• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

CompactFlash adapter not working with ISA IDE controller

M

Malvineous

Experienced Member
Joined
Jun 18, 2010
Messages
119
Location
Brisbane, Australia
Hi all,

I'm hoping to use a CompactFlash card with my 286, but as I have just gotten the XTIDE BIOS working, I'd like to use an original 16-bit ISA IDE controller, rather than one of the modern CF ISA cards.

I was planning to use one of those CF adapters that plugs directly into the IDE slot, as I have a few that work well with Pentium II era machines.

However when I connect the CF adapter to my ISA IDE controller, the machine won't POST. Depending on the controller I get anything from "no video card" beeps, to nothing at all - no sound and no video. If I unplug the CF adapter then the machine boots fine, and I tried adding a Seagate 13GB drive just to see if that would work, and that works fine - I can even boot the 286 from that without problems.

Does anyone have any idea why the CF adapter would cause the system to not even come up? The fact that there are "no video" beeps suggests to me that it is somehow stopping the ISA bus from working correctly.

My hunch is that it's something to do with power. The CF adapter I'm using can be powered through IDE pin 20, which is normally missing as it's the key pin (but some boards like the Via EPIA series supply +5V on this pin so you don't need a separate power connector.) All my ISA adapters have pin 20 present, so I'm wondering whether they connect it to GND. It's possible my cheap CF adapter connects pin 20 directly to the +5V line on the power connector so it can accept power delivered either way, assuming pin 20 will also be +5V or be absent entirely. If this is correct, it would result in a short circuit if the IDE controller connects pin 20 to GND.

I can't find any "old" pinout of the IDE connector so I'm not sure what the original assignment was of pin 20, if it used to be different.

Has anyone seen this problem before, or have any other ideas what could be causing the issue?
 
Malvineous said:
Has anyone seen this problem before, or have any other ideas what could be causing the issue?
Click to expand...

Aitotat did some testing and found that some combinations of IDE interfaces and CF adapters don't work together.

I guess your CF adapter is the same (or similar) as adapter B in that image? If there's no jumper to disable power via pin 20 on your adapter then I suppose the easiest solution is to buy another CF adapter unless you can modify yours somehow.
 
@Kyodai: I definitely mean pin 20. If you look at the Wikipedia article they list pin 20 as missing or VCC. This is a recent, probably unofficial, addition to the connector and is used by embedded systems specifically to run low-power devices like CF cards. I have a motherboard that supplies power on pin 20, and the CF adapter I am using can make use of it if it's available.

@Chuck: pinouts.ru is my first port of call, but you can see in the link you posted they have pin 20 as "key", i.e. the pin should be physically missing. All my ISA IDE cards have pin 20 present, so I'm wondering whether there is an earlier IDE standard that assigned pin 20 to another function, and it was later removed to be a key pin. Like I say, all the sites I can find, including pinouts.ru, list pin 20 as a key pin so I'm wondering whether anyone here knows of any earlier standard. Maybe it was a key pin from the start, I'm just looking for confirmation one way or the other.

@Krille: Interesting - yes my adapter is the exact same as adapter B in the photo. Looks like that's the one with the worst compatibility!

I've used a multimeter to check whether there's a connection between +5V and pin 20 but there isn't, so it doesn't look like it's related to a power issue after all.
 
Last edited:
Malvineous said:
Does anyone have any idea why the CF adapter would cause the system to not even come up? The fact that there are "no video" beeps suggests to me that it is somehow stopping the ISA bus from working correctly.
Click to expand...
If that had happened to me, my first thought would have been, "I have plugged the CF-to-IDE adapter in the wrong way."

Malvineous said:
@Krille: Interesting - yes my adapter is the exact same as adapter B in the photo. Looks like that's the one with the worst compatibility!
Click to expand...
The type I use is at [here]. Comparing both sides of it to the 'B' in the photo that Krille pointed to, the only different that I can see is labelling one. I have a few of them, and have no trouble with them. I power them from pin 20 of the IDE interface. I only use SanDisk and Cisco CFs of 32 MB size.
 
modem7 said:
If that had happened to me, my first thought would have been, "I have plugged the CF-to-IDE adapter in the wrong way."
Click to expand...

I've done that and toasted the adapter and CF card in doing so :-(

The type I use is at [here]. Comparing both sides of it to the 'B' in the photo that Krille pointed to, the only different that I can see is labelling one. I have a few of them, and have no trouble with them. I power them from pin 20 of the IDE interface. I only use SanDisk and Cisco CFs of 32 MB size.
Click to expand...

I have that same adapter/Labeling but for a single CF and all the Adapters that Aitotat tested, All of them work fine when connected to "Certain" 16-bit IDE/ATA, IDE/Floppy Multi I/O cards in my XT 5160, Other IDE/Floppy Multi I/O cards i have/had either just dont work or cause a no boot situation when any of the CF adapters are connected, Though said Multi I/O cards work perfectly in a 16-bit slot. It was some time ago that i tested them and never got around to try and find out why some caused a no boot situation.
 
modem7 said:
If that had happened to me, my first thought would have been, "I have plugged the CF-to-IDE adapter in the wrong way."
Click to expand...

I also had the same thought, but I definitely had pin 1 to pin 1. I did swap it anyway just in case something was mislabelled, but that just made it worse - still no POST and nothing on the screen, but no beeps either!

My ultimate goal was to get the machine working with a small SATA SSD, and this arrived last night. I plugged it in via an IDE-to-SATA adapter, and...same problem as the IDE-to-CF adapter. "No video" beeps.

So I guess there is some sort of compatibility issue there, but what it is I have no idea. Really weird that a few 16-bit ISA cards seem to have no problems with them! I guess I will have to go through mine and see which are compatible and which aren't. I should write down the results somewhere too for future reference...

@Chuck: Good to know that pin 20 is N/C in your cards at least, I guess it really was this way from the start. Thanks for checking.
 
Malvineous said:
@Kyodai: I definitely mean pin 20. If you look at the Wikipedia article they list pin 20 as missing or VCC. This is a recent, probably unofficial, addition to the connector and is used by embedded systems specifically to run low-power devices like CF cards. I have a motherboard that supplies power on pin 20, and the CF adapter I am using can make use of it if it's available.
Click to expand...

Every embedded system I've ever come across that needed power for an IDE device either used the 44 pin laptop IDE header or had a wire harness come out of the board via a proprietary header. I've never seen an IDE device use pin 20 for power, but that doesn't mean they couldn't exist.

You could try bending or cutting off pin 20 and use the JP2 header to supply power to the board via a dongle. Just make sure you don't get the polarity backwards.
 
I've only seen them in the last few years so wouldn't surprise me if most embedded boards didn't have them (I know my last message sounded like it is used by many embedded boards, but what I meant was the change to supply power on pin 20 was made for the benefit of embedded systems.)

I happened to have ordered a different IDE to SATA converter - one that plugs into the drive and lets you attach a normal 40-wire IDE cable - and I just tried this and it doesn't quite work either. Unlike the other adapters, this one actually lets the system POST, but the IDE controller doesn't work properly. XTIDE detects a primary master with a blank name, and the BIOS tells me the floppy controller has failed (which is on the same ISA card as the IDE controller.) The floppy motor/LED turns on during the POST, but it doesn't seek. Booting from the floppy returns an error, and after unplugging the IDE cable so the floppy drive works again, I can no longer boot from the disk so it looks like track 0 has been erased.

I am wondering whether the fact that this adapter is connected via a cable is what allowed the POST to go further? It sounds so much like some sort of short circuit on the data/address/clock lines, because it's funny how now there's a long IDE cable in between the adapter and the controller (limiting the current), slightly more things are working. It's probably not that but the symptoms do seem similar. This adapter is also missing pin 20 so that rules out any issues with that.

What surprises me most is that a mechanical hard drive works, yet all these IDE adapters don't! What could they possibly be doing that seems to be electrically incompatible with an early IDE controller card??
 
I've tried the CF adapter with no CF card present and I still get the same result, so I think the problems are happening before it even gets to speak to the CF card.
 
Maybe the board doesn't have an IDE header after all, I suppose there is a chance it could be one of the earlier 8-bit IDE-like interfaces.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top