Boot win98 from Compact Flash, EWF driver?

[kocoman]

Boot win98 from Compact Flash (with IDE adapter, not USB ones), EWF driver exist for win98?

Has anyone tried it?

[Chozo4]

Not sure about any need for a driver honestly. If it's a CF-to-IDE card, it should be able to work transparently in place of a hard drive and not need any drivers whatsoever. >.>

[jaclaz]

I do not recall having ever seen anything similar to the EWF filter for 9x/Me.

Since the memory footprint (and disk occupation) of Windows 9x/Me is particularly small for today's hardware standards, a RAMDISK based build should be your best option.

You will need to read this thread (and links within it):

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=12326

and this one (where an alternative Registry redirector is given):

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=2293

This one may also be of help:

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=16860

jaclaz

[kocoman]

I think using ramdisk then saving back to disk may be too slow? (maybe have to write 200mb everytime I turn off the computer..?)

I've look at this thread, but there is no progress there.

http://www.msfn.org/board/install-win98-cf...rotected+Access

I tried to install win98 on the cf but I think because of the "Removable disk" bit is not set to "Fixed disk", win98 will sometimes start and sometimes not start, saying some IOS error. not sure how to diagnose it besides using a CF card that supports the "Fixed disk" setting.

thanks

Edit: There's also another EWF writer called http://flashfire.org/xe/, Flashfire, but it is only for XP

Edited August 28, 2009 by kocoman

[jaclaz]

I tried to install win98 on the cf but I think because of the "Removable disk" bit is not set to "Fixed disk", win98 will sometimes start and sometimes not start, saying some IOS error. not sure how to diagnose it besides using a CF card that supports the "Fixed disk" setting.

No, I don't think the issue in your case is caused by fixed vs. removable, DOS and Win9x/ME should ignore that, it is more probable some kind of "timing" problem.

However there is a "switcher" that you may want to try (completely at your own risk , of course):

http://www.ete.com.au/downloads/dmaonoff.zip

http://www.ete.com.au/downloads/atcfwchg.zip

BEFORE even thinking of using it, do take your time "around", particularly read:

http://www.compuphase.com/mbr_fat.htm

about "True-IDE mode"

And here:

http://www.addonics.com/support/faqs/faq-bootcf.asp

jaclaz

[090624]

I've just converted an industrial control PC running windows 98 from a hard drive, to run instead from CompactFlash via an IDE to CF adapter. I had problems that a lot of people seemed to have, and couldn't find an answer online, so decided to post my solution:

To convert a functional PC already running Windows 98 to CF:

1. Create a backup image of the hard drive using your favorite backup program (I prefer a utility from Apricon, but have also used Acronis with good results).

2. Connect your fresh CF card through the IDE adapter to the Windows 98 PC (still configured to run from the hard drive).

3. Boot PC from the original hard drive and right-click on the new CF drive and select "Format..."

4. Format the CF using "Quick" option (always recommended with solid state drives). There is no need to include system files. They would be overwritten below anyway.

5. Use the backup utility to restore the hard drive image to the CF card (entire disk, deleting partitions if asked).

6. Shut down the PC and remove the hard drive.

7. Move the CF adapter to the primary IDE connection, and be sure it's set as Master.

8. Here's the tricky part, and the one that gave me fits until I figured it out: Most modern "consumer grade" CF cards are set to "Removeable Disk" mode, and cannot be set to "Fixed Disk" as the older cards could. The PC (at least in my case) automatically recognized this, and prevented Windows from booting. I don't know if the BIOS prevented the boot, or if it simply reported the CF to Windows as removeable causing Windows to refuse to boot from it. Either way, the solution was to go into the BIOS and change the "Auto" setting for the hard disk to "User". The remaining settings were correct because the BIOS had properly recognized the CF, so I didn't need to change anything else. Setting to User caused the BIOS not to recognize and/or report the CF as removeable. It seems that when set to User, it assumes a completely manually defined drive, and makes no assumptions about whether it is fixed or removeable.

After save/exit from BIOS, the PC boots into Winows 98 with no issues - other than booting up and shutting down faster, and being remarkably quiet

That's it. No special drivers were needed and no utilities other than Apricon and Windows itself were used.

I used an 8GB Transcend 133x card for this conversion. The original hard drive was only 4GB and about half full, but using a larger CF card should allow it to last longer as a result of "wear leveling" algorithms.

One more tip, which you'll find in other threads, but it's important: Be sure to turn off virtual memory in Windows. This prevents Windows from trashing the drive with constant writes intended only to conserve memory. This means you'll need to have enough memory in your system to handle everything that might run. In my case, there was just one app running on top of Windows, but I still had to increase the memory from 128MB. A benefit of this was that since Windows wasn't doing unnecessary page file memory swaps, the application actually ran quite noticeably faster even though the CF is a bit slower than the HD was.

I suspect this same procedure would work with Window XP and later, but haven't tried it. Later OS are probably better suited for the newer SSD using SATA. I only used CF because this was an old machine with only IDE interfaces available.

Edited December 29, 2011 by 090624

[bpalone]

I'll concur with 090624's response. I didn't really think about it when I went through through the process with my set up on a CF card. I also made the switch to USER Defined in the BIOS and all went well after that. The unit is down now, though waiting on the delivery man to bring the replacement LCD. Until the LCD laid down it worked fine.

Good luck.