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Making a CF/SD as hard disk to a 386 Acer- model 1100

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BILL007

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Aug 19, 2010
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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!!!:p
That's a progress I have to confess.:cool:


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!:)
 
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I think the problem is likely that you need a flash card that can be mounted as a "fixed disk". This seems to be the most common problem people run into when trying to convert their old systems to CF. As far as I can tell almost all CF cards on the market are set as "removable drive" by default. This can only be changed if you have the special tool provided by the manufacturer. The sandisk ultra II is a very popular card for CF conversion, because it is one of the few for which the software utility has been leaked to the public. There are a few other cards on the market that are switchable, so you should really do your homework before investing in a new card. Also, when using FDISK to low level format your drive, use the /MBR command. I found that FDISK was not able to create a boot sector on my CF card without specifically issuing the command.

I can't comment much on the SD card based conversions. I have seen the adapters for some time, but I have never personally used one, and perhaps it's not even possible to use them on older systems which expect a fixed disk rather than removable drive. The nice thing about the CF cards is that they use ATA interface, so no support chips are required to work on old IDE controllers.
 
Anonymous Coward said:
I think the problem is likely that you need a flash card that can be mounted as a "fixed disk". This seems to be the most common problem people run into when trying to convert their old systems to CF. As far as I can tell almost all CF cards on the market are set as "removable drive" by default. This can only be changed if you have the special tool provided by the manufacturer. The sandisk ultra II is a very popular card for CF conversion, because it is one of the few for which the software utility has been leaked to the public. There are a few other cards on the market that are switchable, so you should really do your homework before investing in a new card. Also, when using FDISK to low level format your drive, use the /MBR command. I found that FDISK was not able to create a boot sector on my CF card without specifically issuing the command.

I can't comment much on the SD card based conversions. I have seen the adapters for some time, but I have never personally used one, and perhaps it's not even possible to use them on older systems which expect a fixed disk rather than removable drive. The nice thing about the CF cards is that they use ATA interface, so no support chips are required to work on old IDE controllers.
Click to expand...

Ι know about the isue of fixed disk.But this is the strange!
In the PentiumIII bios it saw the cf card as fixed disk!It is said on diagnostics!And boots fine!

When I dual boot with another disk having xp, it shows it as removable, this is true and very strange!Bios understand it as fixed and windows as removable!
I would like to change this into the sandisk CF (so I can eliminate this possibility of screwing my attempts) but I can't find the two tools needed for the operation.The ATCFWCHG.COM and ndcfwchg.com are the files needed for the operation!If anyone has the ndcfwchg.com , please seed! I have managed to find the atcfwchg.com (if anyone need it and can't find send me a pm).
As for the /MBR and low format the fujitsu tool does these two things.
I have checked them through various "mini magic" dos tools for hdd.

Thanks for the support!:) I hope to find a solution finally!:)
 
I got a cheap CF card (it was for a PIII system though) and it just wouldn't boot in my machine. Everything else was fine.

I found a thread that mentioned Puppy Linux. So I used that and Puppy Linux allowed me to set various "flags" of the CF card. I installed Linux onto the card and it booted! Then I installed FreeDOS and it finally worked...

It was a 2GB card though.

You mentioned that your old harddrive had bad sectors? Well maybe it's the controller card and not the drive, seeing you are getting reading errors with the CF card?
 
No dought you will Bill. I'm seriously thinking of doing a similar thing in the near future. The IDE-CF adapters are cheap enough. Thanks for sharing you experience.
 
Mau1wurf1977 said:
I got a cheap CF card (it was for a PIII system though) and it just wouldn't boot in my machine. Everything else was fine.

I found a thread that mentioned Puppy Linux. So I used that and Puppy Linux allowed me to set various "flags" of the CF card. I installed Linux onto the card and it booted! Then I installed FreeDOS and it finally worked...

It was a 2GB card though.

You mentioned that your old harddrive had bad sectors? Well maybe it's the controller card and not the drive, seeing you are getting reading errors with the CF card?
Click to expand...

Very interesting my friend.Do you have the link of that thread?
The controller of MFM is different from the IDE.In order to use IDE, I jumpered a selection onto ISA Goldstar LGS Prime2C expansion card to enable IDE(it was disabled as I had MFM installed) ;) Of course I remove the MFM Western Digital WDC1003 controller.
I have a lot of other ISA IDE expansion cards controllers but as I tested before some months, all get the same errors :(

This damn bios edition.If it has C/H/S user input values, I would be out of troubles...

Caluser2000 said:
No dought you will Bill. I'm seriously thinking of doing a similar thing in the near future. The IDE-CF adapters are cheap enough. Thanks for sharing you experience.
Click to expand...

I think my friend that is the only good quality/value solution in order to be safe from the magnetic matterials which have a limited life (not that the cf,sd and other cards are better into strength,they damaged too among the time and the frequency of use,but are totaly more usable into changes and in replacement)
 
I made also in the morning,a little site for disk types (what I gather so far) and the Acer 1100 mobo jumper settings.
You can find it here http://vintage-pc.tripod.com/

I will upload later on this page, all the hdd tools that I gather and used all this time for this project .


P.S If it is prohibited from administrator to post the above link, let me know and I will remove it instantly.Thanks
 
Now that I know all the values of C/H/S and landing zone according to each type number (thanks for the program!),I want to experiment something if it is possible.

I am wondering if it is possible to change virtualy the c/h/s and landing zone of the media (cf/sd cards).So if I change them,the old bios will be in possition of recognise the drive with no problem.

What is your opinion?Can be done with some program?Is it possible generaly?

Thanks!:)

P.S I find this page which left me some hope of doing this thing... http://paulski.com/zpages.php?id=2103 ;)
 
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hmm surely there is a program out there to analyze a CF card and tell you what CHS values to use? I think most modern BIOSs can discover it automatically. Seems like removable disk should not matter if the CHS values are right.

Maybe this will work? (it is called TestDisk)

I am interested in this because I may convert an old PC to CompactFlash myself soon. :) So please keep me informed! :)

--Brian
 
I've got setup like that for my 586.
He is right about the ATCFWCHG.COM and ndcfwchg.com
I might still have them *somewhere*

However, those utilities only work with Sandisk cards. I've tried it on several others to no avail.
 
Found this article on the web which I think might help with this thread. It tells you how to calculate a geometry.

But I was wondering, has the original poster tried FDISK on the drive after booting from floppy? Preferably an FDISK that recognizes FAT32 (which is more efficient for large partitions). Can FDISK make a partition for the whole disk? I would think that if you boot from a floppy with IBM PC DOS 2000, FreeDOS, or DR-DOS 8.0, the FDISK for any of those should be able to detect the right geometry and configure the FAT table appropriately for the BIOS?

--Brian
 
With older machines guys in the 386 2 486 realm, just upgrade to SCSI-2. The adaptec controller does wonders for my 386 dx40 system! I found the card in a demo job in an old computer. SCSI-2 hard drives are easy to come by! Remember the SCSI frees the processor from hard drive management!!!!!! The adaptec 1542cf post some crazy HD speeds such as up to 10 or greator. It able to do up to 8gigs for dos!!! Get it while it is still out there and cheap!!!!! It can handle an oc ISA bus! Basically it was designed for an EISA server thus the extended capabilities! Try it on a pentium system at CLCK/2 and it works!
 
Depending on the size of the CF card, you may run into issues. But there's also a lot more going on there. Booting in vintage computers was a lot tougher than it is today. If you haven't fdisked and formatted the card on that computer with that DOS version, that's the first problem.

SCSI can solve a lot of these issues. But they will need drivers, so be sure you can get them.
 
After some time abroad I am back :)

About the project, I didn't go any further :(
I am in searching of sandisk tools ATCFWCHG.COM and ndcfwchg.com. I found the ATCFWCHG.COM BUT! I couldn't find ndcfwchg.com

If anyone have it,please send it to vintage-pc@freemail.gr

Μany Thanks!!!!:D
 
I formatted a 2 GB CF card as FAT-16 on my modern system a while back and moved it into a 386 that had a IDE CF slot hooked up to an ISA Super I/O card. It worked great for a couple of weeks, then I accidentally screwed up and managed to erase the CD card. When I tried fdisking the card on the 386 it would only give me 504 MB regardless of the BIOS settings. (This is an old, known problem with early BIOS.) I popped the CF card into my modern machine, fdisked it, and popped it back into the 386. Now DOS was able to format the CF card and see the full 2 GB, but it once I installed DOS on it, I couldn't get it to boot. I spent two days fooling around with it and very nearly pulled all of my hair out, because I *knew* that I could get the system to work with the the full 2 GB, because I already had. *Finally* I remembered 'FDISK /MBR' and a new master boot record on the CF card got everything working again. (This is all under DOS 6.22, by the way...)

As for the CHS values, I believe that if you go the route that I did, as long as you give information that the BIOS thinks is valid and that is the same size (or bigger) as the CF card, if you create the partition on a modern computer, I don't think it really matters. My BIOS is setup for the CF card as 2018 MB. Which is a little bit bigger than the actual card is. Neither DOS nor any program I've thrown at it has had any issues with this.
 
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