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Solid State Drives - For x86 machines

T

Todd82TA

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 1, 2012
Messages
110
Location
Florida, USA
Just wanted to mention to you guys that I recently picked up a DOM (Disk on Memory) from eBay. It's a 525mb SSD drive (basically), and I picked it up for only $26 dollars shipped. It was brand new, and from China (of course). Never the less, it's awesome... it's pretty damned fast. It's not lightning fast, but easily twice as quick as a Seagate ST3144A 130mb hard drive.

There's a few different things you can do, like using a compact flash, etc...

I've generally had bad luck with those. I got a DOM, and it works PERFECT.

Here's one that's even cheaper than the one I just got...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/512MB-DOM-D...C_Drives_Storage_Internal&hash=item5639e8d87d

Only $22 shipped.

1021cyl, 16hd, 63sec.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Your luck is better than mine. I have 3 1GB 44-pin DOMs (made in Taiwan) and none of them works.
Click to expand...

What specifically is the problem you are having? Were you able to figure out if it was a configuration issue, or if the units were simply just not working?

I purchased several of those Compact Flash to IDE converters, and I could never get any of them to work.

I finally decided to go with one of these DOMs and it worked great. I put it in a 386, and my problem of course was that the BIOS is so old, that the largest drive it even supports is 525mb anyway (which is exactly what this DOM was). I don't know if it makes a difference, but mine came pre-formated with FAT-16. It even actually had a COMMAND.COM installed on it. Since it came from China, I assumed the worst (keylogger, malware, whatever), so I reformatted it anyway with DOS 6.2... but it worked great.

I didn't use a cable, I just simply plugged the DOM directly into the motherboard. The motherboard supports two IDE drives of course, but I just stuck the DOM directly in there on the board... so I wouldn't be able to use a second drive or anything, even if I wanted to.
 
I've got about 5 of the CF-to-IDE adapters set up on various machines and never had one not work. Often, just setting the jumpers cures most of the issues. I've used CF cards as small as 32MB and as large as 16GB with no problems.

The DOMs that I have are intended for thin clients (i.e. 44-pin IDE). All of them exhibit the same behavior in my Neoware boxes--the Activity and Power LEDs come on and the system refuses to even POST. Changing switch settings has no effect. 44-pin IDE to CF adapter connected with a short 44-pin female-female ribbon cable to the motherboard always works.

I've even used 5GB Seagate ST1 microdrives in the CF adapter. Works just fine.
 
Chuck(G) said:
I've got about 5 of the CF-to-IDE adapters set up on various machines and never had one not work. Often, just setting the jumpers cures most of the issues. I've used CF cards as small as 32MB and as large as 16GB with no problems.

The DOMs that I have are intended for thin clients (i.e. 44-pin IDE). All of them exhibit the same behavior in my Neoware boxes--the Activity and Power LEDs come on and the system refuses to even POST. Changing switch settings has no effect. 44-pin IDE to CF adapter connected with a short 44-pin female-female ribbon cable to the motherboard always works.

I've even used 5GB Seagate ST1 microdrives in the CF adapter. Works just fine.
Click to expand...


It could just be the CF cards I have, I suppose. I was able to get them all to "work." I could write to them (the CF cards I mean), but when I tried to read from them, it would freeze.

As for the Thin Clients, yeah... I have three of those, and on two of them, I ended up installing laptop hard drives. That worked fine, but then of course, I lost the fast speed of the SSD... I might re-think that and see if I can find some CF cards to install in place of them.
 
I am a happy Disk On Module user ever since Glitch made me aware of them. I was able to replace a dead Connor 60MB laptop drive in an IBM L40SX with a 512MB DOM. The DOM works well, is far smaller than the original hard drive, has no moving parts, and draws far less power than a mechanical hard drive.
 
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I haven't tried the DOM yet, but I do have a few Compact Flash to IDE adapters. The only trouble I've had is that one of them refused to work when it was on the same cable as a particular CD-ROM drive. I swapped out the drive with one from a different manufacturer, and it's been fine since.
 
Hello,

I've got one of these 512MB DOM and i also tried a 32MB DOM from the same seller (here).
It works very well : i tested it with a 486 machine to use the "IDE drive autodetect" from the BIOS and get the CHS values.
Since then, i use it on 386sx (and more) machines. Perfect.

But with older BIOS (286 BIOS and certains 386sx BIOS), it boots but i get random read and write errors : several files were corrupted (header).
I tried them with MS-DOS 3.3 and 6.22 : same problem.
I think old BIOS can't stand these DOM.

If someone have an idea...:)
 
Chuck(G) said:
Your luck is better than mine. I have 3 1GB 44-pin DOMs (made in Taiwan) and none of them works.
Click to expand...

I've had same problem as Chuck with a 128Mb 44-pin DOM from China.

I wonder if there is a particular issue with the 44-pin types that draw power voltage on the extra pins. The one I have is not keyed and has no visible pin-1 marking for orientation, so possibly I inserted it in reverse - but that should not cause a serious short because the first row of IDE is all GND. In several machines, P1 to P4 vintage, I can not get BIOS to recognise presence of the DOM as a drive. TestDisk shows nothing.

Any suggestions on how to confirm whether a DOM like this is really dead or not?
 
I wish I knew. My DOMs all have the end-pin numbers silk-screened on the PCB, so I know I'm inserting it correctly. Since I'm using (or trying to use) these in Neoware thin clients, it's impossible to put them in backwards. Also, all of mine have the tab in the center of the (female) connector facing "out".
 
Well yes, in fact I'm running a CF on the system that way.

I went through my DOMs and it turns out that one of the three does work, so I guess the other two are just bad.

I think I'll install a small Linux distro on it. It's probably a bit faster than a CF-resident version.
 
I bought a couple of Transcend 512 MB IDE Modules (Model TS512MDOM40V-S) from Tiger Direct few days ago. $15/piece + couple of $$ for shipping.
They work nicely in older 386/486 systems, also the size is pretty close to the BIOS limit of these systems (993 clusters / 16 heads / 63 sectors). These modules can get power either using a provided cable or using pin 20 on IDE connector. I patched one of my multi I/O cards, and connected pin 20 to +5V, so no cable required.
 
So what can you put in a <1GB SSD? Most of the lightweight Linux distros seem to want several gigabytes. I've loaded one with Win98SE and it fits comfortably. I expect that Win2K might work as well, but I'm not sure about XP.
 
Speaking of, I really wish that I could get Windows 98SE and even 2000 to run on some of these Thin Clients I have. I've got a bunch of HP Thin Clients that I think would be awesome to use, but I just simply cannot get drivers for the on-board graphics cards and sound cards. :/

Windows 98 SE wasn't real good about supporting this stuff.


Todd
 
I've gotten 98SE and several linuces to run on the HP Neoware CA19 and CA21 clients. Yes, you do have to go prowling for the drivers, but they're still available. It helps to open them up and look at the chips to discover the chipset. In the case of the CA19 and CA21, drivers can be had from the VIA website.

Which thin clients do you have?
 
I'm still missing something: Can someone explain to me how these compare to CF-to-IDE adapters? I've used a few of those and been happy with them; is there an advantage (cost? speed? power?) to DOMs over CF-to-IDE adapters?
 
Speed, mostly--at least that's my experience. That may be different with some of the bleeding-edge CFs, however. Supposedly some have wear-leveling as well. Most are rated at least at UDMA 33.

My current mailserver has been running Debian Etch since it came out on an ST-1 5GB microdrive. Everyone says that microdrives aren't rated for continuous duty, but that's not my experience. There's not much activity--maybe an access every 10 seconds or so.
 
Trixter said:
I'm still missing something: Can someone explain to me how these compare to CF-to-IDE adapters? I've used a few of those and been happy with them; is there an advantage (cost? speed? power?) to DOMs over CF-to-IDE adapters?
Click to expand...

I don't think there is a major difference other than the form factor. It is possible that industrial IDE modules are more reliable. As far as I can tell modern CF cards are blazingly fast :)
All NAND flash based storage devices have wear leveling (it won't work otherwise).
 
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