SSD For Old Computer

[tb75252]

I have this 11-year old PC and I am thinking about upgrading it by installing an SSD (SATA).
The motherboard is a TYAN S1854 Trinity 400 Rev. 1.07. The BIOS is Award Modular v4.51PG. The operating system is Windows XP Professional SP3.

Since this is an old PC, the motherboard does not have SATA ports, so I was thinking about installing a PCI host controller card (SATA).

I fear that my old BIOS will not recognize the solid state drive, so I was wondering if this upgrade is even possible. Maybe the host controller card helps the BIOS in seeing the SSD?

The BIOS I have is very old and TYAN has not posted any newer versions since the year 2000. Also, Award is no longer in business so I don’t know if a newer BIOS version exists.

What do the experts think/suggest?

PS: I am fully aware that from the practical point of view it is not worth spending money in upgrading an 11-year old PC. Nevertheless, I would like to do it as a personal challenge. I have already installed more memory, a faster microprocessor, and upgraded the graphics card too. Now I would like to tackle the hard drive issue, but I do not want to spend money in new parts only to find out that they won’t work at all because of the BIOS issue…
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tb

 

[sminlal]

There is a standard way for add-in cards to extend the BIOS, so it's possible for an add-in card to provide a way to boot from the devices attached to it. But whether the card actually does that or not is another story.

 

[nforce4max]

It depends on the capacity but since most ssd are small in terms of storage you shouldn't have that much of an issue.

 

[RetiredChief]

The pci card route may be the way to go.

As a 2nd Option they do make some PATA (IDE) SSds. They should just plug inplace of your old IDE HDD. I bought three 8 gig drives to replace 2 gig SCSI HDDs in a Windows 3.11 system. The bois in the pentium 90s was to old (Bios ver like 1990): However, It worked great in a Pentium 233, Sligthly newer Bios. What I did was Set up a 2 Gig partition and cloned the old Scsi drive to it.

They do make larger than 8 gig PATA SSDs. I only need a 2 gig drive, but the 8 was the closest.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=pata+ssd

 

[tb75252]

The pci card route may be the way to go.

As a 2nd Option they do make some PATA (IDE) SSds. They should just plug inplace of your old IDE HDD. I bought three 8 gig drives to replace 2 gig SCSI HDDs in a Windows 3.11 system. The bois in the pentium 90s was to old (Bios ver like 1990): However, It worked great in a Pentium 233, Sligthly newer Bios. What I did was Set up a 2 Gig partition and cloned the old Scsi drive to it.

They do make larger than 8 gig PATA SSDs. I only need a 2 gig drive, but the 8 was the closest.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=pata+ssd

Wow, I didn't know that there were PATA (IDE) SSDs! Thanks for the info.

 

[tb75252]

Best answer selected by tb75252.