Pretty cool stuff. Can it work perfectly fine with DOS 7.00 (aka win98 but set to BOOTGUI=0 and not even using 98)? Would be neat to play my QDOS and QWDOS ports with instant loading for the larger maps.

Makes you wonder if you could increase that throughput by using that SSD on a SAS controller card instead of the Promise SATA Controller ?!?

As though that would actually make any difference at this point 😜

BigBodZod wrote:

Makes you wonder if you could increase that throughput by using that SSD on a SAS controller card instead of the Promise SATA Controller ?!?

It's the 32-bit 33 MHz PCI bus that's the bottleneck. At best PCI will do around 100MB/s, but many chipsets like this VIA 686A perform below that.

Maraakate wrote:

Pretty cool stuff. Can it work perfectly fine with DOS 7.00 (aka win98 but set to BOOTGUI=0 and not even using 98)? Would be neat to play my QDOS and QWDOS ports with instant loading for the larger maps.

It works fine with DOS. After all, Win9x relies on DOS 7.

WinME uses DOS as well but it's setup all funky so you never know.

Maraakate wrote:

WinME uses DOS as well but it's setup all funky so you never know.

Oh yeah ME is definitely just another 9X. In fact on the CD the install directory is "Win9X". When you boot the CD, you install from DOS, etc. Then they hide DOS. But apparently some DOS initialization stuff was removed from the boot process so it could boot faster than 98SE (which it does).

swaaye wrote:

Maraakate wrote:

WinME uses DOS as well but it's setup all funky so you never know.

But apparently some DOS initialization stuff was removed from the boot process so it could boot faster than 98SE (which it does).

That's why it's hard to clarify it as being true DOS. DOS 7.00 (Win98 DOS) can be considered pure DOS to me except with FAT32 support. I haven't had any trouble booting it up pure and running old software. Obviously, i have to make a boot menu with config.sys to select Windows 98 or else all the DOS drivers would clash with loading!

But what with TRIM and all this stuff? Won't the performance deteriorate after a many delete/write cycles? I also wanted to use SSDs for my RetroPCs, but there were no reports of how it behaves in the long run.

Guess we'll find out, eh? Keep torturing the system, swaaye, and give us a field report in a few months. 😁

Is it a good idea to use a SSD with 98/ME/DOS? All the VM swapping is going to use up your limited read/write cycles.

If the mere operation of Windows will bring an early end of life to a piece of equipment, then might as well throw it in a retro toy system; I sure wouldn't trust it with my important files. With that said, I'm sure that SSD would be able to last a couple years in that system. It probably has as many years left on it as a conventional hard drive.

SSDs are not trash but if your OS doesn't support TRIM the drive will eventually be so slow as to be almost unuseable. From what I understand this has to do with the way the OS marks files deleted and if it does it the same way it does on an non TRIM enabled OS eventually it will have to make several writes before the empty space is available to be written to at the point of trying to add new files.

These multiple unecessary writes also cut down on the drive lifespan by a good deal.

I read about this before, forgive me if I'm a bit inaccurate in my explanation, but it was something to that effect I believe. I personally wouldn't waste an SSD on an older OS unless it was a really old crappy SSD.

Nah there's little concern for wear or even write performance here I think. In a retro box you aren't going to be writing gigabytes every day. Even without TRIM, SSDs have a function called garbage collectionthat should keep things fairly tidy.

Also, I know some people like to use CF card setups. CF cards don't have wear leveling AFAIK and they perform horribly for small writes to the point of causing system pauses. SSDs are fairly cheap now, with the low capacity ones reaching the throw away price level I think. I'd expect a SSD to last many years (decades probably) in a low usage retro box.

CF cards don't have wear leveling AFAIK

I think wear levelling is pretty standard for CF cards these days.
I'm quite certain that Transcend 133X cards at least have a form of wear levelling because I remember looking up a datasheet and seeing it mentioned there.

CF cards are the preferred solution for most Amiga hard drive setups these days too. Although they tend to be very picky about the type of card they will work with. Kingston brand cards tend to be very problematic (I think I remember reading somewhere that they don't implement the full ATA spec correctly).

Cool to hear that some CFs do have wear leveling.

I'm going to pick up one of those PATA port to SATA drive adapters and see how that works. Using a SATA PCI card isn't exactly ideal in retro boxes.

I wouldn't be to worried about write cycles. You have the wear leveling but I also remember something about when wear cycles are gone you can atleast still read from drive. Also something about how it would take 5ish years in industrial usage to destroy a SSD so I hardly think you'll ruin the drive in short fashion.

I haven't seen a good PATA to SATA adapter yet. I've been looking for something that just plugs into the motherboard like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?It … #scrollFullInfo but reviews aren't very favorable.

It would be interesting to see what speed you can get on a i815 or KT266 chipset which support better PCI bus for the promise card. I bought a couple PCI Sata 1.5 cards but didn't realize they are SATA Raid and have to be flashed to sata IDE to make work on a older system as I wanted to play with a Seagate 320GB SATA 2 drive on windows 98SE 😀

I've been trying to figure out which chipset first separated the IDE controller from the main PCI bus...... I think it may have been 810 but not sure. It was the first to increase the southbridge bandwidth and that would be a good reason.

I put the Vertex 2 into my Asrock 775i65G (Core 2 865G) box. On the 865G's SATA 150 it delivers about 125MB/s.

I also have a old 1TB WD Green in the system so I decided to see if the two SATA ports were in fact independent as advertised. Using HDSpeed, I had both the SSD and the HDD do a read test at the same time. The SSD speed dropped from 125MB/s to 105MB/s which means there is impact with two drives going but it's not too bad. The WD Green pulls around 75MB/s sequentially (WD10EACS dog).

Ok, I'm about to jump into the SSD Retro ring for fun. Just ordered the stuff. After Mail in rebate it will be about $50 spent which isn't bad.

First off Ebay I picked up 2 IDE>SATA adapters with JMicron 20330 controller which according to MSFN is pretty good.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/390279556404?ssPageNa … 984.m1497.l2649

Next off newegg they have a OCZ onyx 32GB for 59.99 with 10.00 MIR making it 49.99, Then there is a Promo code for another 10.00 off making it 39.99!
Product Link : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?It … -_-20227510-L0B
Promo Code : EMCJHHD87

I'll image my current drive and keep it as a master image for backup.

So the wait is now on. Also picked up a AMD 960T for my daily rig since it is back down to 109.99 and unlock it. Thats another topic though.

swaaye wrote:

Cool to hear that some CFs do have wear leveling.

Just wanted to confirm this. A while ago, I was experimenting with CF cards in different systems for multiple purposes and got into contact with Transcend and they assured me, that their CF cards have wear leveling integrated.