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Silicon Valley ADP-50L 8bit IDE

Chromedome45

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I Have a chance to get one of these 8 bit IDE cards. As compared to the Acculogic Side1/16 or the Juko is this one any good? Have not heard much about it. Any opinions are welcome.
 
They work perfect with a CF memory card witha cheap IDE adapter off ebay.

Tip: boot the machine with dos and fdisk the drive mark the C drive active and install the DOS OS. If it fails to boot, boot the machine with DOS 6.22 and do a fdisk /mbr command, the drive should then boot with the installed OS.

For some reason this IDE card does not work with a 5160.

Well worth getting if you like the price.

framer
 
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I've disassembled the BIOS on that card (never worked with it personally) and it's an odd beast. It uses memory mapped IO instead of regular IO. That's the only card of that vintage I've ever seen do that.

A BIOS upgrade to it is probably possible; to break the 528mb barrier.

As soon as I'm finished with the XT-IDE project, I'd love to go around and retro mod all these other IDE controllers with my BIOS to give everyone 2TB+ abilities.
I'd need to borrow some hardware for a few days for each one, but the results may be worth it.

That's a rainy day thing for sure though.

If it's not too expensive, I'd get it. The XT-IDE is right around the corner, but it's always a good idea to give vintage gear a loving home.
 
I Have a chance to get one of these 8 bit IDE cards. As compared to the Acculogic Side1/16 or the Juko is this one any good? Have not heard much about it. Any opinions are welcome.
I've heard they can transfer up to 300Kb/s! That's quite a lot for an 8088 system, but I haven't been able to test it because I don't have one of therse cards.

How many can you get?

If you can get more than one, I'll gladly buy one off you.
 
Per, I could only get the one and paid a bit for it. Framer, it is currently installed im my
PC/XT 5160 and connected to a 170MB Hard drive and works fine. ;)
Could be the BIOS on the 5160 or the controller BIOS (2.53) that is making it work.
The 528MB limit I'm not worried about right now.
 
Per, I could only get the one and paid a bit for it. Framer, it is currently installed im my
PC/XT 5160 and connected to a 170MB Hard drive and works fine. ;)
Could be the BIOS on the 5160 or the controller BIOS (2.53) that is making it work.
The 528MB limit I'm not worried about right now.

It's the BIOS on the card that's limiting it to ~528Mb. The BIOS in the XT itself doesn't even support hard drives, only floppy disks.
 
and it's likely the memory mapped-ness of the IDE BIOS that is allowing it to go so fast. You don't have to do the trickery of the 16bit->8bit data swapping like we do on the xt-ide. mike brutman and I have been discussing this same thing for our project. Maybe the next revision we can match their speed, but I'll take HDD size over speed anyday. :)
 
I've heard they can transfer up to 300Kb/s! That's quite a lot for an 8088 system, but I haven't been able to test it because I don't have one of therse cards.

How many can you get?

If you can get more than one, I'll gladly buy one off you.

If you overclock isa bus you can get mucho more than those 300kb/s ...

IDE-XT.jpg
 
As I understand it, to overclock the bus on an IBM PC/XT, you have to overclock the processor and ensure that the overclocked frequency is on the CLK line.

What program is that, Spinrite, Norton?
 
So, how do you overclock the ISA bus on an IBM PC/XT?

I don't really think it is easy. First of all, you have to disconnect the original system clock signal (problably by cutting a trace on the motherboard), then you have to make a new system clock signal that is unique for the ISA bus. Some cards may not work (due to the ISA bus is out-of-sync with the rest of the system), but most cards that normally works fine in the IBM 5161 expansion unit should work as exepted (except the composite-output of the CGA).

A simpler way is of course to get your hands on an IBM 5161, and just replace the clock crystal with a faster version. Just make sure it isn't too fast (TTL's can't usually handle more than 20-30MHz).
 
Great Googly Moogly!

Are you sure that's an IDE device on an XT class machine? That looks like RAM disk speed to me. I am surprised the 8088 can sling bits that quickly. It must be using DMA, RAM caching, or something is funky.

1MB per second is towards the upper limit of the ISA bus and pushing even the 16 bit version ISA bus.

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

PS, those average track seek times are suspicious as well. I think we are seeing someone's disk RAM cache performance and not true device speed.
 
The program looks like Checkit. And I agree with Lynch I think we are seeing
disk cache perfomance not true I/O throughput. I have checkit too. Might
have to run some bechmarks on it.
 
Great Googly Moogly!

Are you sure that's an IDE device on an XT class machine? That looks like RAM disk speed to me. I am surprised the 8088 can sling bits that quickly. It must be using DMA, RAM caching, or something is funky.

1MB per second is towards the upper limit of the ISA bus and pushing even the 16 bit version ISA bus.

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

PS, those average track seek times are suspicious as well. I think we are seeing someone's disk RAM cache performance and not true device speed.

No caching was used on that photo. The hard disk is a 256mb CF card.

That allowed me to create a demo that plays full screen video in cga 640x200@25fps. You can see it on this video (look to the amber monitor)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itJ-Mg3jKYw

That was our booth on the last edition of RetroMadrid, a retro party held in Madrid, Spain.

And yes, that's checkit.
 
Wow!!! that explains it. Cool, I guess my HDD won't be able to match that
speed.

Oh and if anyone wants one looks like they have one left but
with a different part number. I am not trying to endorse this company
but they were very polite and shipped same day. And yes that is the
same amount I paid. I guess I was just a sucker and wanted one badly
enough to pay the price.

Here is link:
http://cfusion.com/cgi-bin/getPart_1.cgi?strSearchFragment=silicon valley

Part number: 7500354002 don't know if it's the exact same thing or not
but you may have to call and find out if your is interested in it.
 
Wow!!! that explains it. Cool, I guess my HDD won't be able to match that
speed.

Oh and if anyone wants one looks like they have one left but
with a different part number. I am not trying to endorse this company
but they were very polite and shipped same day. And yes that is the
same amount I paid. I guess I was just a sucker and wanted one badly
enough to pay the price.

Here is link:
http://cfusion.com/cgi-bin/getPart_1.cgi?strSearchFragment=silicon valley

Part number: 7500354002 don't know if it's the exact same thing or not
but you may have to call and find out if your is interested in it.
$150 is quite a lot for an adapter... I know it may be exactly what I want, but I'll not allow myself to pay more than $50 for it (It's not THAT imporiant for me).
 
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