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8-Bit IDE Controller

lynchaj said:
I tried again with the larger Quantum Fireball SE (4GB) and it almost works. I tried the old "FDISK /MBR" trick thinking that might help but no luck. I suspect there is a BIOS problem with the older pre-8GB drives as Hargle said earlier.
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Yep. I'm working on a new generation of the BIOS code, much more organized and about 99% of the original acculogic code is now gone. (so I took their name off the sign-on text).
I've got my new code fdisking, formatting, and booting drives properly, and the door is now open to get the eINT13 support working, so that will come up shortly.

I wouldn't even bother testing with anything less than 8.4 gig at the moment, at least not until my new code base comes online. I've got some hard coded >8.4G values in my CHS->LBA conversion routine that may be causing you some troubles.

My only hold up is that I don't have any drives in my stockpile that are smaller than 8.4 gig, so I've got nothing to test with! ;) I'll grab a couple from work this week.

PS, I do not own any CF components and the controller was designed for IDE hard drives. However, that does not mean IDE to CF adapters *won't* work with the controller.
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I have an IDE->CF adapter, and a couple CF cards, so I can test some of that on my end too. I will also be testing CD-ROM support (at least identification) when I get a moment as well.
 
hargle said:
Yep. I'm working on a new generation of the BIOS code, much more organized and about 99% of the original acculogic code is now gone. (so I took their name off the sign-on text).
I've got my new code fdisking, formatting, and booting drives properly, and the door is now open to get the eINT13 support working, so that will come up shortly.

I wouldn't even bother testing with anything less than 8.4 gig at the moment, at least not until my new code base comes online. I've got some hard coded >8.4G values in my CHS->LBA conversion routine that may be causing you some troubles.

My only hold up is that I don't have any drives in my stockpile that are smaller than 8.4 gig, so I've got nothing to test with! ;) I'll grab a couple from work this week.



I have an IDE->CF adapter, and a couple CF cards, so I can test some of that on my end too. I will also be testing CD-ROM support (at least identification) when I get a moment as well.
Click to expand...

If I could help I would, unfortunetly I know absolutely nothing about programming..

I'm like Steve Jobs, the artist who is technically clueless...
 
hargle said:
I've got my new code fdisking, formatting, and booting drives properly, and the door is now open to get the eINT13 support working, so that will come up shortly.
Click to expand...

That is music to my ears.

I wouldn't even bother testing with anything less than 8.4 gig at the moment, at least not until my new code base comes online.
Click to expand...

Now THAT is funny. "Minimum drive size: 8.4G"
 
Hi! I did a bit more testing tonight. Since the <8.4GB drives are out due to BIOS issues I decided to focus on a couple of >8.4GB drives. One is a Seagate 15GB and the other is a Maxtor 10GB. Both appear to work at first, the BIOS recognizes them, I am able to use FDISK and make a partition and master boot record. On the Seagate it won't let me format and the Maxtor will let me format.

Neither lets me boot the system and both report some funky values to FDISK. They report they are 540MB drives sometimes and larger at others. They act rather similar but both neither are working properly. This all seems to me like there is some BIOS funkiness going on. This isn't a great report but it does tell us there are some BIOS issues we'll need to chip away at.

Thanks and have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch
 
lynchaj said:
Neither lets me boot the system and both report some funky values to FDISK. They report they are 540MB drives sometimes and larger at others. They act rather similar but both neither are working properly. This all seems to me like there is some BIOS funkiness going on. This isn't a great report but it does tell us there are some BIOS issues we'll need to chip away at.
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What operating system were you using for this? My (so far) testing has all been done with dos 6.22. Just making sure that your not hitting a 540MB limit due to an OS. 6.22 can do 2gig partitions, and see a drive up to 8.4G.

I'd like to switch over to my new BIOS codebase for all future testing, simply because it's got a better organization setup behind it.

I assume you're still testing on your pentium machine? there may be timeout/timing issues because your machine is running too fast and I'm only using simple loops to wait for timeouts. Perhaps you could turn off your cache to slow your machine down a bit and see if the funkies go away.
 
HI Gang !

Just checking in, and the progress so far looks good!

I was curious about a couple of things however.......

........ what happens if you use the Acculogic sIDE BIOS *as is*? It worked very well the way that it was, albeit it probably didn't support drives above 528/540 meg. Never checked, didn't care.

Which leads me to my next question.... there seems to be a lot of interest in using large hard drives, 2.1G and larger. Although this would be nice, I'm wondering why (?). Are people actually USING 8088/8086 machines to do anything useful ? ( no offense intended of course! )

I would be very surprised if many ( or any ) people are actually using this class computer to access this website, or use them on the internet for many chores. I would be equally surprised if most people here were not using P III or P IV class machines or better for daily computing. ( I could of course be real wrong, after all this is the Vintage Computer Forum :p )

For me, using an XT type computer is only for "fun" or hobby activity, so HUGE HDD's would not be particularly necessary. The OS might be an issue, as you're limited to what OS you can use on an 8088/8086 machine, and most won't support massive HDD's anyway. ( DOS anyway )

Personally, I would like to see support for ATAPI IDE CD-ROM drives, but certainly understand if that is not doable.

Just curious and my 7¢ worth. :mrgreen:

bobwatts
EartH
 
Ibm pc xt

Ibm pc xt

bobwatts said:
Which leads me to my next question.... there seems to be a lot of interest in using large hard drives, 2.1G and larger. Although this would be nice, I'm wondering why (?). Are people actually USING 8088/8086 machines to do anything useful ? ( no offense intended of course! )
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I have the Acculogic, and I have (1) 128 meg CF Card attached to it and it works as it should. Waiting for a 256meg CF and 512meg CF to come in, currently I don't think anything but type1 cards will work, them 80x type cards do not.

As you stated why would anyone need gigs of space on a computer that can barely run anything of practical use, I for one do not,
Even back in 1985 when I owned one I thought it was a slow worthless piece of crap (lol).

That being said, if the good folks here can make their own ide card for this type of computer (8bit PC/XT) that can push the limits why not, it's more about being able to do it than having any really practical use "i think".

If we were to collect every single program that was made to run on the IBM PC or XT, how much space would it take? I currently have a ton of games that takes about 400 megs of space.

:cool:
 
bw: I think the purpose of using drives in that category is one of availability mostly. There are just a helluva lot of them sitting around unused (how many boxes full do you have). OTOH, the smaller drives are becoming a littler scarcer these days.

--T
 
IDE drives

IDE drives

Hello Mr. Yager!

Yes, I kinda figured that. Boxes of IDE drives.....yep, lot's of 'em!

But, I have boxes of "old" 540 meg and smaller also. Shame, but I literally threw out MANY boxes of old IDE 540 and smaller drives. Probably a box of Seagate 351A/X 8/16 bit drives.

Sadly, I haven't looked in years... I wonder how many still work.... I constantly read of people finding out that old HDD's simply "die" from sitting. I know that my IBM Server collection shows signs of this.

And a couple of years ago I was going through my motherboard collection, too late for a few boards that the damn bats had destroyed. Broke off the rest.

*****
Gerry, what software/programs are you using to access your CF cards, and what are you attaching them to? ( I think I know, but was curious in your case. Damn, I have used curious three times today...wonder what the limit is?)

bobwatts
EartH
 
********
Gerry, what software/programs are you using to access your CF cards, and what are you attaching them to? ( I think I know, but was curious in your case. Damn, I have used curious three times today...wonder what the limit is?)
********

Acculogic Side 1/16 Card, CF to IDE connector(cheap and common)
PC Dos 7.0, tried Dos 3.3 and it works as well.

Everything works as is without any modifications.

Its inside an IBM XT, which also has a Orchid 286 card and a 768k Quadram Card. Soundblaster card, MS Mouse Card, 1.44Meg Capable Floppy Card, and IBM CGA Card that came with it, all cards are 8 bit, unmodified as is, everything seems to work, 360k Floppy that came with it, 1.44 Black floppy to replace dead MFM HD.

The MB has a 8087, the Orchid is a 8Mhz 286 with a 80287.

That's about it..
 
CF card

CF card

Hi Gerry !

We seem to have very similar machines. Don't know if you ever saw this:
http://home.fuse.net/bobwatts/xt.htm

My Acculogic sIDE card is somewhere else right now, don't know exactly where. ;)

How EXACTLY do you access the CF card? What program are you using to "see" it ? I have honestly never checked into using a CF card with anything other than WinXP, VISTA, or previous versions of Windows something. And they see the thing automatically, usually. Some older versions of Windows need drivers of course.

Thanks !

bobwatts
EartH
 
Cf

Cf

bobwatts said:
How EXACTLY do you access the CF card?
Click to expand...
DOS on XT machine (with my silcon valley ADPL-50)
Fdisk then format
be sure to set partition active if you want to boot from the CF card
and it will be accessed just like a common harddrive

Dos on 286/386/486/586 ,set the bios HD type first(my 586 M/B has a auto-detect function) then it can be accessed under dos
in window XP system , a USB cardreader...
 
bobwatts said:
Hi Gerry !

We seem to have very similar machines. Don't know if you ever saw this:
http://home.fuse.net/bobwatts/xt.htm

My Acculogic sIDE card is somewhere else right now, don't know exactly where. ;)

How EXACTLY do you access the CF card? What program are you using to "see" it ? I have honestly never checked into using a CF card with anything other than WinXP, VISTA, or previous versions of Windows something. And they see the thing automatically, usually. Some older versions of Windows need drivers of course.

Thanks !

bobwatts
EartH
Click to expand...

I just used an IDE<>CF Connector, and used it like it was a regular hard drive.

I think you have to use Type1 cards only, I haven't tested more than 2 cards yet.

With a 2gig 80x card, it would read and write to the card, but refused to boot from it.

I have a few more type1 size cards comming in the mail to try out.

I think if you can have two 512meg cards on a PC or XT you have more space than you will ever really need.
 
gerrydoire said:
I think if you can have two 512meg cards on a PC or XT you have more space than you will ever really need.
Click to expand...

Not if you're doing development :) My program partition is 100MB and full. I have to delete old builds and .bak files whenever I start a new project or I don't have room.

I have a 320MB IDE and a 340MB CF-to-IDE-adapter in my XT; the CF is the backup drive. I sync files over to it after every four hours of work or so.
 
I managed to find some old drives at work, and have (I believe) gotten them to properly configure in my new BIOS code base. I successfully transferred files from an 800MB drive, a 1.5G drive, and of course, my main 8.4G test drive.
(no eINT13 yet, so I can't test bigger than 8.4G)

One of the drives I managed to find was an 82MB(!) western digital drive, which was manufactured in 1992. It didn't work. Then I realized that it didn't support LBA access methods, which apparently came online about 1994.

This lead me to an interesting dilemma. Do I add CHS support to the BIOS?
I don't really want to. The whole idea behind this controller and breaking all the size barriers was that we'd put drives on there that were more modern and easier to get ahold of.

For now, I just put a warning message up on the screen that the drive is too crusty to work, and then I disable it.

There should be no hardware concerns doing CHS access, but it will require a lot of code debugging and testing, and to be honest, this 82MB drive is so old that the motor is going out and it's hurting my ears, so I really don't want to mess with it any more than I have to.

I personally see no reason to have support for it. If you're too cheap to use a drive manufactured after 1994, I'll send you one for free. ;)

The only reason I could think of would be to transfer some files off an old drive onto a newer one, but you could do that on any machine, not your XT.

opinions?
 
I was going to grouse because I would have no way to use all my "little" drives. But then I figured why bother. I have plenty of "tweeners" that support LBA. Really, what does it matter. I personally would rather have anything that worked in an a 8-bitter than to add more debugging and development time.
 
Chs vs lba

Chs vs lba

Hi Gang !

Isn't that interesting, on a "Vintage" computer forum, to have to choose between ancient CHS or newer LBA ? :cool:

Easy choice, LBA !

Got lots of ways to access other ancient drives if I have to here in the BODADC ( Basement of DOOM and Diet Cola ) :twisted:

bobwatts
EartH
 
Trixter said:
Not if you're doing development :) My program partition is 100MB and full. I have to delete old builds and .bak files whenever I start a new project or I don't have room.

I have a 320MB IDE and a 340MB CF-to-IDE-adapter in my XT; the CF is the backup drive. I sync files over to it after every four hours of work or so.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't it make more sense to development in emulation on a faster computer?
 
gerrydoire said:
Wouldn't it make more sense to development in emulation on a faster computer?
Click to expand...

Not if your target is the real machine and you have timing/speed-sensitive code you are writing :) No single emulator gets the timing of old x86 hardware correct, not even MESS (although Andrew Jenner has done wonders with the CGA emulation). (In fact, one of my projects is a benchmark meant to help emulation authors, but I digress.)

When I write a general purpose program/application/whatever, I do so on whatever my modern machine is. When I program for fun, I do so directly on the target machine. My last project took three months and could have gone much faster on a better machine, but part of the whole point of that project was to answer a dare by a friend. The dare was to write a tracker-like music program in object-oriented code -- something you typically don't do on a 4Mhz 8088 -- that runs on a 128KB machine and can use a speaker for output. Because I coded on the metal itself, it forced me to think of the most efficient way of achieving this goal as I wrote the code. The end result was that I not only met the challenge, but I tossed in Adlib support just to prove it was truly OOP and designed properly (Adlib support was added simply by descending the hardware output object) instead of just a hardwired PC speaker hack.

I think that one trap that plagues developers -- of every era and platform -- is the desire to build applications on the fastest machine they can get their hands on. Sure, this makes builds a lot faster, but if speed is an issue (which it is with my hobbyist programming projects), you don't have any sense of how the program will run on its intended target platform. When I look at OpenOffice (a wonderful program, I'm just using it as an example), I wonder why I need a Pentium and 300MB of RAM just to bring up the word processor.

Me personally, programming directly on the metal gives me the most enjoyment. Why on earth is this? Because it forces me to think deeper and more effectively. On fast machines, it's too easy to get caught up in change-compile-test-change-compile-test in rapid succession. Because building a project takes at least 2 minutes on a slow machine, I find myself sitting and just thinking about what to do next, or re-reviewing what I had written, because I don't have the luxury of frivolous compiles. The end result is better design and the occasional surprise of a program that compiles and runs perfectly on the first try.

Ahem.

All this being said, I am -- gasp -- upgrading (!) to a Tandy TX for my next project, mainly because the project has the unique requirement of needing composite video output and a Tandy sound chip. There are several machines that meet this need -- a PCjr, any Tandy 1000/HD/EX/etc. -- but the TX is the fastest one that meets this need, so why not use it?
 
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