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DOS installation on CF card

J

JT64

Experienced Member
Joined
Oct 21, 2008
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402
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Sweden
I sadly lack both working DOS floppies and HD for my "OLD XT".
But fortunatly i just bought an CF to IDE adapter.

I run XP on my main computer and now i am thinking using a virtualisation tool to install DOS and programs on a CF media attached over an USB cardreader.
(And then move over to the CF adapter)

1. Someone said that 512 MB CF media is a no no with old IDE AT adapters i have an ADP50L "should i use 256 MB or 512 MB media?"

2. What virtualisation tool support formating native FAT (12? 16?) partitions on an USB cardreader with CF media? I do not think VMware can?

3. Is an USB cardreader bootable?

4. Will a modern computer with a 64-bit 1640LE CPU, support booting from an older FAT?

5. What tool do i use to format the CF to FAT12 or FAT16 (if the virtualtool doesn't recognize the CF card as a harddrive.What is better

Is DOS FAT always 16 or 12 bits how do i know.

JT
 
in my experience, a CF to IDE adapter won't work at all in an XT IDE controller because the CF card does not recognize the XT command register. if it did work, the limit would actually be 504 MB rather than 512 MB. same reason a small AT IDE drive won't work on an XT controller card. i ended up having to get a 40 MB seagate IDE drive with a jumper to switch to XT mode to work on my western digital XT IDE controller.

you will get a controller error if you try that CF card in an XT.
 
Mike Chambers said:
in my experience, a CF to IDE adapter won't work at all in an XT IDE controller because the CF card does not recognize the XT command register. if it did work, the limit would actually be 504 MB rather than 512 MB. same reason a small AT IDE drive won't work on an XT controller card. i ended up having to get a 40 MB seagate IDE drive with a jumper to switch to XT mode to work on my western digital XT IDE controller.

you will get a controller error if you try that CF card in an XT.
Click to expand...

But the controller is 40-pin AT, here is the stats/spec, will it work.

ADP50L
Data bus: 8-bit, ISA

Size: Half-length, full-height card

Hard drives supported: Two IDE (AT) Interface drives

Floppy drives supported: No
 
Mike Chambers said:
in my experience, a CF to IDE adapter won't work at all in an XT IDE controller because the CF card does not recognize the XT command register. if it did work, the limit would actually be 504 MB rather than 512 MB. same reason a small AT IDE drive won't work on an XT controller card. i ended up having to get a 40 MB seagate IDE drive with a jumper to switch to XT mode to work on my western digital XT IDE controller.

you will get a controller error if you try that CF card in an XT.
Click to expand...

Does the chip support AT over XT 8-bit ISA bus architecture.

Why is it labeled AT?

JT
 
oh, my mistake! i'm sorry, i didn't realize your model of controller. yes, that will work sorry for that.

VMware should be able to do what you want. just tell VMware to use the entire removable disk as a drive. the particular partition scheme (FAT 12/16) all comes down to what guest OS you are running. try MS-DOS or DR-DOS or something similar in the VM, fdisk and format... transfer system files to the CF card's new partition.. all should be good.

just remember to use 500 MB not 512, to be safe.. greater than 504 MB will not work. everything will seem fine at first but when the partition gets nearly filled, you'll find you get errors reading/writing past the 504 MB mark.
 
Mike Chambers said:
oh, my mistake! i'm sorry, i didn't realize your model of controller. yes, that will work sorry for that.

VMware should be able to do what you want. just tell VMware to use the entire removable disk as a drive. the particular partition scheme (FAT 12/16) all comes down to what guest OS you are running. try MS-DOS or DR-DOS or something similar in the VM, fdisk and format... transfer system files to the CF card's new partition.. all should be good.

just remember to use 500 MB not 512, to be safe.. greater than 504 MB will not work. everything will seem fine at first but when the partition gets nearly filled, you'll find you get errors reading/writing past the 504 MB mark.
Click to expand...

Now i start to suspect that my 10 GB drive will work after all in my XT.
Is it possible the AT controller can recognize a 10 GB drive?

JT
 
JT64 said:
Now i start to suspect that my 10 GB drive will work after all in my XT.
Is it possible the AT controller can recognize a 10 GB drive?

JT
Click to expand...

it *may* with that controller model, but would of course be limited to 504 MB. only way to know for sure is pop it in and give it a spin.
 
Mike Chambers said:
it *may* with that controller model, but would of course be limited to 504 MB. only way to know for sure is pop it in and give it a spin.
Click to expand...

I seem to recall i once installed LILO and managed to format multiple partitions beyond the limits?

What is bios translation what software support this, can it fool the bios to support a bigger drive?

JT
 
JT64 said:
I seem to recall i once installed LILO and managed to format multiple partitions beyond the limits?

What is bios translation what software support this, can it fool the bios to support a bigger drive?

JT
Click to expand...

I will try to get ELKS on CF boot ELKS format HD under linux and install LILO.

This will certainly kill the harddrive:mrgreen::twisted:
JT
 
By and large, any IDE controller can recognize a very large drive--including 48-bit addressed ATA6 drives. The hangup (other than high-speed DMA modes, but then any IDE drive will run in PIO mode) is solely in the BIOS.

Imagine how much more use we might have been able to get out of those old mobos had the manufacturers just kept up with BIOS updates. Might have meant a lot less lead in the landfills.
 
JT64 said:
I seem to recall i once installed LILO and managed to format multiple partitions beyond the limits?

What is bios translation what software support this, can it fool the bios to support a bigger drive?

JT
Click to expand...

Ontrack Disk Manager, but i'm not sure if it'll work on an 8088?? anybody know?

Yep, sure will.

--T
 
Last edited by a moderator:
JT64 said:
Now i start to suspect that my 10 GB drive will work after all in my XT.
Is it possible the AT controller can recognize a 10 GB drive?
JT
Click to expand...

it's possible, but not likely.
we're dealing with this very issue in the thread where we are trying to design our own 8 bit IDE controller.

The problem is thus:
The ISA interface is 8 bits.
The IDE interface is 16bits

So you either have to get the drive to work in 8bit mode, which some newer (like your 10gig drive) might not want to do, or you devise a hardware workaround to get those other 8bits of data out to the CPU.

The acculogic 8/16 controller does this by mapping the other 8bits of data into a different data port. This essentially requires custom BIOS to work with, and at the time that BIOS was written, 528MB was the top end.

On track disk manager software will *not* work because it won't know to pull the other 1/2 of the data from a special I/O address. On track is likely also using standard 1F0-1F7, 170-17F I/O addresses for talking to the controller (you might be able to command line change that) which in the case of the acculogic card we're playing with, isn't mapped at those I/O addresses.

I'd be very interested in what your card does-we're looking to model/clone an IDE card that works on an XT, and I've re-written most of the BIOS for such a card that it'll recognize a drive as big as 137Gig.

So, if it doesn't work, hang in there, and we'll soon be able to get you a custom made, brand new, vintage-computer designed, open source 8bit IDE controller. This is my main winter project to get completed.
 
hargle said:
The problem is thus:
The ISA interface is 8 bits.
The IDE interface is 16bits

So you either have to get the drive to work in 8bit mode, which some newer (like your 10gig drive) might not want to do, or you devise a hardware workaround to get those other 8bits of data out to the CPU.
Click to expand...

Like the Acculogic, the SV ADP50L does indeed map the 16-bit data path of a PATA drive to 8 bits. The BIOS claims to be good to 504MB. A bit of patching/rewriting ought to make it work fine with ATA6 drives. Access will be pretty much restricted to BIOS calls, but that's scarcely an issue with an XT.
 
JT64 said:
1. Someone said that 512 MB CF media is a no no with old IDE AT adapters i have an ADP50L "should i use 256 MB or 512 MB media?"
Click to expand...

I have that very card, and I use a 340MB IBM Microdrive CF with an adapter with it and it works just fine. 512MB didn't recognize well (but then again I didn't try very hard). Try 256MB.

I formatted it in the XT itself using fdisk (three partitions) and format. Pulling it out and putting it into a card reader, I can see all three primary partitions.
 
Trixter said:
I have that very card, and I use a 340MB IBM Microdrive CF with an adapter with it and it works just fine. 512MB didn't recognize well (but then again I didn't try very hard). Try 256MB.

I formatted it in the XT itself using fdisk (three partitions) and format. Pulling it out and putting it into a card reader, I can see all three primary partitions.
Click to expand...

A microdrive is over my budget, i settle for a 10 euro memory.

JT
 
JT64 said:
Sure i give it a try, compact flash is a cheap memory standard, microdrive is a halfbaked HD.
Click to expand...

I get microdrives on ebay for $5 so I don't know why people are down on them. They are tiny hard drives, and I'm using them as tiny hard drives, so I don't need to worry about the maximum number of writes limitation that real flash cards have.
 
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