XT-IDE BIOS in BOOT ROM socket

[orion24]

I wonder if any of you guys had any luck with it. I used an EPROM-EEPROM programmer to program various EPROM-EEPROM chips with the XT-IDE BIOS. The only boot rom socket that initializes it, is the one in the VLB IDE card at the bottom of the picture (which already had a BIOS of its own and I replaced it). And even that one only works with EPROM M27C256 and M27C128 chips (not with M27C512). Probably supports only up to M27C256 ROMs, but I don't know why I can't get the BIOS to initialize in the other 2 cards. Is it kind of disabled? Does the NIC card work maybe with lower sized ROMs than 128K? I'd like to use the QD6580 VLB with this BIOS, because it is supported in high-speed mode.

Chips I tried are:

EPROM:
M27C128 (works only in the SIDE JR-plus VLB)
M27C256 (works only in the SIDE JR-plus VLB)
M27C512 (doesn't work)

EEPROM:
M28C64C (doesn't work)

 

[Malc]

I've used a 3Com Etherlink lll 3C509B boot rom socket to home the XTide-Bios before and it works well, The only thing is you must set the card up / configure first in an AT machine ( 16-bit slot ) to work in an 8-bit slot. IE: enable the boot rom socket / chip size etc.

 

[orion24]

I've used a 3Com Etherlink lll 3C509B boot rom socket to home the XTide-Bios before and it works well, The only thing is you must set the card up / configure first in an AT machine ( 16-bit slot ) to work in an 8-bit slot. IE: enable the boot rom socket / chip size etc.

This is exactly the NIC card I have. I'll try to enable the BOOT ROM from a utility, although I wonder where the information (enabled/disabled) is actually stored. BTW, what is the size of the ROM you used and worked? And was it EPROM or EEPROM?

 

[Chuck(G)]

Configuration on these NICs is usually stored in a little serial EEPROM. Usually it appears as an 8-pin DIP or SOIC.

 

[Malc]

This is exactly the NIC card I have. I'll try to enable the BOOT ROM from a utility, although I wonder where the information (enabled/disabled) is actually stored. BTW, what is the size of the ROM you used and worked? And was it EPROM or EEPROM?

I used an eprom, 27128 because at the time i burned the xt-ide bios and a HD floppy bios, IIRC the card supports 64 / 128 / 256 chips, As chuck said the config data is stored on a little eeprom, " U3 " on the card.

 

[orion24]

Run the configuration utility and it worked. Now it initializes it OK. Thank you guys. Now I'll get to see what addresses and IRQs to use, so that I don't run into any conflicts. The VLB-IDE has 2 channels and will get IRQ14 & 15. Then there is another one from a sound card. What I had in mind is to add all of the following and configure them in DOS:

Floppy 1.2 & 2.88 (real)
Floppy 1.2 & 1.44 (USB emulation)
CD-RW
Iomega ZIP 250MB
LS-120

All these in a 386 VLB machive. It already gives me a headache. If it works, I'll fire up Windows for Workgroups or Win95 - Win98 and post from that PC.
Oh and BTW, I'll look into any configuration utility for the QD6580 VLB card, in case the BOOT ROM is disabled and can be enabled from that one as well.

 

[orion24]

I used an eprom, 27128 because at the time i burned the xt-ide bios and a HD floppy bios, IIRC the card supports 64 / 128 / 256 chips, As chuck said the config data is stored on a little eeprom, " U3 " on the card.

I eventually run into the same fatal exception 06 error you reported in the XT IDE BIOS thread. Mine never gone as far as finalizing the Windows installation (Win95C). Happens either with the large 12K version of the 2.0.0 beta 3 BIOS and the 8K AT version of the 1.1.5. The BIOS ROM is configured at D000 address and the size at 32K. I'll play with the settings to see if I can get around this. Did you find any solution?

 

[smeezekitty]

98 on a 386? That will be a lesson in unpleasantry. You might get away with 95 but even that really wants 486

Try 3.11 and Opera 3.60

 

[orion24]

98 on a 386? That will be a lesson in unpleasantry. You might get away with 95 but even that really wants 486

Try 3.11 and Opera 3.60

Assuming I get the think to work properly I'll check to see how it runs. The 386 board I have is having VLB slots, as well as socket for both 386 and 486. I can do all installations with an AMD 5x86 @ 160 MHz and after everything is up and running, I can plug the 386 to see what it does. I know it will crawl. All I want it see what it does, benchmark and stability-test it. For the moment AIDA64 that I tried starts to run, but fails to benchmark even the 486 (didn't even try 386). Maybe I'll skip 386 benchmarking under Win95 altogether. Still though, I want to use PRIME95 to see how far I can tight the cache and memory timings. The 386 eventually will run DOS - Win 3.11 (or WFW 3.11).

 

[Malc]

I eventually run into the same fatal exception 06 error you reported in the XT IDE BIOS thread. Mine never gone as far as finalizing the Windows installation (Win95C). Happens either with the large 12K version of the 2.0.0 beta 3 BIOS and the 8K AT version of the 1.1.5. The BIOS ROM is configured at D000 address and the size at 32K. I'll play with the settings to see if I can get around this. Did you find any solution?

I tried everything i could think of and eventually gave up and put Dos / WFW 3.11 on it which ran fine and dandy, I swapped the motherboard for another 486 board in the end and had no problems installing 95 or 98, I kept Win 95 as it's quite nippy.

EDIT:

I just remembered the fix for Win 98 BSOD in R557, You are using older versions of the Bios so it's worth trying a newer version, If you are unable to build your own, James has the pre-built binaries on his site, Don't forget to configure them first using xtidecfg.

 

[smeezekitty]

For the moment AIDA64 that I tried starts to run, but fails to benchmark even the 486 (didn't even try 386)

For me AIDA64 works okay except for the benchmarks (they all come out as 0)
I think it may need Pentium. I would try the Sandra systeminfo benchmarks.

 

[orion24]

I tried everything i could think of and eventually gave up and put Dos / WFW 3.11 on it which ran fine and dandy, I swapped the motherboard for another 486 board in the end and had no problems installing 95 or 98, I kept Win 95 as it's quite nippy.

I enabled a setting in the mainboard BIOS that said "Adaptor ROM shadow D000, 16K" (it had that option for plenty other memory addresses as well). After doing so, Windows installed fine and I haven't seen that error since (though I still have testing to do)

 

[Krille]

I enabled a setting in the mainboard BIOS that said "Adaptor ROM shadow D000, 16K" (it had that option for plenty other memory addresses as well). After doing so, Windows installed fine and I haven't seen that error since (though I still have testing to do)

So enabling shadowing made the fatal exception 06 error go away? That is interesting.

 

[Malc]

Yes that's interesting, I don't remember seeing that option in the setup of the first 486 board i had problems with, Unfortunately i can't check now as i've given the board away, But i just checked the setup options of the second 486 board i fitted which is happily running Win 95 ( Runs 98se but i found it a bit slow for my liking ) and it does have that option " ROM shadow D000, 16K " which is disabled, Later on i will revert back to an older bios and swap Hard drive / Caddy and try installing 98 and see if i can get the fatal exception 06 again.

Edit:
I used IDE_AT.BIN from March 2013 Beta3.zip, A known good clean hard drive and setup Win 98 SE, It got to the last leg of setup and i got, " Disk write error, Unable to write to drive C:, Data may be lost, Press enter to continue. " I pressed enter and the machine just froze, Restarted a couple of times and same thing again so i re-flashed the bios with R567 and setup continued to end with no errors.