Reddit reviews Monoprice IDE to Compact Flash CF Adapter w/PCI Bracket [A2]
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The SD-CF-IDE-BR is an adapter for connecting a compact flash memory card to a 3.5"IDE host interface aiming at educational sectors IT development and the embedded technology enthusiast to enable the use of a compact flash card as an IDE hard drive.No external power needed when used on VIA's EPIA series motherboardOn-board LED indicators for power-on and compact flash accessVoltage selection for +3
Just build a Windows 98/DOS gaming PC this year. Little tip I picked up from one of my favorite Youtube channels Lazy Game Reviews.
You can pick up one of these compact flash adapters, and use an ordinary compact flash card as your computer's hard drive. If you want to copy anything over to your retro PC from a more modern system, just turn off the retro system and plug the compact flash card into a USB adapter, dump whatever files you want over, whether it be Doom or Duke Nukem or what have you, the plug it back into the retro PC. No having to deal with floppies or anything like that, although using the original media certainly has it's own charm to it.
Possible workaround: Put /boot on a flash drive.
Both of my home machines have something like this inside and connected to the motherboard's USB header:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000IV6S9S
And attached to that is just a regular old USB thumb drive to serve as my /boot. This was originally done so that I could have /boot be on something other than my raid6 array and I wouldn't have to worry about having /boot copied on multiple disks in the array or anything like that. It lets me keep the array's disks simple and disposable. Only one array, only one partition (or no partitions) on every disk.
Since /boot gets very little writing, even cheap USB flash drives tend to last forever. Just dd a full image of the flash drive somewhere safe occasionally just in case it dies. I've been doing this since 2009 or so, and haven't had a flash drive die yet, but I did mysteriously lose a motherboard's header port and had to move that flash drive to be external.
Flash drives with USB header connectors right on them do exist, but I decided it was easier to just use the cheap adapter cable and then be able to use any random flash drive I had lying around. That way, if one dies, I'm not scrambling to find an immediate replacement of an obscure item.
Back when motherboards still had legacy IDE ports that were never used anymore, I used to use this sort of adapter for /boot on a compactflash card:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001TIXJ5U