Duplicate XT interface drives?

[pearce_jj]

Hi, the most efficient way is to get two storage devices running in the machine concurrently, although pkzip can create a multiple-disk spanning archive. Then ideally read that (or them) off on a more modern computer and store an image of the disk somewhere.

Are you sure the original machine can't be booted from a floppy disk to normal DOS?

 

[kb2syd]

Get a zip drive or install a SCSI HA and drive on the host machine too. Copy from the source disk to the zip or SCSI drive. Put in the "new" disk and reverse. That is assuming the partition is readable under DOS. I spet a little time trying to copy a compact flash boot drive from a machine running embedded XP. Nothing that I could find for free would read that partion. Of course, I only spent about 2 hours on it. It was less expensive in this case to contact the manufacturer and get a spare.

 

[pearce_jj]

I spet a little time trying to copy a compact flash boot drive from a machine running embedded XP. Nothing that I could find for free would read that partion. Of course, I only spent about 2 hours on it.

Search for 'WinImage'; it can create a physical disk image file (sector-by-sector so contents are irrelevant).

 

[kb2syd]

Search for 'WinImage'; it can create a physical disk image file (sector-by-sector so contents are irrelevant).

It didn't even see a partition. It identified the cf card as uninitialized. Would WimImage handle that? I didn't try it since the guy sold the truck it was installed in. At the price point we're talking, the cost of the spare card was lost in the noise of the purchase of the truck.

 

[pearce_jj]

yeah, physical disk image to vmdk or vhd.

 

[rcourtem]

No, the machine cannot be booted to DOS. It's and automotive engine analyzer that happens to use these Segate IDE drives with an XT interface.

I think I may have another option here. Seagate apparantly made an 8 bit adapter, model ST05X, which had two 40 pin connectors for hard drives. If I can find this adapter, I should be able to install it in a Tandy 1000 RL or Commodore PC-20 or perhaps even my old WIN98 machine and copy the contents of one drive to the other. It seems that the ST05X adapter was used with both ST325X and ST 351A/X drives, which are the two drive types commonly found in these machines.

Sound plausible?

 

[pearce_jj]

I seem to recall someone (Chuck probably) posting quite a bit of info on the 8-bit IDE interface; maybe it would be possible to reprogram the CPLD based DPv2 XT/IDE board to drive one directly? Although, we'd need some BIOS support or at least a sector-IO utility for it.

 

[vwestlife]

I think I may have another option here. Seagate apparantly made an 8 bit adapter, model ST05X, which had two 40 pin connectors for hard drives. If I can find this adapter, I should be able to install it in a Tandy 1000 RL or Commodore PC-20 or perhaps even my old WIN98 machine and copy the contents of one drive to the other. It seems that the ST05X adapter was used with both ST325X and ST 351A/X drives, which are the two drive types commonly found in these machines.

Sound plausible?

Yes, the Seagate ST-05X was one of two ISA IDE-XT controllers sold by Radio Shack to add "SmartDrive" support to the older Tandy 1000 models and other XT-class machines which did not have the interface built-in. The other was the Western Digital WDXT-150. Another 8-bit ISA card for IDE-XT drives that I remember seeing in catalogs was the AccuLogic SIDE-1 (not to be confused with the SIDE-1/16, which is an IDE-AT interface for XT machines).

Stason has a pretty good index of all the IDE-XT controllers, and also a few which apparently could be switched between either IDE-AT or IDE-XT -- look for either "IDE(XT)" or "IDE(AT/XT)" on this list:
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-disk-floppy-controllers/8isa_1.html

 

[pearce_jj]

I found the info here, posted by JohnElliot (the same JohnElliot that wrong this, I wonder?).

Anyway it was written, "Since XTA only uses two address lines rather than the three used by ATA, it's quite possible that some or all XTA machines don't connect the third one, meaning any rewritten firmware would only be able to access half the registers on an ATA device". I therefore feel sure the DPv2 board could be reprogrammed to read 8-bit disks although we'd still need some code to do so, but I guess the BIOS from a Xebec 1210 controller in the PC/XT might do it?

 

[kb2syd]

No, the machine cannot be booted to DOS. It's and automotive engine analyzer that happens to use these Segate IDE drives with an XT interface.

If the machine doesn't boot DOS, does it use one of the proprietary OSs like QNX? You may not even be able to see the partition if you got this running in a DOS machine. Just because it has an ISA bus and XT interface IDE drives doesn't mean it is DOS based.

Or am I just missing the fact that it does boot DOS and load a bunch of stuff, but doesn't have a keyboard or allow you to bypass all of the proprietary stuff. Do you actually see DOS boot messages?

I see from an earlier post you see some Microsoft boot messages.

The machine does have a floppy drive and will boot from it, but only to install new software, which I don't have. There is no way to access the file system, etc from the machine. There is a separate interface board in the machine (hard drive and 800K floppy) and there's some sort of custom BIOS on this board.

Is the separate interface board for the hard drive look like an 8-bit connector? Could you post a picture of it?

I have a Tandy machine here that uses these drives, but it is in NJ so won't do you a bit of good. Doesn't anybody on the west coast have one available for testing? This question is not directed at you, but to our other forum readers.

 

[rcourtem]

There is no keyboard, so there's no way to input DOS commands. Iassumed it was running DOS based on the Microsoft opyright messages on the splash screens.

The boards are fairly large, about the size of a motherboard. I'll post a photo when I get home, I'm in MA right now.

 

[rcourtem]

When the machine boots up, I see a splash screen crediting Microsoft MS-DOS along with some other stuff. I'm assuming that the DOS is used for the floppy and hard drive access.

I've attached a picture of the board the hard drive is attached to. This board plugs into a motherboard, which is really just a power supply board. there is a 34 pin connector for the floppy drive and two 40 pin connectors, one of which is used for the hard drive. This board is connected to a second board with the NEC V20 processor and a bunch of RAM chips via a ribbon cable.

The way the machine works is that on startup, the drive loads the data into RAM, which is used by the machine to trouble shoot vehicles. Previous models of the machine used ROM boards with the data. The idea behind the hard drive is that it could be easily updated by the customer via floppy diskettes.. The company that made these machine is long out of business.