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SATA>IDE adapters: Auto-Detecting Pri Master.. [master/slave drives detected but slow wait]

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First post, by willinliv

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I am working on my latest Win98 machine, based around an Asrock GE Pro-M2 (bios 2.80) with two 128GB SSD into SATA>IDE adapters. Initial Win98 install with no issue, but when adding second drive I find that boot time is delayed as ‘Auto-detecting Pri Master…’ / ‘Auto-detecting Pri Slave…’ message is introduced. Both drives are eventually detected after 20seconds or so, and seems to boot normally with no other issues. The same is required before entering BIOS where the drives are set to Auto.

I am using these adapters which have the slave/master pins:
“NFHK EP-014 SATA Disk to IDE/PATA 40Pin Motherboard Converter Adapter PCBA for Desktop & 2.5 3.5 inch Hard Disk Drive”

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09GPGFLWB?ref=pp … _fed_asin_title

I have my C: drive set as Master on the adapter and positioned at 80pin cable end, and D: drive as Slave and at midway point. I have tried various combinations: master/slave as above; no jumpers (maybe relying on cable select?); jumper only on slave. All have this imposed speed bump. Quick boot does not override the motherboards desire to detect.

If I shift the second drive (with the adapter) to the secondary IDE (so only one drive on each connection then all loads nice and fast). If I add to the second IDE a CDROM set as Slave then this reintroduces the delay. Interestingly replacing the SSD with an IDE HDD on the secondary things are nice and fast again (so not effected). So for me at least, with this board, it seems to have an issue if two of these adapters are on the same cable.

I have seen this post Auto-Detecting Pri Master..Press <ESC> to abort_, however in that post the drives weren’t being detected. I may well pump for Startech to see if issue goes away, but wondered if anyone else had had issues with these adapters?

Many thanks, Will

Reply 1 of 3, by willinliv

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The Startech features Cable Select I think

Reply 2 of 3, by willinliv

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Just a quick follow-up on this one to answer my own question :0)

I switched to Startechs using the same config as master and slave on the primary IDE and this fixed the problem with boot at about 18secs compared to 45 - eliminating the 'auto-detecting pri master' type messages. However as I think people would probably tell me, as does the manual, running two ssd drives on the same IDE channel/connector isn't a good idea, although the Startech was marginally faster than Amazon's no-name converter above, for C I was getting 90MB/s but D only 5ish. Pushing the D drive to the secondary as Master/device 0 accompanying CDROM as Slave/device 1, and switching out the secondary to an 80pin cable is now giving me 90MB/s on both. So happy now!

Reply 3 of 3, by jakethompson1

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Reasonable people can disagree on this, but your Pentium 4 board is well past the point where using a Sil311x PCI SATA card causes any compatibility issues (as you'll surely be running Win98SE or 2000 or later) so I'd just get one of those - about $10 on eBay, and get yourself a SATA interface and forget about these IDE conversion headaches forever. Neither the JMicron nor Marvell (StarTech) is 100% compatible for me, it's always very hit or miss with compatibility, and though others swear by the StarTech, there are certain chipsets/boards it doesn't like, either. It's like the makers of late IDE drives (like 40GB) knew ATA front and back and all that was forgotten when these converters were designed.The only caveat is I deal in Socket 7/486 stuff while your P4 is surely more compatible with them.

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