dotmatrix
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- Joined
- Jan 5, 2022
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- 5
You aren't alone. Hard drive or no driveThis is actually a pretty standard thing to do these days, I'm probably one of the last holdouts left still using "spinning rust" for my data storage on my legacy systems. I think most people on XT/AT systems tend to use the XT-IDE cards though with the CF attachment. I've been toying with going this route with my laptops eventually but those are kind of O.T. for this subforum since they're all 486+.
Yes CF cards can be used with those adapters. No software required. Sometimes there are compatibility problems with either the card or how it is formatted. So you may need to screw around a bit.I have an old 286 era IBM which I would like to image the HDD for backup. Got me thinking once the spinner goes bad what is the modern alternative? I have seen IDE to CF adapters on the web. Can one of these be used, along with some emulation software, as an alternative HDD to the spinners?
Even if you dont want cf cards now, grab them. They have skyrocketed in price past few years.
and cf cards or small sd/microsd will be insane as well. Grab the small stuff (16mb-2gb) while you can
BigFoots for the winYou aren't alone. Hard drive or no drive
I have one I grabbed specifically for the amusement value.BigFoots for the win
In my younger years I wanted some of those drives just because they share the name with the Monster Truck.I have one I grabbed specifically for the amusement value.
No bent pins yet. But I have had one back itself out of the connector shell while inserting a card.Niiiiiccceeee on the SD adapter. I have had bad luck with CF pins bending in the past. If you use a 64GB card what is the available memory to the PC? Can you split up into several drives?
Memory and HDD space are separate things. You're wanting to know about HDD space. As mentioned, MS-DOS limits maximum addressable HDD space to 8.4GB per drive and 2.1GB per partition. (4 partitions of 2.1GB each, or more partitions with reduced space) You'd lose anything beyond the 8.4GB limit. Read more here: https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO-4.htmlNiiiiiccceeee on the SD adapter. I have had bad luck with CF pins bending in the past. If you use a 64GB card what is the available memory to the PC? Can you split up into several drives?
I've got two systems with then installed. The Redstone XT-Turbo with XT-IDE hdd card has a 2.1 gig drive and my 1989 386DX33 system with 4gig hdd and EZDriveDDO software. I've had no issues whatsoever with them and have four spare. Performance is perfectly fine for these class of systems.In my younger years I wanted some of those drives just because they share the name with the Monster Truck.
Niiiiiccceeee on the SD adapter. I have had bad luck with CF pins bending in the past. If you use a 64GB card what is the available memory to the PC? Can you split up into several drives?
What about XUB? How do you get disk firmware loaded?Or forget about CF cards and use one of these instead:
In my jaded experience CF cards are junk. Okay, maybe that's going a bit far, but I have had way more compatibility issues with them than I have with these adapters, especially with XTIDE cards. (CF cards *usually* work okay on real 16 bit IDE ports. Usually.)
I use these SD adapters with "high-endurance" 64GB SD cards in my XTIDE's (where you can only really use about 8GB because of DOS' limitations) because, well, the card's $10 and the adapter's $12. If the manufacturer's rating for those high-endurance SD cards are even close to accurate I could set my Tandy 1000 writing the card in an endless loop and not worry about wearing it out until, well, probably substantially after I'm going to be worn out.
Or forget about CF cards and use one of these instead:
In my jaded experience CF cards are junk. Okay, maybe that's going a bit far, but I have had way more compatibility issues with them than I have with these adapters, especially with XTIDE cards. (CF cards *usually* work okay on real 16 bit IDE ports. Usually.)
I use these SD adapters with "high-endurance" 64GB SD cards in my XTIDE's (where you can only really use about 8GB because of DOS' limitations) because, well, the card's $10 and the adapter's $12. If the manufacturer's rating for those high-endurance SD cards are even close to accurate I could set my Tandy 1000 writing the card in an endless loop and not worry about wearing it out until, well, probably substantially after I'm going to be worn out.
What about XUB? How do you get disk firmware loaded?
I had two of these, purchased from Amazon recently. I could not get them to work reliably, either on a jrIDE or a modern Athlon system. The Athlon system running Linux would show the card and if I wrote the boot sector it would be visible/usable, but it did not survive reboots. A USB reader confirmed the data was on the card at block 0, but this particular device could not reliably read the card. (I tried with two systems, two different SD cards, and two different SD to IDE adapters.)
Have you noticed any flakiness?
I hope to boot to Acronis CD to clone the drive. Would that work?
Use can usethe PLOP boot loader on floppy disk to boot CDs on 486s. i haven't tried it on anything earlier though. It can be installed on a systems mbr as well. https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanagers.htmlProbably not. I cannot image most modern bootable utilities supper anything older than a 386. And booting from CD isn’t likely on anything older than a pentium. You might find a scsi card that has a bios that would allow booting from a scsi CD drive, but I’ve never don’t it personal on an ISA system.