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doozer

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Has anyone successfully replaced the PATA HDD with a modern SSD and got it to work?

I purchased a 240Gb SanDisk SSD and a cheap ebay PATA->SATA adapter.

Running the DarkDawg multi kit it boots and displays the game list, which seems to indicate it is booting, however once I select a game it displays pages of seek errors and goes no further.

Wondering if anyone has had success, and if so what hardware you used?
 
I've done it.

Set your adapter to slave. CF is the ide master.
Yeah, I did that. Wouldn't boot at all when it was set to master.

Perhaps the issue is how I'm writing the multi boot image to the SSD?
I used WinHex in clone mode.
 
That should work for cloning. I used the linux command dd to be safe and that worked fine.

At that point it's down to roulette of drives and adapters until a combo works. I used a toshiba ssd and generic adapter.
 
That should work for cloning. I used the linux command dd to be safe and that worked fine.

At that point it's down to roulette of drives and adapters until a combo works. I used a toshiba ssd and generic adapter.
Thanks, I'll see if I can hunt down a toshiba SSD.
 
I use Winhex as well. Which settings are you using to create the image and then set it back on the SSD?
 
I use Winhex as well. Which settings are you using to create the image and then set it back on the SSD?
See screenshot of the values I used to write out the image.
 

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I just installed the SSD in a Linux box and used dd to write out the image.
Same result. I got the boot menu, but loading the game threw a bunch of seek errors.

I'm going to try using a regular SATA HDD (2Tb) via the PATA/SATA adapter to see if that works. Hopefully that will tell me if the adapter is OK.
 
Just tried a 2TB sata drive using the adapter.
Gives the same problem.
Guess that means the adapter is no good.

Anyone got a model they recommend and have confirmed works?
 
Forget any adapter, use the SATA port on the motherboard instead, I will work, maybe you need to clear the BIOS settings in order to have a proper boot sequence.

Best regards.
 
Our multi WILL NOT work from the SATA port on the motherboard. It was done intentionally because there were problems running games from the SATA port. An adapter is needed to use it on the PATA port.

For the record I bought a lot of 3 cheap adapters on ebay for this same purpose and only 1 of them worked....
 
Are there any advantages of using an SSD? I mean I know SSD's are far faster than a regular HDD but what with going through the PATA interface being a bottleneck wouldn't the games expect data to be transmitted at a certain speed?
 
So I finally got around to trying to transfer the HD to a SSD (I got the darksoft/mitsu multi). Getting errors using Macrium Reflect, Acronis and WinHex all hung up about 2/3 way through complaining about sectors. Is the spin disk HD in any special format that I need to clone it or can I just copy the .img files to the SSD? Is it safe to use any disk tools to check for bad sectors on the spin disk HD? I assume the special sauce is on the CF.
 
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That looks like the HDD went south. Any disk formatted as FAT32 will work, just copy the files from within Windows, no need for Winhex at all.
 
Anyone with the darksoft multi able to help me out? My hdd went bad when trying to back it up and i can not acces 3 of the files.

Rtunned_FFB.img
vf5b.image
vf5.img

I can prob upload the other files that i have to mega or something if that would help others.
 
I can check, need just a bit of time. Please send me a PM in a weeek if I don't answer, because I can forget :D .
 
Back in the day, I was using jmicron based sata SSD, same as I used for ringedge, triforce, chihiro et all.

I used the mass production tool to change model name to SDCFB would also put in the 8byte magic code from Sega CF cards, so multi-purpose.

I'd put the game and kernel all on there, but if I remember I did have to use IDE to sata adapter as there was issues with some games like racetv, Harley where the read access would be super slow.

Suspect it was using a basic SATA driver.
 
Can also confirm that using the direct sata port for the most cases doesn’t work well.

Some games like Let’s Go Jungle work fine, but on others (like race tv) the loading time becomes mentally long, and the game runs horribly slow - other games I’ve had the sound not in time with the video.
 
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