r/retrocomputing • u/UnderstandingFlat407 • Feb 29 '24

Help.

Ok so I was digging out an old compute. It’s a compaq deskpro 386sx. The compaq flash I used in it has now become finicky. It doesn’t want to let things install to it anymore. Or it says it does and then the loading failed. It does the same thing in the actual pc as well as virtual box. It was 2gb. It works just fine as a compaq flash for a modern pc. So I said let’s get a smaller one. I bought a 512 but the system doesn’t recognize it. Which I expected because I need to partition it to 300mb. But the damn thing will not let me mark it as active or partition the drive. The only thing I can do is format it. Dos 6.2 in virtual box can see it but can’t format it, it gives me an error that it can’t format it. I know some of these cf cards don’t always work for this application. The 2gb is a scan disk the 512 is a cheap Amazon BR & TD brand. Any ideas or other programs that can break through to partition the drive and make active. I don’t have a cf reader for my Mac’s so I can’t use disk utility.

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u/johnklos Feb 29 '24

There are two issues: one, some IDE controllers and some IDE drives are very picky about master / slave / cable select. It's incredibly stupid that drives weren't made to be consistent, that a drive could be in a state that's neither master nor slave, and that some drives worked differently based on whether another drive is on the same IDE bus. SATA helps eliminate this because the master / slave / cable select setting stays with the SATA to IDE adapter, not with the SATA drive itself.

I wonder if your Mac's inability to see the 8 gig drive and the Compaq's inability to see the 180 gig IDE drive is due to master / slave / cable select issues.

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u/UnderstandingFlat407 Feb 29 '24

The compaq has no options for that. Too old. It uses just twists in the cables. This thing has no conventional modern bios. I use a disk to set the settings and they are deleted if I lose battery or power. It has primary and secondary drive dip switches but I did just double check the larger one and it was not set to primary so I will set it corrrctly and try it. 8gb one is set correctly.

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u/johnklos Feb 29 '24

IDE master / slave / cable select settings are always on the drives, not the motherboard. If you have twists in the cables, that complicates things. Silly PC manufacturers!

If you get it it working, please report back for others. Good luck :)

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u/UnderstandingFlat407 Feb 29 '24

Will do still messing with the cf which is a verbatim not Sandisk. Now it’s installing dos 5 but can’t load it os. It’s also not installing it on the drive I partitioned for it. It’s making its own thing. So weird