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SSD on a 486?

I guess on this I'm just lucky... my 486 era rig has PCI slots. Cheap 8 dollar card and boom, good to go.

Though right this minute that rig has a U320 SCSI 15K rpm 18 gig Seagate Cheetah in it.
 
I'm a bit confused here--the last few posts have addressed rotating rust on a 486.

But back to the original topic--did the OP succeed in getting the SSD to work with his 486?
 
Chuck(G) said:
Sure, I've got one (add-on SATA/IDE PCI card), but how does this solve the OP's problem?
Click to expand...

... and I quote:

kithylin said:
Has anyone here tried using one of the smaller cheap 8gb SSD hard drives with a SATA-to-IDE adapter and then using them on a 486 class computer?
Click to expand...

If he has a PCI slot in said 486, skip the in-between SATA to IDE adapter, use one of those cards instead, job done!

Or as Chris Tucker would put it, Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth!?!

Christmas on a cracker, comprehension, TRY IT!
 
And if he doesn't have a 486 with a compatible PCI slot? In fact, it's most likely that his 486 has either all ISA slots or a mix of VLB and ISA. PCI slots on 486s were uncommon and could be very quirky.

So if he doesn't have one (seems pretty clear)--and he wants to use the native BIOS on his 486 and a SATA-to-IDE adapter. What he wants to know is why it doesn't work.
 
Chuck(G) said:
What he wants to know is why it doesn't work.
Click to expand...
Actually, with DOM's I've twice now encountered units that only work as UATA100/133 and don't recognize on older controllers... I don't know if any SATA to IDE converters might have that limitation, but it's a sticking point to consider.

The whole master/slave/cable select, much less the actual wiring difference of the 80 pin vs. 40 pin despite using the same connector. I think I've got a 20 gig deathstar here with similar issues where it just flat out refuses to work unless you use a 80 pin cable...

Which is NOT how the interface is supposed to work, but, well... implementations quite often differ from specification. Kind of like how crApple on the G3 toilet seats were wired so that only the master line was connected for the optical, meaning to use a third party drive you had to short slave to master if it didn't have select... But then Apple pulled all sorts of sleazy stunts in that era, like leaving off three of the power lines on a PCMCIA port, calling it "airport" all so you could only use their wireless cards... or selling 262k colour displays as 16.7 million... or using silver tinned connectors for the data lines in their cinema displays resulting in people using Tarn-X to fix them...

Though, has anyone mentioned the 2gb BIOS limit? Not an issue if you're playing with most DOM, but if using a SSD that could be a worry.

Silly idea, skip the cable and plug direct to the controller, does it work? If so, it's definitely a cabling issue.

Really we end up with more questions -- what's the controller? 40 or 80 wire cable? Does the BIOS have a LBA translation mode that's needed?
 
My original idea is that his native motherboard controller doesn't support LBA--and that the SATA adapter understands only that and not CHS. It came into use sometime during the 486 era and many older motherboard BIOSes don't have it.

But then, I've already said that a couple of pages ago.
 
I'm running one of the cheapo PATA SSD's from EBAY in my Thinkpad 770. It's a 233Mhz Pentium. I'd say the performance is good.

I also ran this in my 200Mhz Pentium Desktop. Nobody is running one of these in a 486?
 
Simplethings said:
I'm running one of the cheapo PATA SSD's from EBAY in my Thinkpad 770. It's a 233Mhz Pentium. I'd say the performance is good.

I also ran this in my 200Mhz Pentium Desktop. Nobody is running one of these in a 486?
Click to expand...

Yes, Earlier I said I was running SSD's in several of my 486 systems without issue, and the performance is excellent. Right now I am running a 256GB one on a PSC4A with a 3.0GHz P4 and 4GB of RAM (which I plan to upgrade to a 3.4GHz Prescott Extreme CPU). It will run everything from DOS/Win3.x, Win98, WinXP, and Win 7 32-bit) - and fly.

Regards,
Mike
 
nc_mike said:
Yes, Earlier I said I was running SSD's in several of my 486 systems without issue, and the performance is excellent. Right now I am running a 256GB one on a PSC4A with a 3.0GHz P4 and 4GB of RAM (which I plan to upgrade to a 3.4GHz Prescott Extreme CPU). It will run everything from DOS/Win3.x, Win98, WinXP, and Win 7 32-bit) - and fly.
Click to expand...

But again, a P4 isn't a 486 that can't take a PCI SATA card for a SATA SSD. No offense, but I'm sure that lots of folks, given the low prices of SATA SSDs are using them on their "regular" machines. (I actually run a mixture of SSD and spinning rust, but that doesn't have anything to do with the subject thread).

But what can you suggest to the OP with the 486 using a SATA-PATA adapter on a SATA SSD?
 
Could be--however, my suspicion is that the 486 in question needs CHS addressing in the drive and won't do LBA. Of course, a BIOS change or a BIOS ROM extension could cure that too.
 
Simplethings said:
I'm running one of the cheapo PATA SSD's from EBAY in my Thinkpad 770. It's a 233Mhz Pentium. I'd say the performance is good.

I also ran this in my 200Mhz Pentium Desktop. Nobody is running one of these in a 486?
Click to expand...


Well... kind of. I have a Dell 325P, which by default is a 386 DX-25. I installed the 486 DLC-25 chip on top of it which allows it to run as a 486 when you enable the cache, otherwise it quite literally runs at the speed of a 386 DX-33. But, I'm running a 512mb DOM in there.

I also have SSD in my Pentium 2, through IDE.
 
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