{"id":1369,"date":"2021-04-03T15:57:17","date_gmt":"2021-04-03T20:57:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.computercollection.net\/?p=1369"},"modified":"2021-05-15T18:34:01","modified_gmt":"2021-05-15T23:34:01","slug":"ide-to-sata-conversion-adventures-in-pentium-ii-land","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.computercollection.net\/index.php\/2021\/04\/03\/ide-to-sata-conversion-adventures-in-pentium-ii-land\/","title":{"rendered":"IDE to SATA SSD Conversion: Adventures with a Pentium II and 1.33 GHz AMD Athlon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In early 2021, I converted the hard drives in my Pentium II computer which hosts my P\/390E<\/a> IBM mainframe processor card, which I call “Floppy Copy<\/a>“. This machine boasts three different operating systems. Two are in support of its primary mission for copying floppies: Linux to host my Catweasel board (which may not see much future use, now that I have a Greaseweazle board), and Windows 98 for copying floppies using tools like IMD. It also has OS\/2, in support of the P\/390 board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First some background: OS\/2 had always acted a little wonky: I did the partitioning under Linux because OS\/2 didn’t like to partition the 200GB drive. And then, having partitions of 2GB, 57GB, 57GB and 57GB, running OS\/2 chkdsk on the last two 57GB partitions would sometimes clobber the first 57GB partition, for reasons I never understood – until I undertook this migration. (I still don’t quite understand why it never managed to clobber the 2GB FAT partition!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, off to Amazon I went, purchasing IDE to SATA adapters. The two from Startech and Kingwin worked fine. One from Sinloon worked, and the other did not work at all. In addition, I found, strangely, that the adapters would work with a 240GB drive, but not a 120GB drive. WTH? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, then I went looking to see if the BIOS might be involved, and I found a BIOS update from Aug-17-1999 to Sep-09-2000. That cured the 120 GB problem. But then, in testing, I ran into the same kinds of issues on the 240GB drive I had seen on hard drives, with corruption after running OS\/2 chkdsk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, it turns out that this particular motherboard, a Chaintech 6BTM, has Ultra DMA-33 IDE ports – and only supports drives up to 137GB<\/em><\/strong>.<\/em> Ahhh, so that<\/em> was the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wanted to give OS\/2 (and the P\/390E) as much space as possible, so it got one 120GB drive. I tried and tried to move the drive partitions for Windows 98 and Linux over to a shared 120GB drive, but without success. The minute I created a second primary partition for Linux, Windows 98 would no longer boot. So, I simply imaged Windows 98 as is to a 120GB SSD (using only a fraction if it), OS\/2 to a 120GB SSD and Linux to a 240GB SSD – because I already had it, having purchased it from before I learned about the 137GB limit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Pentium II with SSDs for OS\/2, Windows 98 and Linux (IDE to SATA adapter on OS\/2 drive)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Only one of the three adapters I had supported IDE master\/slave. The other two had to be alone on their cable. I am using one of those two (Kingwin) permanently. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having gotten things tested, I went about testing the IDE to SATA adapters one at a time in order to write reviews. While testing the Kingwin adapter, though, I decided to plug it in with power on. Unfortunately I had the power connector upside down, and as soon as it touched, the computer dropped power. Worse, I could not then power it on at all — completely dead. Ohhhh nooooooooo!!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After unplugging the power cord for a couple of minutes, I could at least try and turn it on, but it would not start up – no beep, no nothing. Fearing the worst, I tested the power supply voltages – all fine. Ohhhhhh noooooooo!!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After 10 minutes of panic, I started testing cards from that machine in a reasonably close relative, my AMD Athlon machine with an ASUS A7M266 mother board. Video card: good. IBM P390\/E even passed its diagnostics. (Whew). So then I pulled all the cards out of the Pentium II as well as the IDE to SATA adapter I had been messing with at the time of the infraction, and the machine came to life!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I put all the cards in one by one, and stopped at the POST test. All good. Then, just for giggles, I hooked up that last IDE to SATA adapter – dead in the water, apparently fried. Embarrassing: I fried an adapter. The good news: it costs less than $10. Glad I purchased four of them. (I kept the Startech out in reserve because it is the only one of the four which worked and<\/em> can be set for Master or Slave.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having discovered that the P390\/E was happy in the AMD with the A7M266 motherboard, and that the motherboard has OS\/2 support as well, so in May 2021 I migrated the P\/390E to the AMD machine<\/a>, and upgraded to OS\/2 Warp 4.52, so now I have support for the full 240GB SSD.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In early 2021, I converted the hard drives in my Pentium II computer which hosts my P\/390E IBM mainframe processor card, which I call “Floppy Copy“. This machine boasts three different operating systems. Two are in support of its primary mission for copying floppies: Linux to host my Catweasel board (which may not see much … Continue reading “IDE to SATA SSD Conversion: Adventures with a Pentium II and 1.33 GHz AMD Athlon”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5,9],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-1369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-collection","category-computers","category-hardware"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.computercollection.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.computercollection.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.computercollection.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.computercollection.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.computercollection.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1369"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.computercollection.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1408,"href":"https:\/\/www.computercollection.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369\/revisions\/1408"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.computercollection.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.computercollection.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.computercollection.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.computercollection.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1369"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.computercollection.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=1369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}