t43 1871 - IDE / m2 adapter.

[dhe]

T43, 1871, BIOS 1.29 70ET69WW.

Purchased an IDE <> .m2 adapter.

When I boot a live cd with gparted, I get
ata1 SRST failed (errono=-16)

Do I have an ide adapter that isn't doing it's job, or am I fighting the BIOS?

[axur-delmeria]

The T43's HDD port is actually a SATA port that passes through a SATA-to-IDE bridge chip. This was needed because the ICH6-M southbridge chip only has one IDE port, which is wired to the DVD drive bay.

An IDE to M.2 adapter also contains a SATA-to-IDE bridge chip. Having two chips on the same channel causes various problems, like timeout and/or detection issues, speed limited to 33 MB/s, etc. Outside of using an IDE SSD (which are probably rare and expensive these days), there's no easy solution. Some folks simply removed the bridge chip, soldered some wires to the signal pins, and connected them to a SATA port. See: http://mikejmoffitt.com/articles/0000-t43sata.html

[Gonzaleitor]

I have an IDE to M2 adapter and works great. Did you try another way of installing the OS? What OS are you trying to install?
The SSD i'm using is a M2 SATA, not an NVME.

[axur-delmeria]

I have an IDE to M2 adapter and works great.

You got lucky then. There are reports of IDE to M.2 or mSATA adapters working fine on the T43 (and similar models), but AFAIK the problematic ones are more common. Some forum members have speculated that having the same bridge chip on both the IDE port and the adapter increases the probability of it working, but without hard data to back it up, we can't be certain. There's also quality control issues regarding the adapters themselves.

[Gonzaleitor]

I have an IDE to M2 adapter and works great.

You got lucky then. There are reports of IDE to M.2 or mSATA adapters working fine on the T43 (and similar models), but AFAIK the problematic ones are more common. Some forum members have speculated that having the same bridge chip on both the IDE port and the adapter increases the probability of it working, but without hard data to back it up, we can't be certain. There's also quality control issues regarding the adapters themselves.

It may be that I am lucky.
I have a couple of questions for the OP. Does the BIOS recognize the SSD? If you press F12 to select the boot options does the SSD appear in the options? Is the SSD M2 SATA or is an M2 NVME? Did you insert the adapter correctly?

[dhe]

Cablecc mSATA Mini PCI-E SATA SSD - sled
Transcend 128GB SATA III 6G/s mSATA

No the BIOS does not see it.

The wiring to go pure SATA is more than I think I would like to get into.

I think I will look up an old IDE SSD and give that a try.

I have a T22 and 600x that might be better candidates for the above kit?

[Gonzaleitor]

Maybe your adapter is just not compatible with your T43. Thats an ide to mSATA adapter, not an M2.

[Glaurung-quena]

Cablecc mSATA Mini PCI-E SATA SSD - sled
Transcend 128GB SATA III 6G/s mSATA

No the BIOS does not see it.

I assume you know your T43 works fine with a regular IDE hard disk. I also assume your adapter is compatible with your SSD (there have several varieties of blade style SSDs, some of them using the same slots but incompatible protocols, and they've all had confusing names).

Plug the ssd+ adapter combo into a different computer and see if it works there. I keep a cheap SATA/IDE/laptop IDE to usb adapter in my drawer for those times when I need to see if a drive is functional (and/or to recover data off it). Search for IDE to USB adapter on Ebay/newegg/amazon, it looks like a little square with different hard drive ports on each side, I think I paid between $30 and $40 for mine.

If your IDE adapter + SSD doesn't show up as a drive on a modern computer, then the problem does not lie with your vintage laptop. I've had mSATA adapters be dead on arrival (especially the cheaper ones), and I've also had SSDs that I ordered from reputable stores show up dead.

It's a PITA, but order another drive and test it with the adapter. If that fails, order another adapter. Make sure every piece of the chain is working, then try the combination in the T43.

[dhe]

> Search for IDE to USB adapter on Ebay/newegg/amazon, it looks like a little square with different hard drive ports on each side, I think I paid between $30 and $40 for mine.

That's a good idea, I didn't know those existed. I will report back on this thread when I get one of those in house and have had a chance to test.

Yea, this T43 has a perfectly functioning Hitachi 60GB drive.

[dhe]

> Search for IDE to USB adapter on Ebay/newegg/amazon, it looks like a little square with different hard drive ports on each side, I think I paid between $30 and $40 for mine.

That's a good idea, I didn't know those existed. I will report back on this thread when I get one of those in house and have had a chance to test.

Yea, this T43 has a perfectly functioning Hitachi 60GB drive.

[dhe]

The ide2usb bridge adapter I picked up from ebay was $8.

I have two adapters IDE 2 msata ssd.

I plugged the ide adapter, in to the usb to ide bridge.

I started DiskGenuis - and it sees the drive - blank with a MBR partition table.

Go I would say it's all good, just the T43 doesn't like it.

[axur-delmeria]

In case you don't find any IDE SSDs, someone designed his own IDE SSD and released the plans:

https://hackaday.com/2023/01/19/that-ol ... 5-ide-ssd/

https://github.com/dosdude1/2.5-inch-ide-ssd

[dhe]

I received a Transcend solid-state IDE hard drive.

I was not seen in the BIOS either.

Put the original Hitachi drive back in and it worked fine.

[TPFanatic]

For my T43 fling I wound up running IDE HDD and putting an NVME SSD in the expresscard slot, told OS to use it as RAM/pagefile. Expresscard is marginally faster than SATA1 and this mooted the 2GB RAM limit as well. I do the same thing on my T60/R60 offloading the page-file to a secondary NVME SSD and they’re fairly stable.

For more flash storage you can use a PC Card to CF adapter. CF cards are affordable in high capacity since photographers use them and they are actually also IDE.

HDDs aren’t bad when they’re not thrashing. An optimized system won’t thrash.

A practical T43 system therefore keeps the IDE HDD to boot from, but for actual storage needs you should use the expansion slots.