Cloning a IDE hard drive? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: iXod
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2019, 12:26:35 am
content: Someone has asked me to clone an old 3.5-inch IDE hard drive. The computer is in an old CNC mill and is running DOS 6.2 (so says the hand-written sticker on it). The drive is running fine now but the owner is thinking ahead when the old drive will die and wants a clone ready.The IDE drive is 260 MB (yes, megabytes). I can buy a IDE 250 GB on Amazon for US$16. Is there a conflict using such a "large" drive on such an old DOS version?What I have to work with is an old Lenovo laptop running W7-Pro, with USB ports. Will this OS/computer work with cloning software?I see several enclosures/adapters for IDE/USB on Amazon (). Will there be issues using such an adapter?The datasheethttps://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-drives-hdd/ibm/DSAA-3360-DESKSTAR-365MB-3-5-SL-IDE-AT.html]https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-drives-hdd/ibm/DSAA-3360-DESKSTAR-365MB-3-5-SL-IDE-AT.html]https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-drives-hdd/ibm/DSAA-3360-DESKSTAR-365MB-3-5-SL-IDE-AT.html] https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-drives-hdd/ibm/DSAA-3360-DESKSTAR-365MB-3-5-SL-IDE-AT.html]https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-drives-hdd/ibm/DSAA-3360-DESKSTAR-365MB-3-5-SL-IDE-AT.html]https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-drives-hdd/ibm/DSAA-3360-DESKSTAR-365MB-3-5-SL-IDE-AT.html]https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-drives-hdd/ibm/DSAA-3360-DESKSTAR-365MB-3-5-SL-IDE-AT.htmlI see for the old drive doesn't show a jumper for write-protection. Is there a simple hack to enable WP? It would be a disaster if the software were to write to the source drive...And finally my question: what software should I use to clone the drive? Recommendations are welcome for a utility that you have personally used.Thanks.

author: ve7xen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2019, 01:12:24 am
content: Quote from: iXod on November 19, 2019, 12:26:35 amThe BIOS is the bigger problem, there were various 'large drive' thresholds through the years, which mostly depends on the BIOS. I believe DOS only supported hard disks up to 2GB. In both cases, my recollection is that the disks would still work, just be limited at whatever the capacity limit of either the OS or the BIOS was. That was a long time ago though... My suggestion would be to get a 512MB industrial compact flash (forexample) and passive adapter (example) - it is electrically identical to IDE - instead of an old spinning disk that is much larger than needed.QuoteIt should, but I'd really suggest booting an OS that is not going to automatically mount a FAT partition that appears. I suggest bootingSystemRescueCDand using ddrescue to clone the disk.QuoteUSB to IDE interfaces are pretty widely available, and should present a block device to the OS, so if you do a blockwise clone of the disk, it will end up identical to the original. Rather than an enclosure I suggest a dongle type device that can connect to IDE40/IDE44/SATA, which will be more useful for future disk cloning activities (example).If you use CF instead of IDE, using a CF reader should work too.QuoteNot possible to do in hardware with IDE (at least not without actually implementing the IDE interface and proxying commands to the disk). This is why I suggest using an OS that will not mount the disk without an explicit command, rather than Windows which opportunistically mounts everything. You can still make mistakes though, so be very careful.Quoteddrescue as mentioned above. I suggest initially reading an image file, so there is no risk of overwriting the source disk, and then writing that image to the new disk as a second step. I don't have a suggestion for Windows.

author: wilfred
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2019, 04:20:55 am
content: Rather than cloning the drive I would first try to look at just what software is used and attempt to build that on a compact flash card mounted in an IDE-CF card adapter. They are still available on Ebay. DOS software should be possible to copy over in the same computer currently in use. Then try proving it works OK by booting from the CF card. CF cards should be easily copied using a USB card reader on your laptop if you want an extra copy.DOS has the ATTRIB command to mark files and directories readonly but I just don't recall if you can mark an entire disk readonly. DOS may not like not being able to update the root directory amongst others for file access times and other system functions.

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2019, 04:50:54 am
content: This almost certainly isn't going to go well. An old PC that's been living in a machine shop could fail at the drop of a hat. Its probably heavily contaminated with general 'spoo' from vaporised cutting fluids, and dust loaded with metal particulates. Disturb anything inside it, or even transport it any significant distance and the odds of it booting again aren't in your favour.Pre- PATA/LBA IDE hard drives need the BIOS to be configured (in the CMOS settup) with the correct CHS (cylinders, heads, sectors per track) parameters for the filesystem to be readable. Some BIOSes and drives supported auto-detection of CHS parameters, but many older and smaller ones did not. If the CHS parameters don't match exactly the disk image will be scrambled, and may be missing significant quantities of data.You *may* get lucky and find a USB PATA adapter that mounts the drive with the correct CHS parameters, but the odds aren't in your favour. Also, newer motherboards with PATA interfaces often don't support old CHS IDE drives, and if they do, its often auto-detect only, with no guarantee the autodetection will match the CHS drive geometry configured on the old PC.IMHO the first thing to do is confirm the DOS version, and make a filesystem copy to another legacy box to the suggested CF card in a CF to IDE adapter, pre-formatted, and made bootable with the same DOS version. This can be done non-invasively if you run MSDOS 6.2's INTERSVR utility on the original system and cable it parallel port to parallel port with a parallel Laplink cable to the target, which needs to boot with an OS between DOS 6.2 and Win98, and the interlnk driver from DOS 6.2 configured in its config.sys, after Intersvr is up and running on the old PC. Use whatever filesystem clone utility you like - Win95 or higher XCOPY is good enough with the correct switches as long as you don't let it overwrite the critical MSDOS system files on the target disk that make it bootable, as on DOS that old, they need to be at particular locations on the hard disk that XCOPY doesn't know about.If you are lucky, the copy will boot and run whatever software the CNC system uses. If you are unlucky, it may have proprietary software that utilises some sort of protection scheme and an exact image copy with the same CHS geometry may be required.If it comes down to needing an image copy, and you haven't got lucky with a USB PATA adapter (see above), odds are its going to get very difficult unless you can find a legacy disk clone utility that will boot and run from floppy, and the old PC has a working floppy drive and a second IDE port (usually used for a CDROM), that you can use to attach the target CF drive and adapter. Due to the contamination issues, expect to have to replace any PATA or floppy ribbon cables you disturb, and have plenty of contact cleaner handy!

author: maginnovision
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2019, 04:53:57 am
content: When I did this with my Prema multimeter I used a startech pci-e ide controller and dd to copy it to a CF card. It was the only thing I tried that actually worked and let it boot.

author: Daixiwen
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2019, 08:07:27 am
content: I have usedClonezillawith USB adapters in the past without any problem.But for this use case what I would suggest is to put the system in a virtual machine, using either VMWare or VirtualBox. That way you can run it on newer hardware in case the old PC fails.

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2019, 08:36:16 am
content: Virtualisation is not an option if the PC is the actual CNC controller or is closely coupled to it via proprietary interface card(s). OTOH if all it does is store jobs and send G-code to the real CNC controller over its serial port, then it may well be possible to modernise that and if its just a bunch of batch scripts and menus + the accumulated job files, it should be possible to rewrite the batch scripting to get it to run natively on a current OS and current hardware. Been there, done that.If its a bunch of ISA interface cards and real-time software running them under DOS, there's no guarantee it will even run with a faster processor, so short of complete replacement with a new CNC controller, the only options to improve the odds of keeping it running is to acquire, test and recondition period appropriate hardware, ideally a whole PC of the same model. If that can be done, swapping the proprietary cards into the replacement PC may be worth it due to the lower risk of a fully reconditioned PSU frying irreplaceable parts, then the original PC can be stripped, cleaned and reconditioned.

author: Electro Detective
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2019, 09:06:24 am
content: Suggest to make an image of the IDE hard drive ASAPwith an older version of Acronis, Ghost, Clonezillaor any decent program that allows options of what to include in the image, like image boot, image ALL,and the straight up raw image save of everything as it is on the current drive, warts and all.Make images in all those flavors, make copies..and once done, take your time as to which way to go nextMe personally, I would buy a handful of good used or NOS exact same 260 MB hard drives at any fair price,wack them on a PC with IDE sockets,do the image to drive thing, test them on the CNC machine,= job doneand spares to boot (there's a pun there I think)

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2019, 10:38:07 am
content: Yep any disk cloning utility that can do a direct 1:1 sector copy will do like one ones suggested above. This direct copy is needed so that the boot sectors carry over.I would at least attempt to put in a old industrial CompactFlash card in an IDE adapter into it with the image and see if the old PC motherboard can boot from it. I would expect the flash card to be more reliable long term in such a harsh enviorment. But id still keep the hard drive in the case, disconnected and sealed in a plastic bag, wrapped in foam as a backup in case bit rot kills the flash memory. As far as i know magnetic storage is still the best kind of long term storage solution.

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2019, 11:01:54 am
content: An old IDE drive taken out of regular use has a significant chance of failing due to stiction just sitting on the shelf. A 250MB IDE drive and MSDOS 6.2 would date the system to the mid '90's, so that drive has been running whenever the machine has for the last 25 years. . .IMHO it would be foolish to trust it as the only backup, and as I mentioned earlier, I'd get as much data off it as possible in-situ. Even if you have to resort to removing and imaging it, having a copy of the filesystem will be useful if the image turns out to be partially corrupt.Once you have the data, either a filesystem copy, or a disk image, that can be archived and backed up as many times as you need for security, together with the tools and information needed to reconstruct a bootable drive from it.If you have to image it, take a first shot at it with something dumb like DD, that won't force it to retry multiple times, homing and re-seeking to try to read corrupted data, as if the drive is on its last legs, that sort of intensive activity can kill it.Imaging in-situ and non-invasively to a file on the hard drive of a second PC is possible if you've got an imaging utility that runs under plain MSDOS, the original system can still be booted from floppy and you make a DOS boot floppy that uses INTERSVR/INTERLNK to mount a volume on the second PC on the original PC for the imaging utility to save to. Don't expect it to be fast - 80KB/sec is on the high side for a standard parallel port connection, so it could easily take a couple of hours for a 250MB drive.If you do an insitu filesystem copy, DEBUG (which should be present if it has a 'vanilla' MSDOS 6.x installation) can be used to grab the MBR*, boot sector and partition table, and stuff them in a file for later use if you need to manually patch together a bootable image, but if you've identified the DOS version correctly, you shouldn't need that as its easy enough to use a VM to recreate a bootable drive from an image of the original MSDOS system disks, using FDISK and FORMAT /S then copy the filesystem contents onto it. Depending on the VM software, it may well be possible to mount the raw CF card in an IDE adapter on a USB to PATA adapter as IDE drive 0 of the VM.However if the old PC BIOS has geometry limitations, it may not boot from a CF card written on a more modern PC and you may have to make a real MSDOS boot floppy with FDISK, FORMAT and INTERSVR on it, and format the CF card on the old PC to make it bootable on the old PC then copy the filesystem back onto it using INTERSVR and INTERLNK + your preferred file management utility.Its not my first time at this rodeo, and I've had to cope with getting data off a system with no usable floppy drive (and no way to fit one) or CD drive or bootable USB capability, and no way to read the hard drive on another system. Hint: Laplink 3 is your friend as long as it boots DOS and has a working COM port, as it can be installed onto a DOS system over a serial link!* Reading outside DOS visible volumes (i.e. with a drive letter) with DEBUG e.g to backup the MBR, is only possible by keying in an assembly language routine to do a raw disk read to RAM and executing it from DEBUG. Therefore if the hard drive is reasonably healthy or the floppy drive works, you may want to use a better disk sector editor utility that can handle raw disk access.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2019, 01:59:56 pm
content: Quote from: Ian.M on November 19, 2019, 11:01:54 amYes i did mean store it on a different hard drive, not the original one.It doesn't matter if its a SATA drive or something, just something you can use to get the image back off it. But i suppose no harm in leaving the original drive in there too as a just in case, but put a label on it saying its old and worn.I have a few HP instruments that have a critical boot floppy disk, for that one i made two copies of it, then sealed up the original and one copy in a plastic bag and placed it inside the instrument along with a label on back saying boot disks are inside. The other copy went into the floppy drive to be used as the working disk. Im not sure how long lived floppies are. I wanted to also throw in a SD card with the image, but i couldn't get my USB floppy drive to read these weird non PC format floppies.

author: iXod
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2019, 08:57:06 pm
content: Thanks to all responders.Some points:* the inside of the mill’s cabinet is spotless. No oil or even dust, so connectors are old but virtually unused.* I like the idea of CF to replace the HDD. Multiple cloned cards at hand for (infrequent) serial failures.I’m reluctant to use the PC inside the mill for any monkeying around (cloning or other DOS’ing). So...I’d like to use modern hardware to do the cloning of the drive into CF memory card. I see someone has installed DOS 6.22 into VirtualBox. This plus a couple of USB adapters (IDE and CF).Observations and comments welcome.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2019, 09:17:51 pm
content: My friends shop has a bunch of 90s-early 2000s era CNC machines and has replaced the hard drives in most of them with SSDs of some sort, I can find out what they're using. Pretty sure they used a standard PC to clone the drives which were mostly 2.5" IDE.

author: ve7xen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2019, 10:03:18 pm
content: @Ian.M makes a great point about drive geometry, I had totally forgotten about this, but he's right - a modern PC or USB adapter will likely not work with this old (presumably) CHS disk.Which makes things trickier. Assuming that's the case you can either try to clone it in situ onto a second IDE device in the same PC (XCOPY or some old disk cloning utility - I only recall Norton Ghost but I'm sure there are others), or via the serial/parallel port using INTERLINK.

author: digsys
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 19, 2019, 10:50:20 pm
content: I have done / still domanyold industrial machine HDD backups - depending on the machine, my usual route is -Buy 512MB > 2GB HDDs new or smaller ones 2nd hand. Partition off the max size allowed for the machine and forget the rest ie unformatted, sometimes I'm only left with 10-20MB, but who cares :-)I use Terrabyte Imager and one of those IDE 3.5" / 2.5" / USB / SATA dongles to create a raw image of the HDD. That way I have unlimited copies should I screw up :-)I keep an old ISA / PCI motherboard just for this work. I either work in DOS622 or XP3 for all this work.Then Restore the image to any one of the other drives OR other media IF the machine allows it. I've had some damn temperamental CNC / turret punches etc in the past. One some occasions I've had to trawl aliexpress / alibaba for old exact matches, and never had a failed conversion / backup (touch wood).

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2019, 11:02:08 pm
content: Reminds me of my SE/30, it has a 72GB 2.5" SCSI blade server drive, with a pair of 2GB partitions and the rest empty space. 2GB is the partition limit of the OS and is an absurd amount of space. The 2.5" drives were the only ones i could find that didn't sound like a jet engine and they are relatively low power which is good since the power supplies in the compact Macs were never known to have a lot of headroom.I forgot to mention, CF cards also work well as hard drives in old IDE systems, I've got one in my XT using a XTIDE board.

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 20, 2019, 12:02:57 am
content: You can buy IDE flash drives, that are 8 GB or 16 GB in size. Some of these have the 44pin IDE connector (IDE for laptops), but you can use simple adapters to convert them to 40 pin + separate molex connector, the adapters are everywhere...Here's some examples:https://www.ebay.com/itm/Apacer-8GB-44-Pin-IDE-Flash-Memory-NOTEBOOK-DOC-DOM-FLASH/303346711339?hash=item46a0df7b2b:g:5w4AAOSwCNlb7m0o40 pin :https://www.ebay.com/itm/8-0GB-TRANSCEND-40-PIN-IDE-FLASH-MODULE-PATA-DOM-DISK-ON-MODULE-HDD/153724033136?hash=item23caaa9870:g:gP0AAOSw~K9dzNKD44 pinhttps://www.ebay.com/itm/8GB-IDE-44-PIN-SSD-drive-flash-memory-module-thin-client-DE4PA-08GD51AC1DN-B147/333078880717?hash=item4d8d0c61cd:g:2BIAAOSw9bpcaWHQanother 40 pin :https://www.ebay.com/itm/8GB-LeiDisk-Industrial-DOM-IDE-flash-Disk-On-Module-40pin-with-cable/153573398968?hash=item23c1b019b8:g:aagAAOSwUb5bkkBband another same model as above link :https://www.ebay.com/itm/Top-Sale-8GB-Disk-On-Module-40pin-IDE-Flash-Disk-Industrial-DOM-for-Soft-Route/293191117530?hash=item44438d6ada:g:H6YAAOSwoMddV6R9Such old computers may have problems reading big drives. I remember there was a problem with drives bigger than around 33 GB, but even before that DOS couldn't use drives bigger than around 8.5 GBSeehttps://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO-4.htmlWhen 160GB and higher drives appeared I remember they had a jumper making them show up as127under 137 GB, to work on computers that couldn't handle more than that.... that was another limitation.As for making a disk image of the original drive, I would install freeDos on one of these 8 GB drives (make a 512 MB - 1 GB FAT 12 or something like that partition) and boot from it (if the bios supports booting from 2nd ide drive).Maybe create a second partition in which you'd save the disk image file as it's created.Then simply use some dos disk imaging tool to make the drive disk image.For example, see :http://www.partition-recovery.com/download.htmor active disk for dos (scroll down for free dos version) :https://www.lsoft.net/diskimage.aspxWhen done, remove the drive from the dos computer, connect it to another computer (using a ide to sata adapter or whatever)Alternatively, you could probably use a null modem cable to sloooowly transfer the image to another computer that has a serial port.See interlink :http://www.pcxt-micro.com/dos-interlink.htmlor File Maven:https://www.briggsoft.com/fmdos.htm

author: Rasz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 20, 2019, 02:27:27 pm
content: about bios size limit, by far the best guide on the internet:size barriershttps://web.archive.org/web/20130930200050fw_/http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/size.htmbios translationhttps://web.archive.org/web/20130521200656fw_/http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/modes.htmsadly only archive.org version, most likely domain lapsed and now its a SEO/amazon affiliates spam mill under original addressquick and dirty guidehttp://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/bioslim.htmCHS mapping was standardized and shouldnt be a problem between motherboards, but USB-PATA converters are another story. Some outright refuse to work with pre LBA drives, others screw mapping.Most important thing: Maketriplesure which drive is the source when making a clone

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 20, 2019, 02:31:47 pm
content: +1 for compact flash.You can still get them in sizes that the bios will recognize.One thing to be aware of with CF is that that some adapters re-purpose the key pin on the IDE plug/connector.This means there is a pin where normally there wouldn't be. So any IDE cable that has a plug in this pin slot may not work for you.You may need to source an IDE cable that does not have the pin plugged.Should be easy to find, just something to be aware of.You could also drill out the plug.Here's an example of the pin plug i mean. You can see it in the center of the connector.

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 20, 2019, 02:54:34 pm
content: Quote from: Rasz on November 20, 2019, 02:27:27 pmFirst, thanks for the valuable links.Although CHS mapping was supposed to be standardized, a few really old PC BIOSes didn't always support the full number of heads or sectors (usually due to an off-by-one error in limit checking code or similar bugs) and more had limited drive types available to choose from with preset CHS parameters. If you encounter a PC that has one of these issues that's been fitted with a newer hard drive than was anticipated at the time its BIOS was built, its quite likely to have been configured to use less than the full capacity of the drive and if the drive is autoconfigured in another PC with normal bug-free CHS support, or configured manually according to the CHS parameters on its label, you'll get blocks of garbage data interspersed with the real data.

author: granzeier
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2019, 01:45:47 pm
content: Another possibility is to use an external tape drive. I have a couple QIC-80 drives (one Conner, and one BackPack) which plug into the parallel printer port. These would come with a tape utility which gets copied onto a bootable floppy. If your CNC system uses less than 100MB, then you could also use a Zip drive - or use the Zip250 drive. If you make the boot floppy from the system that you are backing up, then it is simple.You boot from the floppy and run the utility, which then copies the entire disk - without regard to cylinders, heads or sectors. When you need to restore, you just put a new hard drive into the computer (or another,) format it to boot to the version of DOS that was on the old drive, and use the utility to restore the system. It even works if the new drive is a totally different size, or geometry.Does anyone here know if dd can read a drive (if=) and not do a complete copy, but just the data? Then the image could be restored onto a different-sized drive. All of the imaging that I have done with dd copies the entire disk, partitions and all, and can only be restored to a drive of exactly the same size (or bigger - but then you only have access to the original amount of space.)

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2019, 03:42:27 pm
content: You can tell dd how much you want to copy.But in general you would want to copy the whole thing so that if you copy it back on any compatible hard drive of sufficient size it will work. The first sectors around the partition table are important to make it boot correctly. But if you want to expand it to the full size of the disk all you have to do is also install gparted in linux. This tool lets you resize the existing partition to span it out while keeping everything else intact so it should still boot correctly.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2019, 04:10:25 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on November 19, 2019, 11:02:08 pmThese days, you can also find SCSI2SD boards that allow the use of SD cards. Eg:https://store.inertialcomputing.com/SCSI2SD-v6-p/scsi2sd-v6-revf.htmHave you ever tried? I have heard of mixed results using them in old Macs.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2019, 09:00:34 pm
content: Yes I built a couple of SCSI2SD boards and they do work, but I haven't had any reason to mess with the SE/30. The 2.5" server drive works, it's nearly silent and it's all set up. If it ever fails I'll probably go the SD route but for now it ain't broke so I'm not gonna fix it.

author: granzeier
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2019, 11:38:03 am
content: Quote from: Berni on November 21, 2019, 03:42:27 pmThanks, I use gparted quite often - I also have it on my emergency boot thumb drive. But I had forgotten about its ability to resize partitions. This will be a bit more awkward than the old tape drive programs, but it should do the job.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2019, 02:20:22 am
content: Quote from: james_s on November 21, 2019, 09:00:34 pmI'm toying with the idea of restoring an SE/30, and most of what I can find (for a decent price) don't have a working HDD (or if so, probably just very EOL), thus my question. Compatible SCSI HDDs are a few, and often rather expensive (with no idea whatsoever of lifetime). So I was wondering if those SCSI2SD were worth it and had a chance of working (I've heard of some people trying them on Mac SE's and the drive was recognized, but no Mac OS tool was able to format it...) Or if you have references of working HDDs that are cheap enough... (I looked up "2.5" SCSI blade server drive" and didn't find many things, Iv' seen a few U320 SCSI drives but not sure at all they would work...)

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 28, 2019, 06:38:59 am
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on November 25, 2019, 02:20:22 amI'm almost positive I tested the SCSI2SD on the SE/30 but I could be remembering wrong, I know I tested it in one of my 68k Macs. At the time I was playing with this stuff, SCA HDDs were readily available for reasonably cheap prices and SCA to 50 pin SCSI adapters were only a few dollars, I have not looked recently. I dug out one of the 2.5" drives, I had remembered incorrectly, the capacity is "only" 36GB. I tried several different SCA server drives and all of them worked however most of the 3.5" ones are very noisy.*Edit: Ok I just checked, there are still loads of these on ebay, this one is under $20 shipped, that's not much more than the cost of postage.https://www.ebay.com/itm/Seagate-ST973401LC-90P1315-74GB-10000-RPM-2-5-8MB-80-Pin-Ultra320-SCSI-HDD/253528169323?

author: macboy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 03, 2019, 07:04:26 pm
content: Even a U320 (or U160 or Ultra2) drive which normally uses 16-bit LVDS signalling at 160 MHz can fall back to 8-bit single-ended slow SCSI mode at 5 MHz. The biggest issue you will encounter is the need for external (as in not built in to the drive) termination of the bus, as none of the LVDS drives will have built-in termination. If you are lucky and have a working SCSI CD-ROM at the end of the bus, then it can/will terminate. Otherwise, you will need to provide a terminator at the end of the cable. Hopefully the cable has another drop on it, and hopefully you can find a 50 pin single-ended terminator. Note also you may need to set a jumper on the drive to activate single-ended or "SE" mode.Most drives at/under ~ 80 GB (ATA) or ~72 GB (SCSI) will have ball bearings instead of dynamic fluid bearings. You might want to check datasheets. Ball bearings are loud, less reliable, and best avoided. Fortunately, SCSI doesn't suffer from the capacity 'barriers' that plagued various iterations of ATA/IDE protocol. Even an old SCSI controller should happily talk to a very large SCSI disk. You will still encounter various file system limitations on partition size and/or file size, especially with Apple HFS (HFS+ mostly solves this).

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 20, 2019, 05:05:03 pm
content: I don't remember what I did about termination, I think I used a cable with connectors for two devices and stuck a passive terminator on the end. 50 pin IDC connectors are readily available so you can easily build a custom cable and if you can't find a passive terminator at some point they are easy to make.The 3.5" SCA drives tend to be very noisy but those 2.5" ones are very quiet.

author: olafnz
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2020, 10:05:50 am
content: Hi,Sorry to hijack an older thread, but my question is somewhat similar, so I thought it would be a good place to start.I have a 1990's era woodworking CNC (Biesse Rover 322), which has a 2162Mb (Fujitsu MPB3021AT, 40-pin IDE with 4470C, 15H, 63S). Seehttp://www2.fcpa.fujitsu.com/sp_support/ext/desktop/manuals/mpb3xxxat-manual.pdfThis machine runs a proprietary real-time version of Unix, with a file format which not even my Linux box can understand.I realised this was a likely failure point, and imaged this disk not long after I took ownership of the machine (2-3 years ago). I experimented with restoring the image to a number of similar-vintage disks (all 3-5 Gb but with different geometry), but none would boot. I was then able to source an identical Fujitsu disk off Ebay in Germany - this cloned and booted just fine.A couple of weeks ago, when the original disk failed, it was a big relief to be able to replace the disks and get going again in an evening, rather than ending up with a 3 tonne paperweight.I understand the gist of CHS (and the Apricot BIOS does seem to support LBA) but where I get hazy is in the actual cloning:1) If I have taken a clone image of the entire disk, does that or does it not depend on drive geometry? ie. I would expect that the image is a logical copy of the drive, rather than being CHS dependent?2) Or perhaps it is that the operating system is attempting to address the drive "directly" and when the geometry is different, it is somehow not finding the data in the correct location?My concern is that my "new" drive is still 20+ years old, so I would like to replace with a DOM type system, perhaps:https://www.ebay.com/itm/4GB-DOM-SSD-Replace-Vintage-3-5-IDE-Drives-with-this-40-PIN-IDE-SSD-Card/254364506542(8146 Cylinders 16 Heads 63 Sectors)https://www.ebay.com/itm/16GB-SSD-DOM-Replace-Vintage-3-5-IDE-Drives-with-this-40-PIN-IDE-SSD-Card/312774694344(16383 Cylinders 15 Heads 63 Sectors)But what confuses me is that these CF DOM modules state that they present as a certain number of cylinders, heads and sectors in non-LBA mode. I would have thought this might be configurable on the module. ie. why is are all 16Gb modules of that type 15 heads, 63 sectors (so probably compatible with my drive, since I am told that the cylinder number doesn't matter if it is larger) but all 4Gb and smaller modules on Ebay seem to different, ie. 16 heads, 63 sectors?I am obviously not understanding what is going on, but I would have thought that the data on the CF card would not have actually changed, just the way it is addressed by the IDE controller?Ultimately I intend to purchase something like the following, as I already have some 8Gb CF cards. However the ad says nothing about how the drive presents, or whether the CHS is configurable.https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Compact-Flash-CF-to-3-5-Female-40-Pin-IDE-Bootable-Adapter-Converter-FTBX/143553365915Thanks,Anton

author: bobcat2000
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2020, 04:10:06 pm
content: I was shopping for a replacement Windows 95 PC for a customer. (They ended up buying an used one from eBay.)I came across this company who sell brand new legacy PC.Maybe you can check it out.https://www.nixsys.com/

author: olafnz
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2020, 06:58:12 pm
content: Thanks, but that doesn't really work in this case, as there is a lot of proprietary hardware to control the CNC, and the software setup is quite specific to that hardware.I see in my research that different CF cards actually present different CHS values - I had no idea they used this format. Is there a way I can reformat them to the required CHS to match my existing image? Or am I going down the wrong rabbit hole?

author: bobcat2000
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2020, 12:20:53 am
content: You are exactly like my client who asked me to get a Windows 95 PC to control the machine. In your case, you want to clone the hard disk knowing that the old hard disk is ready to fail. It is not possible to ask the client to replace the industrial equipment.My suggestion is to take the hard disk to one of the data recovery company. Give them a call to see if they can clone the hard disk as if asking them to recover the data. They may take the old hard disk apart to get the data. They will usually gave you a new hard disk or an ISO image. Tell them that you need the old hard disk returned and intact. See what they say.This will cost between usd$300 to usd$3000. Still cheaper to replace the equipment.

author: Rasz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2020, 04:21:35 am
content: thishttps://hackaday.io/project/20774-netpi-idewill let you emulate whatever IDE configuration you want, great if you need some super specific HDD but cant get the real hardware anymore

author: olafnz
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2020, 08:55:38 am
content: Thanks Rasz. I was aware of that project, and it is definitely within my abilities. I will go down that path if I need to (I have a couple of Pi's sitting around) but I'd really like to go the simplest path if I can avoid it.The point of my question is I am struggling to understand how the super specific HDD is affecting me, i.e. is the operating system possibly trying to look at specific CHS locations? I suppose it might be messy and complicated, but I almost find myself wondering whether that is just a case of manipulating the data in my image before I write it to a different HDD.Oh, and the other point was to figure out how these DOM modules work (or possibly how the CF format works), and whether they are able to present as different CHS values, since the two near-identical ebay links I posted had different numbers of heads.

author: olafnz
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2020, 09:02:57 am
content: Thanks Bobcat2000 for taking the time to reply,I'm certainly not wanting to seem ungrateful, but unless I am misunderstanding you, it really seems like you have not understood my question.I have already cloned a perfectly usable disk image, so I'm not clear on why I would need to take my disk in to a data recovery company. I can keep on purchasing identical old hard disks, and re-imaging, and the machine will continue to work until the next HDD failure.However I have no ability to reinstall the proprietary operating system and control programs from scratch either, so any solid-state or legacy solution needs to utilise my existing image, if necessary by converting the data blocks in some way.I am struggling to understand how purchasing a legacy or Win 95 type PC would help solve my issue in any way.Anyway, thanks for your time, and if anybody has any insight on CHS as it applies to disk images or CF cards, then please speak up.Regards,Anton

author: Rasz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2020, 10:06:55 am
content: Quote from: olafnz on April 04, 2020, 08:55:38 amthere werent many, name it, record the screen to show where it stops. There are people like neozeedhttps://virtuallyfun.com/Tenoxhttps://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2015/09/19/virtualization-challenge-ii/or Michal Necasekhttp://www.os2museum.com/wp/who could probably figure out the problem and patch it for you, even more likely if you provide a bounty.

author: bobcat2000
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2020, 03:41:25 pm
content: Oh. I did not read all the posts. I thought you had an old DOS 6.2 PC hooked to a Mil. I read the first couple posts suggesting to buy tools to clone the hard disk. So, I thought if you needed to spend $$$ for the tools, it might be better to replace the old DOS PC and hard disk with a new one.

author: bobcat2000
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2020, 04:19:07 pm
content: I re-read all the posts. I got it now.You want to replace the spinning hard disk with a IDE-to-CM adapter.The machine is not that old. I will call Biesse to see what they will say regarding a hard disk replacement. The best case scenario is that they ask you to send them some cash and they ship you a new hard disk no question ask. The worst case scenario is that they ask you to sign up a support contract before they will talk to you.My guess is that the machine may be checking the model # of the hard disk before it will boot.

author: olafnz
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2020, 08:27:36 pm
content: Thanks BobCat2000,I see the confusion now, as I had hijacked a thread with a similar, yet different, problem.Biesse Inc. are not much interested in supporting 20yo obsolete technology, but I do have a good contact within the ecosystem who has assisted me in the past. I should at least ask the question.Regards,Anton

author: olafnz
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2020, 08:56:27 pm
content: Sorry, I haven't previously mentioned the details:The realtime "Unix-like" operating system is LynxOS V2.3.0. (seehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LynxOS)I see LynxOS is now up to V7, and still an active product.https://amaus.net/static/S100/lynxos/software/LynxOS%204%20Users%20Guide.pdfIn previous research I found very little online even about the file format.https://superuser.com/questions/668398/what-file-systems-does-lynxos-support(refers to some other dead links)I did find this project (https://www.anarres.org/projects/lynxfs/) but lacke the hacker skills to get anywhere with it.Incidentally, the PC is a Pentium 133 with 64Mb of RAM. The POST screen mentions both Superpath (tm) BIOS Version 2.0 as well as Apricot VT BOIS Version 7.07, 9th June 1997.I cannot right now recall the exact error message I got with the different hard drives, but it was basically just a 4-5 digit number (no text). Googling for it basically said "Could not boot" or similar, so it wasn't even getting off the ground.I have ordered one of the CF-to-IDE adaptors, so I will likely be seeing that error again soon.Thanks,Anton

author: bobcat2000
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2020, 09:22:47 pm
content: I found this website. It looks like they have a device to emulate a specific hard disk for a specific machine.https://embeddedsw.net/EMUFDD_Custom_Installation_Biesse.htmlDoes this document mean anything to you?https://www.embeddedsw.net/doc/emuhdd_IDE_manual.pdf

author: bobcat2000
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2020, 09:27:23 pm
content: "... Each EMUHDD is custom configuredto match exactly the geometry of the original drive (name, size, tracks, sectors...).There's no limit about the OS supported by the emulation: Win/Dos/Unix and any other legacy operating system. Depending on the application you'll be also given a recommended preventive maintenance guide, each 1/5 years, ensuring a unique 0% failure rate over time."So, you can have a device emulating a specific brand of hard disk for your mil.

author: olafnz
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2020, 10:04:18 pm
content: That looks like an awesome, link thank you!I imagine they charge industrial prices, but they definitely look like they can provide the solution.

author: bobcat2000
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2020, 01:47:49 am
content: Ok. The goal is to get a reliable hard disk replacement (cheaply) to make the machine work for years again.So, first thing is to understand the PC.I google for the Apricot PC. It is an IBM PC clone but with a custom BIOS.Maybe the same as this one. You will see the error code at the bottom of the page.http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/apricot/mb/aprdia.htmDid you make sure the jumpers in the back of those hard disks you tried were set correctly? If they were not set correctly, the BIOS might not see the hd.I also try to find a list of supported hard disk for the Apricot PC but I can't find any.I don't believe how the physical specs of the hard disk will affect the OS. It is IDE (ATA in this case). Correct me if I am wrong. The OS sends a command to the IDE controller to read / write data. The OS does not know how the controller access the disc itself. The specs are hidden from the OS.

author: olafnz
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2020, 03:24:49 am
content: The motherboard is not identical to the link. I think it is this one:http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/apricot/mb/aprtrent.htm- the physical layout looks identical, as do the BIOS screens.The motherboard says Trent Motherboard, and Apricot Computers Limited (c) 1996, It is PNo. 13299631 (listed on this site, but with no useful details.http://insight.actapricot.org/insight/products/desktops/ms/mstntbrs.htm)Anyway, it is similar, both in terms of vintage, and in having a riser card for the card bus. There is a network card, plus a proprietary full length slot with Xilinx chips controlling the XYZ axes and other I/O of the CNC. Oddly, there is a little jumper cable from an on-board serial port to the main controller card.There is another version (the original?) here:http://insight.actapricot.org/insight/products/desktops/ms/mstntlay.htm- this seems to have a bit more information on hard disks, network cards, etc, but I am not sure what exactly to make of it.I am pretty sure the error was "1780" (Fixed disk 0 failure) but can't swear to that (may have been "1762"). From memory the disks did show up legitimately (correct size, perhaps even model number) on the POST/BIOS though (but it has been a while). I have seen some other online hints that it may be a cylinder limit in the BIOS.Generally I am not that hopeful that imaging to a completely new "vintage" PC (and installing the custom cards) will work. It seems to be from an era where the "drivers" are specifically expecting a certain type of chipset. ie. Apparently the network card has to be either 3COM chipset (which I have) or something else, which I forget.My ultra-long-term plan is to completely re-automate the machine using Mach3, LinuxCNC or some other similar CNC controller solution. But that is a huge job, and will have months of downtime, so I would rather stay with the 90's era controller, as I have not found it too limiting most of the time. However if the PC itself or controller board die, then that is my plan.Back to the Hard Disk geometry, it sounds like you have understood my confusion. But I have read various online resources about OS's going direct to the IDE controller (skipping the BIOS?), among other things being able to overcome various size limits. I started making wild theories that a real-time OS might set up a file system specifically optimised for low latency, or at least deterministic latency.Yes, the HDD interface is ATA IDE.Yes, the jumpers on the similar-yet-different HDD's were definitely set to Master on all the (3?) similar drives we tried, having cloned the image on to them. Sure, there would have been some blank space at the end, but the data that was read should have been identical I would have thought.

author: bobcat2000
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2020, 03:51:12 am
content: I have an idea. Why don't you plug the spare hard disk that did not boot to another pc to see if it boots?

author: bobcat2000
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2020, 04:05:55 am
content: http://insight.actapricot.org/insight/kbase/ipb/unix/ipb3188.htm"...Under the Enhanced IDE Features menu select the Hard Disk Size > 504Mb option and set it to Disabled. "Is the spare hard disk that won't boot bigger than 504Mb? Try to enable this option (or disable it) just for trying it out.

author: olafnz
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2020, 05:44:46 am
content: Thanks. From memory we did try booting on the temporary machine. I also believe I tried to boot the working one, with no luck, but can't swear to it. Of course they are completely different generations of hardware.I will have to wait 3-4 weeks on those tests until some other bits arrive, as I don't currently have those similar-but-different hard disks in my possession.The present hard disk is 2.1Gb (4470C, 15H, 63S). So I don't think that link applies (with a 1024 cylinder limit). Have a look at the attached photos - Set to Extended CHS (rather than Basic CHS), then Transfer mode is Automatic, PIO mode 4. (Manual permits PIO mode 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4). Those are my only options.I will have to play more when I try my new SSD modules.Thanks for your advice and suggestions.

author: bobcat2000
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2020, 04:46:02 pm
content: This is amazing.This is handmade!!!

author: olafnz
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 06, 2020, 01:21:11 am
content: Thanks.Just one of many things I've made (but arguably the most technically challenging).It certainly is a useful tool, hence my desire to future-proof it.PS The EMUHDD people came back to me already. US$750 (which for me in New Zealand is the equivalent of around $1,500). So I will keep that as a backup option and go with my $10-20 experiments for now.

author: bobcat2000
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 06, 2020, 01:26:27 am
content: Oh! It is a box. I thought it was something you hang on the wall.You can put all the Dune movies and video games boxes in it.Very Nice.

author: olafnz
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 06, 2020, 01:39:57 am
content: It was a commissioned job for a fan of the original board game, prior to the new release last year:https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/283355/dune

author: bobcat2000
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 06, 2020, 02:04:32 am
content: Aha! I see.

author: bobcat2000
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 06, 2020, 03:09:54 pm
content: I met a guy who went to the mountain to haul back a big piece of wood about the size of a dining table. He used a hammer and chisel to make an art work from that piece of wood. He sold it for around US$20,000.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 06, 2020, 04:45:49 pm
content: I still play an old version of Dune II in Dosbox when I feel like nostalgia....... SAdly the sound experience on the emulation is better than what was available on the original Adlib compatible card I had, and even when I got a Genuine Creative labs card I had to move IRQ on it, so not all sounds played as well. But plays really nice now in emulation.

author: olafnz
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 17, 2020, 07:32:19 am
content: Right, that took a while, due to AliExpress shipping times and Covid lockdowns.I have this week received my CompactFlash to IDE adaptor (https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32920488992.html). I plugged an 8 Gb CF card into it (remember that my original HDD is ~2.1Gb) and booted up.The drive presents as 8000MB, so I wrote the image and it seemed to copy with no issues.I tested this on the same desktop PC I used to write the image, and it does at least get to the LynxOS boot loader:I plugged it in to the CNC, and the BIOS seems to recognise it just fine:This was a relief, because I don't know how large the BIOS can handle, although it does support LBA.Sadly it would not boot. I had the same issue as previously when I tried with spinning HDD's:According to Google, 1962 means "No operating system found". There is no other HDD in the PC, so it is not boot order. The jumpers are definitely set to Master, and of course it kind of boots in the other PC.So I might be on the wrong track, but I'm still concerned about drive CHS geometry. To refresh you, the original HDD is:2162Mb (Fujitsu MPB3021AT, 40-pin IDE with 4470C, 15H, 63S). Seehttp://www2.fcpa.fujitsu.com/sp_support/ext/desktop/manuals/mpb3xxxat-manual.pdfMy 8GB CF card presents as:15501C 16H 63S, Sector Size 576I sort of feel that this shouldn't matter under LBA, but I lack the confidence to know for certain, and if it is not that, then what is it?To refresh you, I previously tried 3 similar-era-but-slightly-larger HDD's with different geometry, and had similar results to today. But when I purchased an identical MPB3021AT HDD and cloned the image on to it, it works just fine. Very luckily because since I took the image my original disk failed.To me that proves that I am copying the image "correctly", but I lack the knowledge to know whether LynxOS looks at the HDD at a low level of geometry to achieve its realtime requirements.I still wonder whether I somehow need to pad out the image (ie. 15 blocks, then 1 block of blank to match 16 heads) but having a different sector size probably doesn't help either.

author: Twoflower
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 17, 2020, 09:43:55 am
content: If you can find one try a 1- or 2GByte CF-Card. It still can be a BIOS problem that can't handle bigger drives than 2.1GByte. The code reporting the size on the screen and the one actually used for accessing the drive might be two different parts.But there were many other IDE size limitations in the past:https://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO-4.htmlEdit: Can you check the Jumpers on the old drive? The old drive is a bit over the actual size limit. But you can 'reduce' the reported size by jumpers. It is described on page 3-12 of the drive manual.

author: olafnz
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 17, 2020, 10:23:02 am
content: Thanks Twoflower,Well spotted. I had not noticed that there are a few other jumper options apart from just the usual Master/Slave/CSEL, as the printing on the drive itself only covers the "Default Mode" settings not the "Special Mode" settings. However both my old defunct drive and my replacement working drive are just on the default mode Master Device setting, so it definitely should be presenting as 4470/15/63.Obviously there are no jumpers on the CF, and this has been my big confusion throughout. If you look at some of my previous posts I was asking why different CF cards actually present different CHS geometries."https://www.ebay.com/itm/4GB-DOM-SSD-Replace-Vintage-3-5-IDE-Drives-with-this-40-PIN-IDE-SSD-Card/254364506542(8146 Cylinders 16 Heads 63 Sectors)https://www.ebay.com/itm/16GB-SSD-DOM-Replace-Vintage-3-5-IDE-Drives-with-this-40-PIN-IDE-SSD-Card/312774694344(16383 Cylinders 15 Heads 63 Sectors)But what confuses me is that these CF DOM modules state that they present as a certain number of cylinders, heads and sectors in non-LBA mode. I would have thought this might be configurable on the module. ie. why is are all 16Gb modules of that type 15 heads, 63 sectors (so probably compatible with my drive, since I am told that the cylinder number doesn't matter if it is larger) but all 4Gb and smaller modules on Ebay seem to different, ie. 16 heads, 63 sectors?"I'd love to know if there is a way to "reprogram" a CF card to present as a different geometry (or even a different total size). Always assuming that I am on the correct track, but ultimately I know that replacing the identical HDD and cloning it did work. So if there is a way I can spoof the same size and geometry I'd hope that should work too.----------------------------------------I know there were lots of different size limits, so I could try 4Gb. However the existing image is 2.1Gb so I can't really go much smaller.Also, I know you weren't part of the conversation a couple of months back, but I had previously tried 2-3 very-similar-era-but-slightly-larger HDD's (of the order of 2.5-6Gb) and they all had the same result.I probably need to know more about whether there is anything specific to LynxOS, but sadly I have had a topic on comp.os.lynx for over a month with no responses there.https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.lynx/H-JmV74I_7o

author: granzeier
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 17, 2020, 10:40:34 am
content: Quote from: olafnz on May 17, 2020, 07:32:19 amOne more thing to test...Try deleting the image on your CF card, and put it into the CNC computer. Boot that from DOS (floppy disk, USB, whatever) and then try to format the CF with /S to make it bootable. Then reset the computer and see if it will boot. That will tell you if the trouble is with the hardware/firmware, or with the image.

author: Twoflower
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 17, 2020, 11:11:20 am
content: Probably there's no real way to modify the geometry of the CF cards. Unless you can access the card-Internal controller. I think the geometry is managed in the CF card itself.Just looking a bit around in the webs abut that. Maybe that might help:https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/lynxos-disk-clone-939135/#post4659248Try to format the CF card from a FreeDOS or MS-DOS as granzeier mentioned is a good idea. Just to see if the drive is correctly accessed. I think the next step would be to test if your cloning somehow was not working as it should (even if it booted on another PC). With the unknown file-format it might not like to moved from one geometry to another. If the LynxOS uses some kind direct access to the media you might run into some unexpected trouble.

author: olafnz
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 18, 2020, 09:49:55 pm
content: Thank you both Twoflower and granzeier for your thoughtful and helpful suggestions. Perhaps obvious in retrospect, but I had not thought of them!So I got another 8Gb CF card, installed FreeDOS on it, and checked that it boots OK in the desktop PC.Sadly when I put it in the CNC, it does not boot. I get the same 1962 error as before.I tried fdisking to a 512 Mb primary partition, just in case it was a partition size, rather than disk size issue, but no difference.So I guess we can rule out this being a LynxOS direct media access issue. Which for me is a huge step forward, so thank you for that suggestion!Then I thought, well I have nothing to lose, so I did something I had never tried before - I set the BIOS from Extended CHS to Basic CHS. The 8000 Mb CF card now shows up as 527 Mb (no big surprise).Then, wonders of wonders, FreeDOS boots!So I decided to push my luck and try the other LynxOS CF card. It also booted right up without issues. I am not sure whether this is because there is <527 Mb of data accessed on the disk, or whether LynxOS accesses the disk directly in spite of the BIOS settings (but then why does it not work when the BIOS is set to Extended CHS).The problem for me is this is all 20+ years ago, and my memory is vague. But I do recall sometimes (I think?) you had to do tricks where the drive presented (or was set up) as a smaller drive, until it had booted, then you could access the rest of the drive. I thought that was usually done with a small primary partition and some TSR or other utility that was loaded on boot, but does anybody remember the details?----------------------------------I did find an interesting article saying you can "force disk geometry" (https://dark.ca/2009/06/22/force-disk-geometry-with-sfdisk/). Sadly the sfdisk on my version of Linux (LinuxMint) seems to lack the -C -H and -S options, so I will have to chase down some other distribution. Not sure exactly what this is claiming to do, though.

author: bobcat2000
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 01, 2020, 05:39:48 pm
content: I found this video talking about why the PC can see the drive but won't boot. I think what he is saying is that the CF adapter may be reporting the wrong CF card geometry to the PC.He says to use a third party software to query the CF card directly to get the exact geometry. So, you can manually enter the numbers to the BIOS instead.https://youtu.be/G26cRjrt5Mg

author: guenthert
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 03, 2020, 04:09:33 pm
content: Quote from: bobcat2000 on June 01, 2020, 05:39:48 pmI haven't seen the video and hence don't know what he claims, but the CF adapter is passive and won't (be able to) "translate" the card's geometry. CF cards use an IDE interface, all the schmarts happen inside the card. The translation generally cannot be changed inside the card and seems rather be an artifact of the PC BIOS. So yes, you might have some luck bypassing the auto-detection and force some values.I know nothin' about LynxOS, but early Linux didn't use BIOS code, so you could end up in a situation, where the BIOS was able to load the boot loader (e.g. LILO or GRUB), that one then in turn might or might not load the kernel and the kernel then might or might not find the root fs. I could imagine something similar is happening in LynxOS.

author: olafnz
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: June 04, 2020, 12:24:28 am
content: Yes, there are absolutely no IC's on the adapter board. I hadn't realised CF cards were so compatible with IDE, even to the extent of presenting a fake CHS geometry. (Obviously fake, since a memory chip has no physical "geometry").In any case, my BIOS doesn't seem to provide any option to enter the CHS values manually.The only options you get:General IDE setup:- IDE Translation Mode: Standard CHS or Extended CHSThen drilling down for each drive you get:- Transfer Mode Determination: Auto or Manual. The options in Manual are PIO Mode 0, PIO Mode 1, PIO Mode 2, PIO Mode 3, PIO Mode 4. In Auto, (for my hard disk) PIO Mode 4 is selected. I notice (looking at the screenshot in my previous comment, that the CF card selects PIO Mode 2).- There is another note stating that LBA is supported.From a Google search, PIO mode seems to be just about data transfer rate (ie not relevant to this thread):- PIO Mode 0 3.3MB/sec- PIO Mode 1 5.2MB/sec- PIO Mode 2 8.3MB/sec- PIO Mode 3 11.1MB/sec- PIO Mode 4 16.6MB/secSo, to recap:- My CF card will boot under Basic CHS (first 527MB), but not under Extended CHS (8000MB).- Basic CHS works both under FreeDOS and using LynxOS.- Extended CHS does not work under either FreeDOS or LynxOS, so I've actually become less suspicious of LynxOS's (probably) direct hardware writes being the cause.- My CF card presents as 15501C 16H 63S, Sector Size 576, but there is no way to put that in to my BIOS.- My Hard disk boots fine under Extended CHS (2162Mb (Fujitsu MPB3021AT, 40-pin IDE with 4470C, 15H, 63S). Seehttp://www2.fcpa.fujitsu.com/sp_support/ext/desktop/manuals/mpb3xxxat-manual.pdf- The Master/Slave/CS jumpers are just fine (set to the default).So, a BIOS firmware bug/incompatibility?But then why does my Hard Disk specifically work, and other similar-vintage hard disks with slightly different geometry not work?

author: guenthert
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 04, 2020, 03:48:03 pm
content: Quote from: olafnz on June 04, 2020, 12:24:28 amThe sector size looks wrong. It will most certainly be 512 bytes (520 bytes was used in some systems, e.g. NetApp and NeXT Cube/Workstation, but those were SCSI).

author: olafnz
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: June 05, 2020, 07:32:59 am
content: Agreed, but that's what it reports.I tried using some of the Linux fdisk options to "modify" the geometry, but that was ignored.So it's all very confusing what the BIOS is doing under Extended CHS.

author: Wallace Gasiewicz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 06, 2020, 05:46:08 pm
content: Is it possible to connect an IDE drive to a PCMCIA port on an appropriate computer and then use the computer to clone another PCMCIA card and use this for backup? Using the correct connector.PCMCIA cards were used a lot in old programmable machines.Wally

author: Rasz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 06, 2020, 10:07:24 pm
content: 'CF -2- PCMCIA' converters work because CF cards support PCMCIA PC Card ATA modes of operation in addition to IDE emulation.PCMCIA PC Card ATA defines memory mapped and I/O Mode.TLDR it only works one way.

author: guenthert
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 07, 2020, 04:46:07 pm
content: Quote from: olafnz on May 18, 2020, 09:49:55 pmThat was common practice (at least) using Linux for a time: you had to create a small (less than say 500MiB) partition which you formatted with a fs the bootloader understood, e.g. ext2, which had to be in the beginning of the disk, so that the braindead BIOS would find it and place the bootloader there. The bootloader then did understand larger drives and was able to load the kernel either from that boot partition or anywhere you specified. That procedure isn't needed with UEFI.I actually ran into similar issues just these days, as the HDD in my HP1662C died (before I could make a back-up). I got a CF card and adapter which works fine, but struggled a bit to get the system software (chiefly test tools, as the OS is thankfully in ROM) on that card as the fs used by the LA is an oddball FAT (byte-swapped, 16KiB sector size) and neither Linux' fat fs nor the mtools (at least not mformat) cooperate with that. I seem to have succeeded by formatting the card using the LA and then using mtools under Linux to copy the files to the card. Have you tried to format your drive using LynxOS?

author: olafnz
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: June 07, 2020, 07:35:04 pm
content: I have no possibility of setting up from scratch - I have no LynxOS installation, nor the CNC-specific software.Hence why I am jumping through hoops to preserve the HDD image. If I had not taken the initiative when I got the machine, I'd now have a 3 tonne paperweight.

author: guenthert
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 08, 2020, 06:09:31 pm
content: I just see that the company which (still) produces LynxOS makes it software available for 'evaluation'. Not sure, whether that's just a legal limit or indeed a technical (limited time or limited functionality). Might be worth looking into that. Or bugging them for support.I also looked around a bit and came to the conclusion that the 576B sector size is very likely a software bug in the reporting (incidentally the 4GB CF card from Kingston reports itself having cylinders of 576 sectors, each 512B, seehttps://web.pa.msu.edu/hep/atlas/l1calo/cmx/hardware/cf_cards/CMX_CFcard_02_Kingston_4GB.txt).