CF Card Change CHS values

[iamwally]

Hi! Wondering if anyone out there knows a way to change the CHS values of a CF Card?

Thanks,

iamwally

[fzabkar]

Which card? What kind of motherboard? Which year/era?

[iamwally]

Ah!! You are right! Sorry I did not provide more details! I have numerous different CF cards that I am trying to get working. Motherboard is an old Intel Celeron and OS is an old Linux variant. The card needs to wind up having very specific values for things to work. I need it to be 1000C 16H 32S. Problem I am running into is most cards are 63S so I am trying to find a way to change the card to 32S.
Not really sure if that is possible or not but I figured this would be the place to ask since I have seen similar discussions here. Though not specifically about changing those values.

Thank you,

Iamwally

[fzabkar]

I don't know about hacking the firmware, but old CHS IDE drives could be reconfigured with a custom CHS translation by the BIOS during the POST. This change was volatile, ie it would not survive a power cycle.

There is an ATA command that is responsible for reconfiguring these CHS parameters, but I would need to search through the old ATA standards documents to find it.

[iamwally]

Yes I definitely need something that is persistent. I would appreciate any assistance or guidance you could give.

Thank you,

Iamwally

[fzabkar]

I have never hacked a CF card. I expect that you would need to physically dump the firmware, make some edits, and write it back. How you go about this would be totally dependent on the particular card.

There was a SanDisk tool in an older thread that could convert between ATA and ATAPI configurations. Perhaps it could be adapted to do what you want. IIRC, the OP in that thread lost interest in the job.

[fzabkar]

https://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?p=222051#p222051

[geraldine221]

Great, I happen to want to know too

[Arch Stanton]

Use a MPtool.

[iamwally]

I thought so but I have yet to find an MPTool that works with any of the cards I have and I have tried many cards and tools! Does anyone know of an MPTool for Hyperstone controllers? As I have not found any out there. I have found many Silicon Motion MPTools and tried them with all the cards I have with those controllers but no luck. Any advice would be helpful!

[fzabkar]

Does the motherboard's BIOS have a setting for user defined drive types (types 46 and 47)?

[iamwally]

It does not and also I do not want the changes to be motherboard dependent. I am trying to find a way to change the CHS of the card permanently.

[fzabkar]

FWIW, I once edited a fixed drive type in the drive table of an old Award 286 BIOS to add my own custom CHS parameters. That may be a temporary solution for you.

[iamwally]

Bios is locked on the device so that won’t work.

[fzabkar]

Another workaround that would be portable would be to use a DDO (Disk Drive Overlay) in combination with a standard 17 sector drive type. This places DDO MBR code in sector 0 which then redirects the OS to a 32-sector MBR on track 0.

[iamwally]

Not sure I follow that?!?!? How does that work?

[fzabkar]

Sector 0 contains a dummy partition table that uses a standard 17-sector drive type. This sector and the following sectors contain DDO code which installs a TSR routine with INT13 extensions. This DDO code then redirects the boot process to the actual 32-sector partition table elsewhere on track 0. The OS sees this 32-sector partition via the TSR rather than the dummy partition in sector 0.

Ontrack's Disk Manager was one such DDO utility. I think Seagate had such a tool on its old FTP site.

Maxblast was another DDO, as was Microhouse EZ-DRIVE.