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Best performing storage option for a 286 Machine

Instead of going CF you could try going hog-wild with a full-on IDE-to-SATA converter and a real SATA SSD, I suppose, that would probably substantially outrun a CF card. They make convenient little "sleds" in the laptop 2.5" PATA drive form factor that can house an M2 or mSATA format drive "stick", conceivably you might be able to put one of those in a 286 with a 40-to-44 pin adapter and the combination can be really cheap, considering. (I recently upgraded an old PowerBook with a PATA-to-M2 sled fitted with a 128GB disk and the whole setup was less than $40.)

That said there's a really good chance you'll run into compatibility gotchyas. It's a known issue that many of those PATA-SATA converter chips have issues with DMA modes less than UDMA-33, I have *no idea* if there will be deal-breaker problems with the PIO ATA modes you'd actually be using on a 286. (And of course the other issue is you're unlikely to find an M2 or mSATA drive much smaller than 64 or 128GB, which to a 286 is an inconceivable amount of overkill.)
 
Chuck(G) said:
On faster machines with PCI-oriented IDE controllers
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I don't disagree, but the OP has a 286, and I stand by my answer in that context.

Once you hit Pentium-era systems, it is worth running some benchmarks to see what works best on your hardware, as boards and interfaces and drives were all over the place at that time (ESDI vs. VLB vs. PCI vs. SCSI vs. bus mastering vs. UDMA vs. incomplete PCI spec slots in very early Pentium 60 systems, vs....)

ibmapc said:
Falcon 3.0 claims to need 602K ;)
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I remembered, but didn't want to muddy the conversation. Yes, technically Falcon 3.0 will run on a 286 or better with 602K free DOS RAM. It's not pleasant though. It's much more enjoyable on a 386 DX with a mathco (the only DOS game from that era I know of that actually uses a mathco).

I worked at Egghead Software when both Falcon 3.0 and the MS-DOS 5.0 upgrade were released in 1991. We used each of them to sell the other: "You can't run Falcon 3 unless you have MS-DOS 5 to free up all that memory" and "Why upgrade to MS-DOS 5? So you can run advanced games like Falcon 3". I'm not going to say it was evil, but we sold a lot of bundles that quarter.

Okay, maybe it was a little evil.
 
Eudimorphodon said:
Instead of going CF you could try going hog-wild with a full-on IDE-to-SATA converter and a real SATA SSD, I suppose, that would probably substantially outrun a CF card. They make convenient little "sleds" in the laptop 2.5" PATA drive form factor that can house an M2 or mSATA format drive "stick", conceivably you might be able to put one of those in a 286 with a 40-to-44 pin adapter and the combination can be really cheap, considering. (I recently upgraded an old PowerBook with a PATA-to-M2 sled fitted with a 128GB disk and the whole setup was less than $40.)

That said there's a really good chance you'll run into compatibility gotchyas. It's a known issue that many of those PATA-SATA converter chips have issues with DMA modes less than UDMA-33, I have *no idea* if there will be deal-breaker problems with the PIO ATA modes you'd actually be using on a 286. (And of course the other issue is you're unlikely to find an M2 or mSATA drive much smaller than 64 or 128GB, which to a 286 is an inconceivable amount of overkill.)
Click to expand...
... which is why a plain ol' plug'n play DOM is way easier, cheaper, uncomplicated and simpler. It's the only piece of hardware needed and it doesn't come with its own issues.
 
Stone said:
... which is why a plain ol' plug'n play DOM is way easier, cheaper, uncomplicated and simpler. It's the only piece of hardware needed and it doesn't come with its own issues.
Click to expand...

Oh, I agree, a DOM is an easy plug-and-play solution. Mentioning SATA converters was complete devil's advocacy.

(Well, okay, on a more modern system that could actually make meaningful use of a gigantic drive I'd still probably at least try the SATA converter solution simply because the bang-for-buck is attractive. But it's not like DOMs are "expensive".)
 
Eudimorphodon said:
Instead of going CF you could try going hog-wild with a full-on IDE-to-SATA converter and a real SATA SSD, I suppose, that would probably substantially outrun a CF card. They make convenient little "sleds" in the laptop 2.5" PATA drive form factor that can house an M2 or mSATA format drive "stick", conceivably you might be able to put one of those in a 286 with a 40-to-44 pin adapter and the combination can be really cheap, considering. (I recently upgraded an old PowerBook with a PATA-to-M2 sled fitted with a 128GB disk and the whole setup was less than $40.)
Click to expand...

I use a couple SATA SSDs in a couple of my old systems using the SATA-to-IDE adapter (they're not created equal; I posted a thread about that somewhere here)--I just velcro them to the inside of the case--they don't take up much space.

One advantage of using an IDE-to-CF adapter, however, is that you can get them in a standard bracket configuration, so that you can insert and remove CF cards at whim. That may be less important on a 286 system, where your OS options are somewhat limited, but it's a thought.

There were USB-to-IDE adapters made for using external IDE drives as backups, but I don't know if there were any "reverse" ones made that allowed for using USB storage devices on IDE controllers. If so, that might be an option; my Orange Pi boxes all boot from cheap USB pen drives and they're pretty responsive.
 
As far as using CF-IDE, the only compatibility issues I'm aware of are the removable device bit, which can be changed with that sandisk utility, and occasionally some of them don't support CHS so I've heard. Neither of those concern me, is there something else I'm missing?
 
I don't know about USB solutions but there are also IDE to SD card adapters out there; it seems like they're being positioned as competitors to DOMs because a search on Amazon for the latter turns them up as well. I can't imagine the performance being that great but since we're talking about a 286 here that's probably a relative thing. There is a general concern with SD storage solutions about "wearing out" cards, but they are selling cards now that are specifically designed to withstand being written to almost constantly at fairly high bitrates (IE, for use in HD video monitoring systems) so, again, that might actually be a 286-apropritate solution assuming the compatibility is there.
 
OK benchmark time

"Almost Period Correct Drives" are Western Digital Caviar 2420 on IDE and a Conner CFA340S SCSI. Modern SCSI drive is a Quantum Atlas 10KII.

Here's my initial results before making any configuration changes, each photo includes two passes of the benchmarking software; first the Caviar:
caviar_original.jpg

Then the Atlas 10KII:
atlas_original.jpg

I discovered that by loading VIDE-CDD.SYS *low* I actually could produce a small but meaningful and repeatable improvement in the IDE drive speed, here's the Caviar with VIDE-CDD (only, location of MSCDEX had no effect) loaded low:
caviar_cdlow.jpg

For giggles, I re-enabled DOSDATA=UMB and it destroyed my IDE performance:
caviar_dosdata.jpg

However it seemed to have no meaningful impact on SCSI performance with the Atlas somehow:
atlas_dosdata.jpg

For reference, here is the result of the Conner SCSI drive (DOSDATA *not* in UMB, and VIDE-CDD loaded low, but that probably doesn't matter):
20190514_185111.jpg
 
20190515_121039.jpg

I was able to squeeze a little more performance out of the Atlas 10KII by adjusting the the jumpers on the AHA-1542B. There are settings for 5.0, 5.7, 6.7 and 8.0MB/s. Default is 5.0MB/s. Posted results are with the card set to 6.7MB/s, I tried 8.0 but it was actually corrupting the file system with that setting, I had to delete the partition and start over.
 
Question for those familiar with the XT-IDE boot ROM:

Right now this old Adaptec BIOS will not allow more than 2 HDD total in the system. I.e. if you configure Drive C in the system CMOS Setup it will initialize one SCSI drive as D. If you configure Drive C and D in the system CMOS Setup it will print a message saying Drive C and D already installed and do nothing.

If I were to set the system CMOS to no hard drives, and use the XTIDE ROM instead, would I be able to have the Adaptec configure C and D as SCSI drives and then have the XTIDE ROM configure an IDE drive as drive E, as long as it loaded after the boot ROM on the SCSI controller?
 
You could also use the Adaptec ASPI driver and the device specific (ASPIDISK.SYS) driver to get access to as many SCSI drives as you'd like after boot.
 
Well, I don't have the -B version; just the -nothing (very old) and the -C most common. I can't say much about the -B. In theory, there shouldn't be an issue--I've had up to 7 drives on a single (PCI) controller.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Well, I don't have the -B version; just the -nothing (very old) and the -C most common. I can't say much about the -B. In theory, there shouldn't be an issue--I've had up to 7 drives on a single (PCI) controller.
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Yeah definitely, I've also used more modern SCSI controllers with fistfulls of drives.

I think either the Adaptec aspi driver just either doesn't work right with this card, a 286, PC dos, or some combination of the three. Because l couldn't even get it to work right with a single drive
 
To be honest SCSI cards , even the old 8 ISA bit ones, are some of the less problematic vintage storage options around. There are other brands besides Adaptec but the Adaptec seem to be the most universally compatible ones.
 
I'm leaning heavily towards picking up a first generation Barracuda SCSI drive for this system and just using IDE for the CDROM only. Looks like I'm going to have to burn new BIOS and microcode chips for the controller if I want to access the full capacity though
 
maxtherabbit said:
Yeah definitely, I've also used more modern SCSI controllers with fistfulls of drives.

I think either the Adaptec aspi driver just either doesn't work right with this card, a 286, PC dos, or some combination of the three. Because l couldn't even get it to work right with a single drive
Click to expand...

Out of curiosity, I hooked up the Conner 320MB SCSI drive and tried the ASPI driver. It works perfectly with ASPI4DOS.SYS loaded and the BIOS enabled, as well as with ASPI4DOS+ASPIDISK.SYS loaded and the BIOS disabled. The problems I was having with the Atlas 10KII must be related to capacity and/or different translations being used by the ASPI driver vs. the BIOS.
 
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