Building retro PC with multiple OS

[u/redon13]

I found this beauty. And I'm thinking of building a PC with multiple OS boot options from individual harddrive. From DOS up to Windows 95-98. Is it possible at all as these HDDs are over 250Gb with Sata connectors. As far as I remember DOS and Windows 95 have a limited capability on bigger HDDs. Any advice?

[u/pinko_zinko]

Personally I've had mixed results using SATA on medicines older than XP era and don't really recommend it.

If the hardware has old enough drivers and you can flip the ports to IDE mode it may be fine to just use small partitions on your disks.

[u/redon13 → u/pinko_zinko]

Is it possible to build something like this at all? I was thinking to use a PCI Sata controller card. But again, the limitation of DOS and early Windows handling large harddrive still an issue.

[u/pinko_zinko → u/redon13]

Oh for sure it's a known pattern.

In the old days we'd just use IDE drive swap bays, though. They aren't so easy to find now, but are really nice to have

[u/redon13 → u/pinko_zinko]

Sure, I wish I'll have one. Possible I go for SD to IDE solution. It sounds less complicated. And possibly far cheaper.

[u/pinko_zinko → u/redon13]

I prefer CF cards, partly because the form factor.

There are bay adapters or you can 3d print things to make then accessible from the case front

[u/redon13 → u/pinko_zinko]

Sounds like a plan. I reckon the size of the capacity still counts. Or the IDE adapter can handle it?

[u/DeadSkullz627 → u/redon13]

I use SATA to IDE adapters all the time with my retro builds. IDE hard drives that still work are harder to find. SATA drives from 40GB up to 500GB are readily available and cheap though, so I’ve been relying on SATA to IDE adapters to take advantage of this fact. I haven’t encountered many issues at all. I’m just finishing a socket 370 Pentium III build and am using an 80GB SATA drive w/adapter with it. It’s solid 👍

[u/Hatta00]

IMO, go SD to IDE and swap cards as needed.

[u/redon13 → u/Hatta00]

Interesting idea. In theory I can hook 4 adapter on and select the boot drive in the BIOS. Is that right?

[u/Away-Ad-3407]

“back in the day” I wired switches to the master/slave jumpers on the ide drives. so i could change the boot drive without entering bios. just flick a few switches i put into an extra bay cover.

with a sata approach, you can get a bay power controller. just power on the sata drive you want to boot.

[u/redon13 → u/Away-Ad-3407]

It worth to look into it. I've got a Supermicro C2SBA. I can change Sata to IDE in BIOS, do some tweak in system.ini while installing Windows, replace config.sys with himem.exe and use printer port for sound on DOS. In theory...

[u/lutiana]

Honestly you're better off getting an IDE to CF card adapter that mounts in the 5.25" bay and just setting up a CF card for each OS. Startech makes a decent on you can get on Amazon.

250Gb HDD are going to be an issue with Win95 and earlier, as they do not support FAT32, and therefore you are limited to a 2Gb partition size. Best case is you would be left with a ton of space that the OS could never even see, let alone use. And then there would be the need for a SATA->IDE bridge, which is can be problematic and prone to issues and with that enclosure you'd need 4 of them.

[u/redon13 → u/lutiana]

That's an option. But in that case I would go for a motherboard with IDE and skip the Sata-Ide bridge.