) and while the SSD works neat, I cannot manage to boot from it! That suxx beyond words!

                        That is second time when PATA - SATA conversion proved unbootable for me. First case - Dell OptiPlex GX110. Same result, different convertor used. Working, but NOT booting...

                        Curse these "adapters"... thed don't work at all.
                        did you connect it as the primary / sole drive and format / sys it from cd or floppy?
                        because you need to.

                        Comment


                          #52
                          Re: Change old low HDD to a CF card?

                          fzabkar - I did not see how that is relevant, because when I cannot flip the fixed bit, then I cannot use the CF card as HDD. Witch is why this is ATM IMHO irellevant. Unless I can use the CF card as normal HDD, there is no reason to plug that cursed thing back into any computer at all.
                          What you say also did not make slightest sense to me, altrought it sounds reasonable at first. The 3.3V settings worked well, if the cursed DMA did not get off, I get over 20MB/sec speeds with Pentium 90, witch was fantastic... But only once.



                          stj - of course I did that: fdisk, reboot, format c: /s and reboot and... no post:

                          I get a PATA to SATA adapter, SanDisk 120G (must be to be under the 128G limit with patched bios) Ultra II SSD and now I figuring out how to make it all work. It does not. The SSD is well detected during POST and things seems to work (I can install ANY operating system on it, WinNT, WinXP...) but it does NOT BOOT from it:

                          http://postimg.org/image/aetkg8fep/
                          http://postimg.org/image/g7z1321oh/
                          http://postimg.org/image/4zkuf9nup/

                          (SanDisk Ultra II 120G (SDSSDHII-120G), PATA to SATA bi-derectional adapter from Gembird, chipset JM20330, should do hot-swap for non bootable devices)
                          Last edited by trodas; 10-13-2015, 07:51 AM.
                          "It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong." - Voltaire
                          "I believe that all the people who stand to profit by a war and who help provoke it should be shot on the first day it starts..." - Hemingway my config - my caps

                          Comment


                            #53
                            Re: Change old low HDD to a CF card?

                            wtf... this has got to be the bug of the year. a non-booting ssd stuck at a blank cursor with NO error msg. not even complaining that no boot device found and to insert the boot media and then press a key.

                            srsly, i doubt anyone can figure out how to fix this hahaha well if someone does, i will worship him and convert to paganism.

                            Comment


                              #54
                              Re: Change old low HDD to a CF card?

                              Yep, someone did It was fixed very easily, just using fdisk /mbr ... and on next reboot it get format c: /q /s ... and on next reboot it (the SSD in question) booted nicely and worked well ever since. Except the DMA.

                              My bad, I forget completely that things sometimes need the fix of the MBR, lol. Maybe that could fix the old PATA to SATA adapter in the Dell OptiPlex GX110? Gotta try that one day...

                              ...

                              And it looks like the DMA can be fixed too:
                              http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=398

                              There are drivers that can enable the DMA on i430TX, so there might be a chance. But from initial testing it looks like that I have to do the BSEL=0 mod that lock the PCI bus to 32MHz regardless of FSB, because at 41.7MHz PCI it seems that enabling DMA cause instant crash/freeze and there is not much doubt why things are going wrong, lol. 41.7MHz is quite much for such ancient chipset, IMHO.

                              So looks like that there is some light at the end of the tunnel - still. As for the CF card, well... I have to try it again on different mainboard to be absolutely sure that the "Fail (error #20)" will happen again. Even after fdisk /mbr
                              "It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong." - Voltaire
                              "I believe that all the people who stand to profit by a war and who help provoke it should be shot on the first day it starts..." - Hemingway my config - my caps

                              Comment


                                #55
                                Re: Change old low HDD to a CF card?

                                http://www.openfirmware.info/Welcome_to_OpenBIOS

                                something there may be interesting.

                                Comment


                                  #56
                                  Re: Change old low HDD to a CF card?

                                  Originally posted by trodas View Post
                                  Change old low HDD to a CF card?
                                  Walking thru threads landed here… my thoughts skipping introductions:
                                  1st.
                                  Replacing an old PATA hard disk with a CF card only seems a good idea if you are unaware of the serious lowdown - the rapid flash wear down due constant repeated OS writes! Very soon, depending on the hours the computer’s being used, the CF card will be trashed for writing.
                                  Therefore, unless you come up with a complement solution and tweak, at least, all virtual memory and other files to use another device you’re doomed!

                                  2nd
                                  You’re too much focused on making the CF card non-removable, plus using the worst choice - Sandisk CF Card, imo.
                                  Being a fact that M$ won’t install to a removal media, but runs from one (no comments)
                                  and you’re only(!) changing the primary media,
                                  clone the existing one and restore it to the CF card (use WinImage, Ghost,…).
                                  Furthermore, if you want to make a clean M$ install, do it on the existing hard disk, just be patient and let it working forgotten, checking if it requires input action from time to time, or even better use an unattended tweaked install CD. Then clone it to the CF card.
                                  With this solution you will fully accomplish your goal!! Without hassles…!

                                  3rd but not least
                                  Here’s a more reliable solution for your aim:
                                  Since PATA hard disks are deprecated, hard to get and when found way too expensive, use a common SATA hard drive!
                                  How?
                                  Buy a SATA to PATA adapter, for couple of euros on eBay, and use it…!
                                  All previous mentioned short comes and lowdowns are overcome.
                                  Furthermore it’s less expensive and more reliable solution.
                                  However you may face a new problem:
                                  the BIOS might fail to recognize the new hard disk due to its greater capacity (some old BIOS will fail even for 40GB or greater).
                                  That’s easy and hassle free to solve using a low level hard disk tool to tweak the hard disk parameters to less capacity (don’t remember the tools name but recall that one was available on Hiren’s boot CD)
                                  Last edited by megaraider; 11-12-2015, 08:16 PM. Reason: none

                                  Comment


                                    #57
                                    Re: Change old low HDD to a CF card?

                                    I have reverse engineered the SanDisk utility. The tool dumps a section of the firmware, modifies it, and then writes it back. To do this, it makes use of vendor specific ATA commands.

                                    Unfortunately the OP is incapable of providing me with the quality of feedback that I need in order to attempt hacking the firmware. If anyone else wishes to follow up this avenue of attack, please let me know.

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