So you got a new XT-IDE card for your vintage computer, you get installed boot from a floppy run Fdisk then format and transfer the system files to the CF card, and on boot you get the message “NO OPERATING SYSTEM FOUND” and after some random words of disappointment your try and figure out why it wont boot from the CF card. So you try the whole process again thinking you missed something and again you see “NO OPERATING SYSTEM FOUND”.
Let’s explore why it wont work. CF cards though using the same IDE bus are not made to be bootable IDE hard drives. CF cards are designed to be storage media for devices like cameras and industrial electronics. This doesn’t mean they cant be used as Hard drives, they just require a few extra steps to make them capable of being bootable media.
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There are several of different ways to fix a CF card so it’s bootable, they all reset the master boot record (MBR) to all 0’s. The first is the “fdisk /mbr” command the next is wipedisk.exe which is a small program that resets the MBR of the c: drive to 0’s (Download available below). There are other methods but these are the two simplest ways I have found to reset the MBR.
This is how I do it and your results may vary or you may need to change the process depending on your system and available resources.
fdisk /mbr method:
1 – You will need a MS-DOS boot disk with at least DOS 5.0 or newer and Fdisk.exe, format.com, and sys.com.
2 – Boot the computer with the floppy disk with the CF card installed.
3 – from your a:\> prompt type “FDISK /MBR” or “FDISK /CMBR <DISK>” <Disk> being the hard drive you want to reset the MBR on, Eample – “FDISK /CMBR D:”.
3 – Run FDISK and create your partitions, Keeping in mind if your going to be installing a different version of DOS you would want to reboot at this time with the boot disk and use FDISK for that version of dos. (When creating partitions keep in mind the max partition size supported by the version of dos you plan on using)
4 – After running Fdisk Simply format the drive with “FORMAT <DRIVE>” Example = “Format c:” or “Format c: /S” to transfer the system files automatically after the format is complete.
5 – If you forgot to use the “/s” option Simply use the command “sys c:”
Wipedisk.exe method:
1 – You will need a MS-DOS boot disk and Fdisk.exe, format.com, and sys.com.
2 – Boot the computer with the floppy disk with the CF card installed.
3 – Run “wipedisk.exe” and when prompted Confirm with a uppercase “C” (Note – Wipedisk will ONLY work on drive C: Do not attempt this method for a secondary drive)
