I've been trying to use a CF-card with an IDE-adapter as an SSD with my DOS-computer, but I encountered some weird problems.. Some games start up instantly, but some (like Master of Orion) take several minutes to start, and Win3.11 doesn't start up at all. Even my start-menu created in CONFIG.SYS takes several seconds to appear after POST-screen. Any idea where to start debugging this, or is it just a case of "it won't work". I have an AT motherboard and 120MHz pentium processor, also tested with another MB and two other processors, similar symtoms.
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CF-card into IDE "SSD" problems
- Thread starter djquu
- Start date
arrow_runner
Veteran Member
Have you tried running a chkdsk just to make sure the card is 100% good?
yes, no problems there
Compgeke
Veteran Member
Did you do a clean install of everything onto the card or just clone the hard drive? If you did a hard drive clone I would try a clean install of MS-DOS or whichever version you're using and go from there. I myself got DOS on my system using dd with a BOCHS HDD image with only MS-DOS installed and then copied installer files to the CF card and went from there, might help you to try that.
DOS lives on!!
Veteran Member
Some brands of CF cards work better than other ones. Are you using a major brand (like Sandisk), or an off-brand clone?
gerrydoire
Veteran Member
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2008
- Messages
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I found KODAK Brand 128 Meg Cards to be super compatible.
Compgeke
Veteran Member
Lots of cards work, I myself have a 512 MB 40X Lexar for one system and a 80X 1 gig Lexar for another being as those came with my camera (which now has a 4 gig Sandisk 200X).
Most name-brands work, although I wouldn't say the same for a cheap Chinese no-name card.
Most name-brands work, although I wouldn't say the same for a cheap Chinese no-name card.
Ole Juul
Veteran Member
I'd look at caching software as well as anything else which has to do with disk access. I stopped using SMARTDRV and got a huge improvement. You may not need yours either. It's always a good idea to go through your config files with a fine tooth comb. If in doubt, start them from scratch.
I'm using a Kingston ElitePro 133X and it's been going 24/7 for maybe a year now. I did find that fdisk wouldn't address it properly and had to use the Ranish Partition Manager to avoid overlaps.
I'm using a Kingston ElitePro 133X and it's been going 24/7 for maybe a year now. I did find that fdisk wouldn't address it properly and had to use the Ranish Partition Manager to avoid overlaps.
Ole Juul
Veteran Member
Mine is a Kingston Elite 8GB which is the max DOS6.22 can use, but bigger is fine - you just won't be able to address it all. Is it possible that you are not partitioning correctly?
Ole Juul
Veteran Member
I'm no expert, but did run into a problem with overlapping boundaries and found a solution with the Ranish Partition Manager. Perhaps give that a try. There were some discussions on this forum about it and a quick search brings up this quote from me, but there may be more informative stuff if you look around:
PS: Now seeing the date on that I note that I lied earlier, and the drive has probably only been running 24/7 for half a year.
hargle
Veteran Member
it would be interesting to FC /b the files from your source material for master of orion against the files that have been copied to your CF device. This would tell us 2 things:
1) if any files are corrupt (duh)
2) that the reads of every file from CF are happening at a decent speed,
I can think of a few possibilities to explain a slowdown:
1) MOO (and windows 3.11) is doing a ton of tiny writes to temporary files as they start up. depending on where/how those files are allocated, the CF device may have to do a ton of read-modify-writes to update the file+fat. A disk cache, set in write back mode, can help with this. The cache will absorb the repeated hits to the FAT and won't write it physically to the media until after the storm is over. Depending on how full your CF device is will also impact the write performance. Since CF is so fast on reads, the disk cache can actually slow reads down, so you'd want to configure it to only cache writes, if possible.
2) The fuller the drive is+longer it has been in use, the more data it has to juggle around to wear level the device. Simply deleting files is not enough to free up the space, since we know DOS only deletes the files out of the FAT- the data is still there and the CF device cannot know that the file contents are no longer in use. This is why the ATA TRIM command exists, but sadly DOS doesn't know to use it. This, combined with #1, would make the problem worse. A DOS format will also not free up the space, since format mostly does verifies across the drive's sectors, and doesn't ERASE the blocks of flash. You'd probably need a manufacturer's utility to clean erase your CF device to properly create a fresh drive.
3) a file in your MOO or windows folder is sitting on a bad block and the CF is retrying repeatedly to read the data until it finally gets lucky enough to get the correct bits, causing the slowdown. This is less likely. the File Compare could show this either in extremely long read times to get the data or it will show data corruption in its output.
1) if any files are corrupt (duh)
2) that the reads of every file from CF are happening at a decent speed,
I can think of a few possibilities to explain a slowdown:
1) MOO (and windows 3.11) is doing a ton of tiny writes to temporary files as they start up. depending on where/how those files are allocated, the CF device may have to do a ton of read-modify-writes to update the file+fat. A disk cache, set in write back mode, can help with this. The cache will absorb the repeated hits to the FAT and won't write it physically to the media until after the storm is over. Depending on how full your CF device is will also impact the write performance. Since CF is so fast on reads, the disk cache can actually slow reads down, so you'd want to configure it to only cache writes, if possible.
2) The fuller the drive is+longer it has been in use, the more data it has to juggle around to wear level the device. Simply deleting files is not enough to free up the space, since we know DOS only deletes the files out of the FAT- the data is still there and the CF device cannot know that the file contents are no longer in use. This is why the ATA TRIM command exists, but sadly DOS doesn't know to use it. This, combined with #1, would make the problem worse. A DOS format will also not free up the space, since format mostly does verifies across the drive's sectors, and doesn't ERASE the blocks of flash. You'd probably need a manufacturer's utility to clean erase your CF device to properly create a fresh drive.
3) a file in your MOO or windows folder is sitting on a bad block and the CF is retrying repeatedly to read the data until it finally gets lucky enough to get the correct bits, causing the slowdown. This is less likely. the File Compare could show this either in extremely long read times to get the data or it will show data corruption in its output.
I severely doubt that both MOO and Windows reside on bad blocks on all three CF-card. The 1GB card was pretty full, but the 32GB cards were mostly empty, and had not been used. As for the tiny reads, defragmentation has no effect on solid state drives so that's not the problem either. Tiny write could have been a problem with the 40x card but not on the 600x card (which should essentially use full bandwidth of IDE bus). I'd say the best bet is still to re-partition with some of the mentioned tools (and erase the flash drives before that just to be on the safe side).
btw, what is "FC /b"?
btw, what is "FC /b"?
arrow_runner
Veteran Member
FC /b does a file compare using the binary 'view' of two files, as opposed to text based files.
Is it a DOS command? Never used it.
Ole Juul
Veteran Member
External command first introduced with MS-DOS v2.1and also included with subsequent versions. I can confirm that it comes with MS-DOS v6.22. Apparently it's not distributed with PC-DOS.
Edit: I just checked on the net and it would appear that the command is included all the way through Windows 7. See here.
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