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8-Bit IDE Controller

I think we're good on the size of the card, unless there are any other tandy variants that are even more space restrained than this HX is. (anyone know?)

It appears there is plenty of space horizontally, so a shorter but longer card would work. It also looks like just moving all the ICs down 1/4" and then shaving off 1/4" off the top would also work, but again, I don't think any of this is going to be required. It'll be tight, but I'll be able to do it.

I am hoping to be able to do a little dremel action tonight on mine and I will report back if mine fits in the space. I think it will.

Is that unreasonable that purchasers of the xtide may require physical mods to their machines to get it to work? ;)
 
hargle said:
I think we're good on the size of the card, unless there are any other tandy variants that are even more space restrained than this HX is. (anyone know?)
Click to expand...

The HX is as small as it gets. Still troubles me that this card didn't work in any machine I tried it in, even something as simple as a bare 486. I didn't change the settings at all when I had it, and I couldn't even flash it after a few days. I may need to check the power supply to my basement work area.
 
hargle said:
Is that unreasonable that purchasers of the xtide may require physical mods to their machines to get it to work? ;)
Click to expand...

I think the real question is there enough people out there that would require a low profile 8 bit IDE Card for any kind of machine?
 
Good information!
Looking at it now, I see that the tandy does indeed report the top of memory just fine: the value at 40:13 is 270h, which is 624k of base memory. (I have a 640k machine), so 16k of it is reserved for video. What the IDE card should have done is checked this value, removed 1 from it, then install its 1k buffer at 623-624k. That should just work, provided everyone is using and respecting that pointer at 40:13. I'll investigate some more as to why this doesn't seem to work on the first go around.

XTIDE only needs 1k of space. I could actually do with 1/2 of that, but 1k is a nice round number, and if I'm using that pointer at 40:13, that's the granularity anyway. If we have to get really creative on the tandy, so be it.
Click to expand...

I would hope looking at the pointer should be able to find the top of the free conventional memory area regardless of the graphics mode the Tandy adapter uses. The text, 160x200x16, 320x200x4 and 640x200x2 modes all require 16K, the 320x200x16 and 640x200x4 require 32K and the 640x200x16 64K.

By the way, do you think this thread should be split off into a new thread at 100 pages or 1000 posts?
 
Not that this has anything directly to do with the IDE Prodject but.

Being a person who owns an Acculogic, I've been trying various CF Cards to see which ones will work with the card "as is" and boot.

The results are interesting:

The card will NOT boot any make of CF Card except Kodak(Lexar)

I have a 128 and a 512 meg card, both will boot, tested with Dos 2000
on an XT.

I've tried many other makes of cards, none will boot, 128meg, 256, 512,
2 gig, none of them will boot under the same circumstances.

Go figure...
 
gerrydoire: you should go get a prom burned of our latest BIOS. All you need to do is change the base address using the setup utility to 360h (or I can do that for you) and then you can have your acculogic card booting any sized compact flash card. No reason to wait for our card when yours is ready to roll right now...


tandy HX news: Success! I've moved the adapter cable to the lower pin header and dremeled off the higher one, and now the card fits easily in the space available.
The next step is to try and find power for the IDE drive. I figured I could just tap off the floppy power, but I took it apart just now and there is *no* power going to the drive. It's powered via the cable? It all looks so standard 34 pin floppy to me; I didn't know you could power off that... man these things are weird! have to break out the multimeter and see if I can find a 12 and 5v power source...
 
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hargle said:
gerrydoire: you should go get a prom burned of our latest BIOS. All you need to do is change the base address using the setup utility to 360h (or I can do that for you) and then you can have your acculogic card booting any sized compact flash card. No reason to wait for our card when yours is ready to roll right now...


tandy HX news: Success! I've moved the adapter cable to the lower pin header and dremeled off the higher one, and now the card fits easily in the space available.
The next step is to try and find power for the IDE drive. I figured I could just tap off the floppy power, but I took it apart just now and there is *no* power going to the drive. It's powered via the cable? It all looks so standard 34 pin floppy to me; I didn't know you could power off that... man these things are weird! have to break out the multimeter and see if I can find a 12 and 5v power source...
Click to expand...

oh yeah, HX's are goofy machines. wish mine didn't get tossed in the garbage. it was a fun one to play with. don't bother though, there's no 12 volt line on it. only 5 volt. it's identical to the floppy drives in the TX.
 
hargle said:
I think we're good on the size of the card, unless there are any other tandy variants that are even more space restrained than this HX is. (anyone know?)
Click to expand...

Not a Tandy, but the Sinclair PC200 has a very oddly-shaped ISA bay. Full-length but only about half the proper height. If you want to have any cards plugged in you have to leave the sunroof open :)
 
I'm joining this late, but would be happy to contribute and am excited about being able to use an IDE drive in my vintage PC and XT. I am pretty handy with Eagle/PCB layout/hardware design and X86 assembler/C/C++...please let me know if I can help.

Which PCB mfgr do you use in China?

We often use PCB-Pool for smallish boards...have you tried them?

Thanks for this project...it is a great idea!
 
hargle said:
Tandy 1000 hx:
The next step is to try and find power for the IDE drive. I figured I could just tap off the floppy power, but I took it apart just now and there is *no* power going to the drive. It's powered via the cable? It all looks so standard 34 pin floppy to me; I didn't know you could power off that... man these things are weird! have to break out the multimeter and see if I can find a 12 and 5v power source...
Click to expand...

The GVP-50 taps the +12 and +5 from the buss and adds a 4 pin plug on the card. Many hard disk on a card ISA boards had this. You can do something similar.

The HX floppy cable carries the power on a couple of what would be ground pins on a standard floppy cable. They run 3 or 4 in parallel so it can provide enough current. So, you could also split the power out there. See this thread:
http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?t=15854

for the pinouts on the HX.

Kelly
 
hargle said:
tandy HX news: Success! I've moved the adapter cable to the lower pin header and dremeled off the higher one, and now the card fits easily in the space available.
The next step is to try and find power for the IDE drive. I figured I could just tap off the floppy power, but I took it apart just now and there is *no* power going to the drive. It's powered via the cable? It all looks so standard 34 pin floppy to me; I didn't know you could power off that... man these things are weird! have to break out the multimeter and see if I can find a 12 and 5v power source...
Click to expand...

The drives in an HX are powered through the drive cable. You can find +5v on pins 3,5,7,9,11 and +12v on 29,31,33.

oh yeah, HX's are goofy machines. wish mine didn't get tossed in the garbage. it was a fun one to play with. don't bother though, there's no 12 volt line on it. only 5 volt. it's identical to the floppy drives in the TX.
Click to expand...

PC floppy drive motors, at least of the HX's era generally require +12v, and the HX is no different.
 
OK, I think I've got the HX power sorted out. The small power cable that runs from the power supply over to the motherboard has 12v and 5v lines on it, so I'm going to tap that and run a line over to a hard drive power adapter.

Apologies that I'm pulling the thread way off topic while doing this.

dalbert: I think you will be an excellent addition to the team, being able to play in both hardware and software land. I used http://pcbcart.com/ to do the 1st prototype board. China based, but the quality seems to be excellent, and the cost wasn't too bad. With a run of 10 boards, 4.5x4.25, the cost was $175.

I think we're just about to pull the trigger on revision 2, it would be most excellent if you were to give it a quick design review:
http://n8vem-sbc.pbworks.com/f/Printing XT-IDE-sch.pdf

I can also make the bios source code available to you (x86 assembly) but there seems to be enough of us working there already that the BIOS is fairly well covered. It will all end up being open source eventually, but for now it's actually easier to keep some cooks out of the kitchen to make version tracking possible.
 
hargle said:
tandy HX news: Success! I've moved the adapter cable to the lower pin header and dremeled off the higher one, and now the card fits easily in the space available.
The next step is to try and find power for the IDE drive. I figured I could just tap off the floppy power, but I took it apart just now and there is *no* power going to the drive. It's powered via the cable? It all looks so standard 34 pin floppy to me; I didn't know you could power off that... man these things are weird! have to break out the multimeter and see if I can find a 12 and 5v power source...
Click to expand...

Good Gracious, that Tandy HX is one weird duck! At what point is it easier to just pull out all the components and mount them in an XT clone case or zip tie them to a piece of plywood? :)

Thanks! Have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch
 
Good to hear that it is working on a HX.
Will it work in a Tandy with the built-in "Smartdrive" XTIDE controller? My first candidate for the card when it comes out is a TL/2.
 
I'm *just* now getting to this, but had a few questions if someone in the group would like to take a stab at them:

1. I am set up to fab PCBs here at home, nothing fancy of course but something like this should be no problem. Are the original layout files available, and if so, in what format are they / which layout program was used? I may actually like to convert the layout to surface-mount since that's more convenient for me fabrication-wise (no drilling!) and the soldering is no biggie once you learn how.

2. Where can I get a PROM(?) burned with the option BIOS for this board?

3. I am soon to be in possession of a 5150 which I believe is one of the earlier BIOS versions. Is it possible to upgrade the bios in this machine (S/N 0197797) in order to use expansion cards with option ROMs?

Thanks a lot! This looks like such an awesome and genuinely useful project! :)
 
nathan said:
I'm *just* now getting to this, but had a few questions if someone in the group would like to take a stab at them:

1. I am set up to fab PCBs here at home, nothing fancy of course but something like this should be no problem. Are the original layout files available, and if so, in what format are they / which layout program was used? I may actually like to convert the layout to surface-mount since that's more convenient for me fabrication-wise (no drilling!) and the soldering is no biggie once you learn how.

2. Where can I get a PROM(?) burned with the option BIOS for this board?

3. I am soon to be in possession of a 5150 which I believe is one of the earlier BIOS versions. Is it possible to upgrade the bios in this machine (S/N 0197797) in order to use expansion cards with option ROMs?

Thanks a lot! This looks like such an awesome and genuinely useful project! :)
Click to expand...

1. Send lynchaj a PM, he got the files.
2. I can't help you there, but you can get the binaries from the VC wiki.
3. Very few PC's have the first BIOS, as IBM upgraded it within half a year from the original release. You may be in (or in your cause; out) of luck to get one with the firs BIOS, but you can allways burn a later BIOS to an EPROM and place that in the 5150. Just note that IBM used some unusual kind of ROM chip in the 5150, so you problably have to make an adapter if you are used to 27xx EPROMs.

*Edit*
Nevermind. Only the third revision of the PC BIOS will support BIOS extension.
 
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New BIOS available:
http://wiki.vintage-computer.com/index.php?title=XTIDE_project#Downloads

Rev 0.10

If you're not using the card on a tandy machine, there's no real reason for you to upgrade. All the fixes put in place were to get it to work properly on my HX.

from the history.txt file:
Note: ROMS prior to this release will not work on a tandy (HX) machine!
* quick switch to 25x80 text mode before sign-on banner. made it possible for Tandy to display.
* Interrupts enabled before pressing Press [ESC] for boot menu...
* Boot menu now displays drive model number on a tandy HX.

I haven't actually tested this code on a NON tandy machine, but I see no reason why anything I've done would cause it to fail. the changes were really minor.

Oddly enough, I am now using my card at ROM address D000 again, and it works just fine. I also didn't modify anything with where the scratch pad is being reserved at; it is all working exactly as it should. Kinda creepy, but this is a tandy machine! I'm also using kb2syd's card, and it's behaving nicely. I flashed it on the tandy itself just fine, and I'm using a Seagate ST310014ACE drive out of an xbox 1. All 8G of the drive is available via 4 partitions. It's perfect.

I even got a power hookup. I tapped into the mainboard power lead and spliced in one of those Y power splitters. Seems to be happy, and I very well may attach a CF card to this thing too, since there's really no way to get external data onto the drive other than the floppy. The 2nd power connector from the Y splitter is sitting behind the floppy drive.

tandywdrive.jpg


I think with just a little bit of squishing I can get the cover back on. Now to play some King's Quest on it!
 
oh thats killer hargle! now i want my HX back so i could do this to it. :(

i never used it much just because i couldn't have an HDD on it.
 
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