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XTIDE tech support thread

Raven said:
Excellent headway, when I get the project started I'll of course start a thread (soonish..).. I wonder if that guy would consider releasing the source to his program, it could help quite a bit. I contacted him about that.
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he won't. he wants money for his work, which is why i'm a little upset that he used my (open source) code in his project. He didn't even tell me he was using it.
I don't have any licensing restrictions in my code, so he's free and clear to do with it what he wants, but I consider it LAME to take someone else's open source work and use it for your own profit. ok, we've taken this thread WAY off topic now. sorry!

More On-Topic: is there a shot at a later revision of XT-IDE having two or more IDE headers with support for four or more devices? A crazy build like 4 headers supporting 8 devices would be awesome.
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No, there is no such project in the works. you've niched a niched product. ;)
you can absolutely put 2 cards in one machine though, which is what I will likely do on 1 of my machines that I have room for a CD drive.
 
I got a response from him and he asked me a few questions, who knows.

As for adding multiple XT-IDE cards unfortunately that won't work for me, as I'm running out of ISA slots on my 486, and the last one is about to be filled by an Appletalk card - maybe on another build..
 
Why in the world are you putting an XTIDE card in your 486? Get a 16 bit IDE controller, swap out the BIOS with aitoit's 16 bit version and enjoy the same capabilities but 4x the performance!
 
Um, because I have an XT-IDE and no XT yet, I have no BIOS programmer (one is on it's way), and every 16-bit or VLB IDE controller I can find likes to also have tons of other stuff on it (meaning I have to re-jumper the damn things) and then even after that don't seem to work due to the onboard IDE controller in some way.
 
here's something you can do:
1) the XTIDE itself is, in a way, a BIOS programmer already. You can use it to program pretty much any 8k eeprom from the 28c64 family.
Get a 28C64 eeprom and load in the 16bit version of atoit's BIOS.

2) get a 16 bit 3COM ethernet card. They have ROM sockets on them, and with the 3com setup software, can be set up to enable the onboard ROM functionality. This has no effect on the operations of the actual 3com networking device, it's just a way to enable the hardware to let us have a free device to load in ROM data.

3) go into the motherboard BIOS and set all your HDD drive types to "NONE". It may also work to just disable the onboard IDE controller altogether, but that will vary depending on the machine itself. We want the hardware physically available on the bus, but no motherboard software talking to it.

With that combination, the mainboard BIOS *should* ignore the onboard IDE, then load in our option ROM which is located on the 3com card. That code would then talk to the onboard IDE hardware. With a couple fingers crossed and proper planetary alignment, you will then have the ability to have high performance IDE with >8.4G support, oh, and you can network the system too. :)
And then your xt-ide card will be free for when you actually get an XT to use it on.

I should probably write up this whole procedure and give links to the 3com software to use. I'll start a new thread when I do so.
 
Problems with xt-ide

aLRIGHT I GOT AN OLD HUYNDAI XT 8088 WITH 512K RAM i installed xt-ide and plugged it on an old ide hard drive which was first WIPED CLEAN with one of those "kill disk" utilities which erase all data, i repartitioned the hard drive using dos 6.22 formattec and transferred the system to the hard drive using sys c: all those were done in a more modern pentium 3 pc and by using cd-rom as my XT doesn't have any floppies (they are dead) then installed the ready made hard drive to my XT since dos is hardware independent and tried to boot from it.

while xt-ide bios sees the HDD and tried to boot from it after the time out, the message that boot sector found! is displayed and then absolutely nothing cursor jumps a line and thats it hangs right there while it should normally display time date then c:\ drive prompt

any clues ? many thanks to jeff for his email support and card

why it stops right there and doesn't go on ? another note is i have tried this WITHOUT using a keyboard in my XT is this the problem ? keyboard is located in my summer house and i didn't think it would be needed for the test as the pc will move to my summer house also after i got it to work. i tried with a seagate hard drive older ata2 model im perfectly sure it isnt the hard drives fault as i had windows xp previously installed there and worked like a charm

cheers
 
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asiawatcher said:
while xt-ide bios sees the HDD and tried to boot from it after the time out, the message that boot sector found! is displayed and then absolutely nothing cursor jumps a line and thats it hangs right there while it should normally display time date then c:\ drive prompt
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As can be seen at http://wiki.vintage-computer.com/index.php?title=XTIDE_TestResults , there are some drives with 'issues'.

Note the "If you can FDISK and FORMAT a drive but can't boot from it ... " right at the end.
I've only just seen that.
I went back and revisited two 32MB CF cards that were showing the same symptoms as what you're seeing. I did what was suggested, and now they boot.
 
asiawatcher said:
an old ide hard drive
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What is the capacity of this old IDE hard drive? If more than 504 MiB, it is possible that your modern system gives it L-CHS parameters using some incompatible translation method.

Download HDD Speed 2.1 from here. Run it on the modern system. It will display CHS geometry (IDE Default and BIOS). Let me know what they are.

Edit: It will allow to save results to a text file. If possible, let me have the result file.
 
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hi all thanks for the replies the modern ide drive is seagate barracuda ata 2 100 model ST320424A 20 GB

ill try the first suggestion from <modem7> and come back to you IN A SEC


after trying::: modem7 it worked!!! i did fdisk /mbr and now it works loads of thanks guys amazing thank you also aitotat

god bless you all
 
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modem7 said:
I went back and revisited two 32MB CF cards that were showing the same symptoms as what you're seeing. I did what was suggested, and now they boot.
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I tried the FDISK /MBR command for Magicstor microdrive and non-bootable CF cards and now they all boot. Good to know that there is no such thing as non-bootable microdrive or CF card.
 
I aplogize in advance that i have not read the post sincei got the XT-IDE card that was built for $40.00 price, however, i ahve been busy with some other things unfortunatley.

i have a Tandy Tl/2 1000 and I have some parts I would be glad to part with such as small HD's, 540 mb, 270 et al, and some memory and a p133 pentum processor that may work if someone would like those if they would get in touch with me and help me get this up and runnning. I have used comptuers for about 30 years and know a good bit about a variety of things, but no expert on them with regards to computers . . .well some things i might be an expert on . . .
I have a BS in Chem Eng . . .and so i have good engineering knowledge and learn well, but i was just wondering if someone could help me getu p and running . .. ihate swimming through tons of posts. . . but maybe i can take the time to do this . .. this is a hobby though right? . . .

please advise . if you dont midn . . .is it ok to post an email or a phone # to get in touch with me regarding some tech support? . . .

please adivse.

thanks!

chris
 
The main thing you need to read is the 1st post on page one of this thread. Whenever something new and interesting comes up that should help people, I try and update that first post so it's current.

We're all here to help you get it going, what's the problem? what does it do/not do? The more details the better. You should also remove anything cards that are not required for booting. (soundcard, NIC, SCSI controllers, etc)
 
Someoldpc286:

How about a little more info on your project. Tell us what kind of hardware that you have on hand, and where you want to go with it. Knowing the guys on this forum, you'll get all the good help that you can handle.
 
Hello. I just finished assembling th pcb. I will post photos later. Now i am having a problem flashing the eeprom.
My system is
AMSTRAD PC 1512
RAM 640Kb
DOS 3.3
8086
Three 8 bit ISA slots (2 free+1 XT IDE)
Drive A floppy 720kb
Drive B floppy 360Kb
config.bat
drivparm /d:0 /f:2
drivparm /d:1 /f:0

The configuring utility runs OK. I loaded xt_ide.bin. I get an instant "timeout error when polling eeprom" when i try to flash.
What may be wrong? Maybe i have to check for a dry soldering?

ATMEL EEPROM, have used 74LS245 and 74LS573 instead of Fs
JP2 ON
JP1 ON
K1 L CSEL
SWITCH default setting:
1off
2on
3on
4on
5on
6off
7on
8on
 
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Having trouble with Fdisk. My system is as follows;
IBM 5155 with 64-256kb MB Modified for 640kb. Latest bios (5/9/1986)
NEC V20
Intel 8087
Original floppy controller with two 360kb floppies attatched.
ATI EGA Wonder.
New XTIDE with XT+ build.(IDE_XTP.BIN 0)
Tried several CF cards including SanDisk Ultra 2GB (15Mb/s)
DOS 5.0

When running Fdisk, I can create a primary DOS partion and make it active. If I then triy to create other extended partition, I get error stating there is no space on the drive even though I specified only half of capacity for primary partition. When I attempt to delete the partition and re create it the system hangs durring recreation and no new partition is created.(or at least not one that Fdisk can see). I get simalar results with different types of CF cards, so I don't think it's a compatibility issue.
I was able to get the SanDisk card to take a format/s and it did boot. But when I decided to re-do the Partitions(Multiple partitions instead of one using entire drive) Fdisk could no longer partition the drive. All solder joints on the card look good to me. Does anyone know of any issues that might cause this?
 
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Try with any real hard disk. If it works, then the problem is somehow related to CF cards. What kind of CF-to-IDE adapter do you use? Try other adapter if possible since some i had were dead on arrival.
 
aitotat said:
Try with any real hard disk. If it works, then the problem is somehow related to CF cards. What kind of CF-to-IDE adapter do you use? Try other adapter if possible since some i had were dead on arrival.
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Need to backup info on my hard disk before trying it. The CF adapter and all of the cards work fine with my Silicon Valley Computer ADP50L. But, of cousre it only see's 504 MBs.
The XTIDE worked some, but appears that it either doesn't delete the existing partition or is getting errors when checking drive space durring Fdisk partition creation.
 
you might also try backing out to the non XT+ BIOS, just in case the ins/outs are *too* fast for the CF adapter. (ok, that's a long shot, but it's an easy variable to check off the list)

oh, also, "fdisk /mbr" seems to be a fix that has helped many.
 
I found a bug from XTIDE Universal BIOS that might cause the CF problems (actually it should cause write problems for hard disks as well). I just send a private message to ibmapc about fixed version to try.
 
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