Replacing old hard drive with SSD

[jnnewton]

I am going to replace an old 272.2MB HDD with a 512MB IDE flash module. It seems that for the ancient computer i'm going to put it on, i'll need to set the CHS prior to swapping out the old. I need information to :

1. calculate an acceptable CHS to input to the mobo rom bios prior to pulling the HDD.

2. change the CHS on the newly cloned flash. When cloned via dd, the chs of the new flash was made identical to the old HDD, which cannot be correct due to the different sizes. It did not work when trying on the old mobo.

Details: Old computer is a compaq 4/33s prolinea running DOS 6.20.

I have windows xp, 7, debian, freebsd and dos 6.22 at my disposal for any necessary tasks.

Please, this is not to become a discussion as to why i'm using such an old system, or why i haven't upgraded x, y or z. I need the old pc, it has custom hardware in the isa slots, and the software running is connected to that hardware, and only runs on dos 6.20 and sub-300MHz processors.

 

[i_hate_toms]

if the BIOS supports LBA, you should go for LBA instead of CHS. If not, there should be an "Auto" mode in the BIOS..
what's an "IDE flash module"?
can you still find HDDs with 512MB capacity?
DOS, reminds me of those good old days
DIR /P, command.com, extra large floppy disks with less than 2MB of memory, and writing programs in GWBASIC
Miss those days .. .. ...

 

[strollin]

Is it necessary to clone the drive due to copy protection or something on the original disk?

Does the Compaq have auto IDE identification? I would go ahead and set the flash module up on the Compaq then simply copy the files from the old drive to the new. Is that a possibility?

Another idea I have is to connect the flash module to the Compaq and let it ID it which should then give you the parms to be able to set it up.

For i_hate_toms and others benefit, jnnewton is trying to replace an old spinner IDE drive with a solid state module such as this: 512MB-40PIN-IDE-FLASH-MODULE, sorta like an ssd for older systems.

I've used those flash modules on old DOS computers before but never tried to clone an old drive to a new one, just installed the module then did a clean install of everything.

 

[i_hate_toms]

For i_hate_toms and others benefit, jnnewton is trying to replace an old spinner IDE drive with a solid state module such as this: 512MB-40PIN-IDE-FLASH-MODULE, sorta like an ssd for older systems.

Thanks strollin, didn't know that. To be honest, back in the DOS days, I was a small kid and wasn't allowed to physically open a computer. I just remember using huge TDK floppies, using FORMAT A: /S to make DOS boot disks, and coding in GWBASIC.
10 CLS
20 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
30 END

(PS: CAPS here doesn't mean i am shouting, it's just the way we used to code, everything was in caps, although GWBASIC wasn't case sensitive AFAIR.)

 

[strollin]

Those flash modules didn't exist in the DOS days so even if you had been allowed to open the case you wouldn't have used one.

BTW, you do know that GWBASIC stands for "Gee Whiz Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code" don't you?