I have a pentium II machine with an SD to ide adapter and they're so convenient! I've used Windows 98 and XP on separate SD cards and it's nice to just be able to swap between them without configuring dual booting.

A 386 video with my morning coffee, what a great way to start the day! Thanks Phil!

Phil really love the 8088 to pentium content, sound cards and video cards. It keeps me coming back. I am now trying to learn how to repair motherboards at component level (testing bad caps, integrated circuits) and basics of multimeters. Had some success but eager for that content too your content is awesome!

So nice. That's the exactly config I had as my first pc back in late 93, when I was 9 years old

Disk On Module (DOM) is another good alternative if you don't change drives much and don't want any visible external card interface to "ruin" the vintage exterior. They're a little pricier but that's because they have better write endurance and speeds than flash cards. (Though, for vintage system use, the speed thing makes no difference since even a cheap SD card is able to saturate an IDE bus.) Like with the other solutions you mentioned, they usually work but sometimes they don't. So it's always useful to have a few different options on hand.

You don't need to manually enter drive parameters for type 47. You can just use type 36 which has maximum 504 MB capacity and works fine with SD cards. IDE to SD adapters are really the only option to consider unless you already have CF adapter with cards or older HDD. EZ-Drive will not only increase maximum capacity you can use, but on 386 systems it might increase read/write speeds up to 4x or higher. I don't remember exact values when I've started using it, but it was a massive increase. 504 MB limit is artificial due to BIOS not allowing to set IDE parameters on a controller to their maximum supported values. EZ-Drive fixes that and as side effect it increases raw transfer rates. The only downside of EZ-Drive is that your modern computer might no longer see the partitions on SD card. Mac OS won't see FAT16 partitions at all on SD with EZ-Drive installed, while Windows 10 will only see the first 2 GB partition. Even though 504 MB is more than enough for 386, having 4 GB or larger SD can be useful. 2 GB main partition is enough for DOS and Windows 3.11 along with pretty much all good games you can play on 386 machine. However I use other 2 GB partitions to store data from CD-based games. There's a TSR that can simulate CD-ROM drive from a HDD path. I don't remember it's name, but you'll find it easily on Vogons. That way I can play CD games without CD-ROM. I've tried 3 different drives on my 386 machine and while every drive worked there were errors in data stream. So a virtual CD-ROM from HDD can be really useful.

Phil, I would like to see a video about SCSI storage options for retro computers. I know of the existence of things like Azul SCSI but have never seen them in action. When I can make the time for it, I have several mid-90s machine that would benefit, including PS/2s, Macs, and (especially interesting to me) a couple of RS/6000 workstations.

1. 40-pin IDE industrial flash. Like the 44-pin IDE PCBs used in thin clients, just straight (inline connector). I like them because I don't need IDE cable. 2. I recently got msata-to-ide 44-pin adapters, however I only tried them in Pentiums or newer (CHS vs LBA, like in the sata-IDE adapter metioned; JM20330-based). Of course, 40 to 44 cable/adapter required. 3. Also 2.5" IDE shaped CF adapter (with 2 CFs, master+slave). Again 40-44 adapter required for desktop. But on my Thinkpad 760 it was hit-and-miss with several CF cards (just like not all CF cards work in IDE-CF adapters). Technically not local storage, but in the last months I'm into network booting. Recently I've made a complete setup on a raspberry pi with rpld and mars-nwe (netware emulator; can expose my NAS retro folder to DOS). Can boot a 286, but RPL ROMs are hard to find. I only have RTL8019 working on ISA. PXE would require 386, as I don't know other ways than memdisk (even then, hunting for 386-compatible binaries; 486DLC is the lowest I got it working, technically in 386 MB). Oh Yeah! no capacity limitation on network.

😀 yay, my parents bought me my first pc back in High school. It was a 286.

I ran into the same problem with sata to ide on my pentium 200mmx computer. I probably had bad luck but I gave up trying LOL. I ended up using a Industrial Grade IDE Disk on Module. Works for my needs.

Phil is making 386 storage great! And he can put 200 TB on a 386 DOS machine!

Keep the Retro content coming! I miss the Tuesday videos.

The mention of Western Digital EZ-Drive brings me back lol. There's something that hasn't crossed my mind in a long time.

Thanks for all the great info.. picking up a few of these today.

Nice video! Agree with your sequencing and rationales. I do love the HDD spin up noise of the original classic HDD, especially the MFM drives.

Beautiful 386 Motherboard!

I have one of those SD to IDE adapters -- works great. Of course on an XT or 286, it's just not complete without the four distinct sounds from a classic HD ... seek, read, write, delete.

CF and IDE2SATA is my prefferd system.

Woah! That Cirrus Logic graphics card reminded me of the Cirrus Logic Laguna 3D GPU I used to own. I had no clue as to performance but it worked like a champ!

I found on eBay a 4GB flash on a tiny board, with IDE connection, even without a molex connector.

Short and sweet indeed but very informative and well put together. Well done!

i think another really nice additional to this solution is using xt ide universal bios. i use the rom socket on isa network adapters so i also get network access for ftp. The xt ide bios gives you larger partitions and more reliable booting. Also a third option i see others using are the commercial ide flash modules. It does seems like a nice power in solution.

I bought one of those startech ide to cf adapters. I also bought on of those cf to sd adapters. Well an important note is that those cf to sd adapters are not ide M/S compliant and act no different than a ide to sd adapter, without M/S capability. Hearing the term SX . It brings back the days of saying "Suck X because of no Coprocessor, unlike the DX deluxe version. I still have a couple new sounding 1GB IDE 's in use. They are used as 98se install/swap partition and boot drives. I always set up a swap partition for all Windows variants that I use to keep fragmentation down. Don't forget the possible use of a laptop IDE drive in place of a 3.5 inch with the right adapters if cost and scarcity mattered.

What a machine ! I love the vintage mixed with new tech. It would pretty much be fanless as well , except PSU. would be weird running a 386 without the rattling hard drive

I prefer the SD card option as they are cheap and readily available. I'm using them with front bay device which I wasn't aware of until I watched one of your previous videos.

I prefer to use a nice fast CF adapter and card, and also the XT-IDE universal BIOS ROM in a spare network card. I find the CF cards are faster than SD cards, although that's more noticeable on later machines than the 386. But if I were looking for a solution today I'd probably go with an SD card. As you said, they're more available and the card readers are easier to find too.

Well, the winner for me is the IDE to CF adapter with an SD to CF adapter card inserted inside. You get the best of both - availability and good prices of the storage media (SD/microSD cards) and ease of their use in modern systems; and technical simplicity (and low price) of the IDE to CF adapter along with the possibility to switch it to master/slave as needed, or even use two on a channel (which is not possible with IDE to SD adapters). And the connecting piece in the middle - the SD to CF adapter card - does not cost much as well, and you only ever need one for a single popupated IDE position. Pretty neat, isn't it? :-)

Thank you for telling us about the SATA to IDE issues on a 386. You solved a mystery of mine because I too could not get them to work on a 286 or 386. Don’t know if 486s work.

I managed to program an EPROM for my ISA Ethernet card to enable beyond 504 megabytes in combination with a rear panel CF card slot. I did have a period correct drive originally but, they don’t last forever.

Sata to ide with an ssd. I'm going to try the ide to sd though. Looks about the best.

Currently I prefer CF to IDE adapters because they are available (from Monoprice and others) with an expansion slot bracket which makes it easy to swap cards without opening the PC. So far I haven't found an SD card adapter that includes a bracket.

there's a utility, claaed MHDD it can "cut" HDD''s like 20-40-80-120gb to any size, like 500mb or 8gb and also a utility called Ontrack Disk Manager 7.1 that allows any pсs from 286 onwards to use any IDE HDD up to 8 gb)

We just need a flash based hard drive emulator with a speaker to produce those wonderful startup and head seek sounds. Maybe a setting to toggle the constant bearning whine tho.

In my Pentium III machine (running Windows 2000), I use a CF-to-IDE adapter combined with SD-to-CF and microSD-to-SD adapters in order to finally use a microSD card for storage. Likely not quite as fast as it could be (a SATA-to-IDE adapter and a SATA SSD would be better for that), but at least storage is fairly cheap and convenient to switch out.

Good informative video as always. Because of you I’m using IDE/SD card adapter on four of my retro computers. I found only situation where retro builders must give there attention. It is bandwidth of the SD card. If you want MS DOS and Win 9x up to 98 RTM/FE you don’t care which type of card do you use. Starting from 98SE and Millennium, bandwidth must be higher than 10 mb/s. Or there will be freezes. So my recommendation is 70-90 mb/s SD cards. Also China SSD 32 of 64 gb.

I've managed to find some CF and SD cards with really small capacities (by modern standards) from e-waste recyclers: CF and SD as small as 48MB and 128MB, respectively. Many poeple dump or recycle their obsolete digital cameras without taking memory cards out first; I've seen photos in many SD cards salvaged from broken digital cameras, and the largest capacity was a Sandisk 4GB (which is still quite useful even today).

IT department was throwing away a bunch of e-waste today and I scored some 20gb IDE drives!

Happy Friday Phil! I also like using PATA/IDE to mSATA adapters or DOM for retro machines. I don’t have a 386 or 486, so I don’t know if these solutions would work, but maybe you could give it a shot. I’ve seen DOM and mSATA drives as small as 256MB and 2GB respectively. I also just seen NGFF M.2 to SATA adapters with 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB modules available on eBay and Amazon for cheap, so maybe that may be yet another option to explore. 👍

I like to run old DOS versions of C64, Speccy and Megadrive emulators. No joypad support, but for many games, keyboard is sufficient.

I used to have an desktop on my dads shed and it had an Intel pentium E6500, with an asus p5kpl-e with an fx 3500 sli and it runs quake III arena fine plus my dad used it for work one time in around 2008

Interesting, like!

SD card to ide are the best.

I've found on 386 OEM systems, such as Compaq Deskpros (that don't have a user definable field) they are somewhat picky when it comes to CF cards; newer CF cards with UDMA (512MB or 1GB) tend to throw "1782 Disk Controller Failure" errors and won't boot (also true with more modern IDE/ATA hard drives). I have a bunch of Cisco branded CF cards pulled out of old network equipment (64 or 512MB) that only support PIO and they work flawlessly (the Deskpro 386s/20 that I'm currently staring across the room has a 512MB Cisco CF card configured as Type 61)! Some of the early Compaq EISA systems (386/486) can auto-detect larger CF cards (1-4GB), but will throw a "1740 Fixed Disk 0 Failed Set Block Mode Command", you can bypass this message, boot from floppy, and use blockmd.exe (still obtainable online in SoftPaq SP0970) to disable block mode. From the SoftPaq blurb "BLOCKMD.COM allows the Enabling or Disabling of Block Mode, to allow non-Compaq disk drives to function properly on Compaq EISA machines."

Interesting you didn't mention the Disk-on-module option. I'm not surprised though, they're more expensive than they should be. I've also found that compatibility is variable: they work with a regular Goldstar Prime controller card, but cause the PSU to auto shut down when used in a more advanced SIIG Controller card with dual IDE ports and an option ROM socket.

I wouldn't dream of running Windows from an SD card. I tried it before with Windows98 and the SD starts to fail after a week of use. I haven't tried it for just bare bones DOS install yet. I have also had issues with CF cards when using them in this way but they normally work for a bit longer with windows 9x installed on them but they maybe alright for just DOS. I think either a disk on module is better for DOS or sometimes you can find industrial 2GB or 4GB sata drives. I bought quite a few from ebay at fiver each which can be used via the SATA to IDE adapter. I might do a laptop DOS build with an old Panasonic toughbook CF28 mk1 which drivers are very hard to find for these laptops for running Windows 9X and I have a CF-28 mk1 Win98 recovery disk for it that has all the drivers on it but its not in english so making a DOS laptop would be better I think and it has a CF card as a hard drive.

I kinda accidentally discovered a good method for quickly transferring files from a modern PC to a DOS machine, which is to have a USB zip drive and a parallel zip drive and use the USB model to write them and obviously read them on the parallel drive on DOS. I couldn't get a CF adapter to work on a horrible AST 486 laptop that I have (and it would've been horrible to remove for file transfer). So zip drives turned out to be fantastic since 100MB is pretty massive for DOS games and floppy images are a pain even with a Gotek. Paid 5€ for two USB zip drives and already had a parallel version at home so it worked out nicely

Yup, same list. SD reader have become so dependable now, even with laptop IDE that compared to CF there is no reason to go for CF anymore (especially considering the prices). The laptop IDE to m.2 or to mSATA however are not recommended, they're way too slow. Need to test desktop IDE to mSATA and m.2 later on.

You've asked for video suggestions. I don't miss HDD noise at all so I think it would be interesting to see some kind of fanless 0dB DOS PC build. I already have Termtek TK-3770 but I'm wondering if it's possible to build something better without spending huge money.

I only buy sd card to ide adapter, and sometimes when the bios is too restricted old 20gb ide HDD. These sata adapters will only works correctly starting on pentium 3, I got tones of corrupted data under w9x when you activate the DMA mode especially on SSDs... but PIO mode works under Dos... sometimes...

GOOD JOB :)😺😺😺

This video makes me want to break out in a round of 🎵Lets see how far we've come...🎵

I found that on my old 386 in the BIOS I can set 4095 Cyl 16 Heads and 63 sec to get maximum possible drive of 2GB and it works fine

Are there differences in performance between CF and SD adapter? (some cf cards support ultra-dma)

I really wish to have 386 pc at least when my family have XT286 PC. My family was ahead of time those days, many people wish to have a PC.

I use CF to ide, works great. But there are issue with some (mostly newer) cf cards - it is impossible to boot from some of them because manufacturer like Transcent drop some of the old features I guess. Buy "industrial" CF cards to avoid any troubles.

Great video, my understanding is those SD card adaptors come in two types, one mounts on the motherboard itself and the other at the end of an IDE cable, is that right? Thanks

Have you tried the m.2 to ide adapters?

is there any difference in access time between the 3 methods?

Great video, thank you. Which is more long term reliable, cf or micro so?

On this subject, I only just recently became aware of the Vantec CB-IS200 IDE/SATA converter boards which can be plugged straight into the motherboard IDE headers. Have you used these before? I can't find much said about them.

I run a CF 32GB 60mb/s on my Win98SE and it works amazingly well. Actually faster than the ide to ssd adaptor. Really. Specially compatibility wise. I do have a Q... you never do anything on Mac. Is that on purpose? I was gifted a G3 and it uses an IDE drive, but it won't see my adapters....

I wish to see a video that covers mobos with BIOSs that don't even POST if you plug in an HDD>504MB (be it physical drive or CF/SD card). What are the workarounds possible? (other than upgrading the BIOS). Cheers!

I have not worked on a 386 for quite some time now. Good to know those PATA to SATA adapters don't work.

I played with Pentium II 333MHz, with adapter: - Delock Converter IDE >SATA / SATA>IDE (Item No.: 61635) No good instructions found, and I could not get new 120GB SSD work. Bios always halt when start look hard-drive (Auto detect). After many google searches and YT videos, no luck found yet. So I decide try to partition new SSD with another PC (Linux). Nope. Lucky I have old PCI expansion card from year 2005: - PROMISE SATA300™ TX2plus This worked instantly out of box, I partition SSD again with win98 FDISK, it automatically set boot section which is for me hard to do with Linux OS. After I got SSD work with PCI card, I went back to Delock device and try to figure what is wrong with it and with Pentium II Bios. I tried to look Cylinders and Heads configurations, to setup manually in Bios. From Linux I got it show those values: fdisk -l And it worked :) What a pain.

Video Suggestion: Affordable VGA (Dos resolution 320x200) to HDMI adapters available today. You showed a device doing this in a previous video. I have been unable to find anything that can support 320x200, countless devices support Win98 resolution but nothing I have tried works with msdos res (and I went through several via amazon and ebay). 10 years ago there were plenty of cheaper Vga-Hdmi adapters but unless you want to drop a grand or more for professional gear, nothing works today. Is the device you showed still available? Big fan. love your work.

Phil, what do you think about IDE to SD vs SCSI to SD adapters? All my systems have IDE, so that is the obvious choice, but would it be worth the effort to add a SCSI card? I think this might make an interesting video. Would it be different on say a 386 era vs pentium vs pentium III+ (with ATA/100 or ATA/133)?

Any thoughts on D.O.Ms? Disk on Modules. (Also anyone know how to stop YT making text into links?)

Some people tend to say that CF Cards live longer than SD Cards on such configurations... I'm hoping that not necessarily true. Since It would be a such awesome alternative to IDE/PATA HDDs for Pentium III/Athlon XP PCs with their Capacity.

A big issue with the CF and SD adapters is mounting, you may think that the pci one is good, but the spacing is all sort of wrong and often will not fit on any slot because they will bump into components on he motherboard or the slots themselves.

I have a problem with my laptop with a 486 sx25 cpu, it had a damaged 60MB hard drive, I bought a 512MB cf card and connected using an adapter. The computer displays a hard disk error, the bios shows a value of 60MB that cannot be changed, there is no disk configuration option. Is there any way to get any cf working in this laptop?

hdd seagate st350041 8as is best for retro computers yet hitachi hdd ata100 were good

I use a micro SD / TF card to m.2 in a m.2 to ide 2.5" hdd with a no name Chinese micro sd card.

Hi, your mainboard still has a battery on it that will surely leak. When the time comes, you can build a new one. I have replicated the board. All data can be found in my Github.

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Unfortunately, SD cards have not worked great for me. The more motherboards you test (especially older boards from the 386/486 era), the more you are likely to run into very weird issues with these SD to IDE adapters. And I do mean VERY weird issues. On one such 486 system, I was actually getting video artifacts and weird sound noises/static that turned out to be caused by the damned SD card adapter. I switched to CF cards (which are natively IDE), and all issues disappeared. Furthermore, even on newer systems, I've found that SD cards, even though they should be fast, can actually cause performance issues (which can even be felt in certain games, when new areas are loading).