Hello guys!
I am going to represent you my tries in order to make a CF/SD card as hard disk for my old Acer.
My Acer in the beggining has an MFM hard disk.But this disk unfortunately as any magnetic device has a limited life.
Although some months before,all programs started to crash because of bad sectors.
My only solution as I figured out,was to replace that disk with a CF.
That was the beggining of my problems.
My CF boots perfectly dos under new bios systems (e.g a Pentium III PC)
But this old Acer has a difficulty.It has an AWARD BIOS VERSION 3.03A!!!!!
The only configurations for hard disk are the desplayed bellow
Only to select between types! 1-47 and 6-84!
Unfortunately I didn't find so far a Disk Type Array showing C/H/S and capacity for every type.Only references about 1-47.Nothing else about 60-84.
Although this problem I find a temporary solution by putting the code 7 for 64mb compact flash.It works also fine for 32mb SF and SD (my other attemps to make it work)
These are the CF/SD cards and adapters
The problem for not finding any drive fixed and the system tried to boot from CF/SD card.
But now another problem show up.
Error Loading OS!
I tried putting dos boot disk.As I boot I can alter to c: and see the driver with dir,modify files but can't run anything onto it.If i tried to execute an exe file after 20 seconds a message of reading failure (retry,ignore,fail), compare to a floppy reading failure message, shows up.
After running some good floppy disk tools I realise that the system didn't recognise correctly the CHS values and furthermore the capacity.
Discrepansy between bios and disk values,was a message of a program.And I am totaly sure that has right.
Same things happened if I try with sd cards.
What to do furthermore????
I checked for options on to the ISA IDE expansion card but nothing special.
I also used the fujitsu disk manager from here http://www.members.shaw.ca/rinocanada/hdutils.htm .
The things goes better with this tool,but then I have problem with XMS memory and can't load windows 3.1. But now I am able to run programs individualy no stuck!!!
That's a progress I have to confess.
So my friends what else can you suggest me in order to see the system the cf/sd card correctly????
Any other details as C/H/S of cards are available if you want me to tell you.
P.S I am thinking of buying this one TRANSCEND 64MB IDE Flash Modul IDE 40pin http://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/a220021.html to test also.What is your opinion?
Thanks in advance!
I am going to represent you my tries in order to make a CF/SD card as hard disk for my old Acer.
My Acer in the beggining has an MFM hard disk.But this disk unfortunately as any magnetic device has a limited life.
Although some months before,all programs started to crash because of bad sectors.
My only solution as I figured out,was to replace that disk with a CF.
That was the beggining of my problems.
My CF boots perfectly dos under new bios systems (e.g a Pentium III PC)
But this old Acer has a difficulty.It has an AWARD BIOS VERSION 3.03A!!!!!
The only configurations for hard disk are the desplayed bellow
Only to select between types! 1-47 and 6-84!
Unfortunately I didn't find so far a Disk Type Array showing C/H/S and capacity for every type.Only references about 1-47.Nothing else about 60-84.
Although this problem I find a temporary solution by putting the code 7 for 64mb compact flash.It works also fine for 32mb SF and SD (my other attemps to make it work)
These are the CF/SD cards and adapters
The problem for not finding any drive fixed and the system tried to boot from CF/SD card.
But now another problem show up.
Error Loading OS!
I tried putting dos boot disk.As I boot I can alter to c: and see the driver with dir,modify files but can't run anything onto it.If i tried to execute an exe file after 20 seconds a message of reading failure (retry,ignore,fail), compare to a floppy reading failure message, shows up.
After running some good floppy disk tools I realise that the system didn't recognise correctly the CHS values and furthermore the capacity.
Discrepansy between bios and disk values,was a message of a program.And I am totaly sure that has right.
Same things happened if I try with sd cards.
What to do furthermore????
I checked for options on to the ISA IDE expansion card but nothing special.
I also used the fujitsu disk manager from here http://www.members.shaw.ca/rinocanada/hdutils.htm .
The things goes better with this tool,but then I have problem with XMS memory and can't load windows 3.1. But now I am able to run programs individualy no stuck!!!
That's a progress I have to confess.
So my friends what else can you suggest me in order to see the system the cf/sd card correctly????
Any other details as C/H/S of cards are available if you want me to tell you.
P.S I am thinking of buying this one TRANSCEND 64MB IDE Flash Modul IDE 40pin http://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/a220021.html to test also.What is your opinion?
Thanks in advance!
Last edited: