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The ultimate 'tweener'?

Stone said:
Lately I've been using 'Boot - B:', a little program that you put on your A: boot disk and it automatically passes the boot process over to the B: drive. This is a very neat little goodie. :)
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I'm probably missing something obvious - but why would you need to do this? If there's a disk in the (functional) a: drive, why not do the whole boot process from a:?

I assume you have to modify the boot sector on the a: disk - does that have any effect on the disk in normal useage?

Could you (for instance) put it on a 720K a: disk, and then boot from a 1.2M System Disk in the b: drive?
 
You may want to check out the operation of the on-board FDC using Dave Dunfield's TESTFDC. Many internal floppy controllers of this era are utterly incapable of handing FM.

Personally, I'd disable the primary controller and use a 4-drive controller only. Drives 3 and 4 can be external and plug into the DC37 connector present on a number of FDCs. That's the most flexible for me--I've got a stack of external drive boxes that I plug in as needed.

Also bear in mind that there's a lot of software that doesn't understand controllers on secondary ports. Put the 2.88 and a 1.2 in the box--that way, you've got the basic physical formats covered. If you want to do 3 inch Amstrad CF2 floppies, you simply plug the appropriate external box in and Bob's your uncle.
 
Phil Saunders said:
I'm probably missing something obvious - but why would you need to do this? If there's a disk in the (functional) a: drive, why not do the whole boot process from a:?
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Because sometimes the disk you wish to boot from is not the same size as the A: drive.

1) What if you have a bootable game on a 5¼" disk and your A: is a 3½" drive?

2) What about a *FULL* 3½" HD disk that you want to boot from but your A: is 5¼"?

That's two good examples and I'm sure there's more. :)
 
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Phil Saunders said:
I assume you have to modify the boot sector on the a: disk - does that have any effect on the disk in normal useage?
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I'm not sure what you mean here.

Phil Saunders said:
Could you (for instance) put it on a 720K a: disk, and then boot from a 1.2M System Disk in the b: drive?
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You can put it on any disk you want and it will transfer the booting process to any bootable disk you want to stick in drive B:.
 
Stone said:
Most CMOS setups allow for floppy drive swapping.

Lately I've been using 'Boot - B:', a little program that you put on your A: boot disk and it automatically passes the boot process over to the B: drive. This is a very neat little goodie. :)
Click to expand...

ISTR using " Boot-B " or something similar a long time ago though i've now been using the XT-IDE Bios since V1x and it suits my needs perfectly, it's excellent.
 
On my tweener for boot selection I use a program called GAG.
It provides a graphical (VGA) menu with keyboard shortcuts, and you can add or remove boot devices to choose from. Sits in the boot sector of C.

On mine I use it to boot MS DOS off the secondary hard drive, instead of Windows 98 off the primary, but there are floppy options as well. I thought it was pretty nice and tidy solution.
 
I have mentioned this elsewhere here....I have a dual boot Win 2000 / DOS 6.22 P-III system for imaging. I use the on-board disk controller and/or a Catweasel 4. It checks for a CD first then checks for a disk in drive A and lastly boots to C.

Drive A is a 5 1/4" 360. B drive is a 8" TM848. I also have a Adaptec AHA 1522A disk controller on stand by. The SCSI Adaptec 1522A card is very good for disk imaging if you don't have a Catweasel.

I have been able to read most anything, I can switch around using the BIOS if I really want to boot from B (the system thinks the 8" is a 1.2M 5 1/4"). For this kind of system, you really need to be prepared to switch things around sometimes, per the task at hand.

Most of the time I boot to DOS 6.22 and use ImageDisk. I have a USB dive attached via internal cable as well, to transfer files. This system is not attached to the Web.
b
 
It will have a 360K and a 1.2M 5.25" connected to the MB floppy controller
...
Secondary Floppy Controller with 1.44M and a USB floppy emulator
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How can you achieve this?. In my tweener I have an extra AHA-1522 as secondary drive controller; but as billdeg suggests, you need to mess with cables every often to get all four drives working.
You can build a cable with switches to swap at least two floppy drives (or maybe two); but I'm not sure about which lines must be switched.
Never thought about the 4-drive controller possibility tho. Can this kind of cards select the active pair of disks?
 
jltursan said:
How can you achieve this?. In my tweener I have an extra AHA-1522 as secondary drive controller; but as billdeg suggests, you need to mess with cables every often to get all four drives working.
You can build a cable with switches to swap at least two floppy drives (or maybe two); but I'm not sure about which lines must be switched.
Never thought about the 4-drive controller possibility tho. Can this kind of cards select the active pair of disks?
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A 4-drive controller is exactly that - it can handle 4 drives simultaneously - there is no 'active pair'. It can assert Drive Select lines DS1 to DS4 on a STRAIGHT cable as required. A standard controller can only assert DS1 and DS2 - the other 2 select lines are usually not connected. The standard floppy cable with a twist is a 'cheat' to enable both drives on the cable to be physically configured as B: while still allowing both drives to be accessed. This also swaps the 'Motor On' lines - the drives precise behaviour at this point depends on weather the interface is following the original Shugart standard (all drive motors run at once) or the PC standard which is compatible, but only the motor for the drive required is activated.

It's relatively simple to rig a switch to select any number of drives (pick a select line, break it out of the cable and run it to the common terminal of a rotary switch, then run a wire from each 'out' terminal to the relevant select line on the drive connector) - load the correct driver for each one with a DRIVER.SYS command with the correct parameters, then select the correct drive when prompted by DOS. That way, PHYSICAL drive x (selected by - say - DS2) - would access whatever physical device is selected with the switch. I can't remember the floppy connector pinout, but all the pins can be connected to all the drives except the particular select line you want to use.

The only down side to this is that you (the user) has to remember what drive is actually in use at any one time. For example, Win98 will 'see' - say- 6 floppy drives, but it will get very confused if you try to drop a file on a drive which it thinks is - say - 1.44m, when in fact you have a 360k selected with the switch. This is where the distinction between 'physical' and 'logical' drives is important. All the drives so connected are physical drive (x) but they are all distinct logical devices with different characteristics.

That's how I did it 'back then' anyway - this time I want native support for all the drive formats which will need 2 4-drive controllers. Problem is making 2 floppy controllers co-exist. I could get away with 1 4-drive device if it will co-exist the the motherboard controller.

I've never had SCSI floppy drives, but all this would be irrelevant in that case. Did they ever make SCSI versions of all the common drive formats?
 
I'll repeat here what I've posted in other threads.

Yes, it's possible with the right controllers to get more than 4 drives operating. I have a tower with 6 floppy drives, all running very happily under DOS. If I'dve had more open bays, I could add another 4 drives.

While some think that the AHA1522 is a great one for drive support, some of the DTC SCSI and ESDI controllers allow for 3 drives on the same cable, with individual drive motor control or 4 drives with a single motor control (i.e. one drive motor goes on, they all do). Many Ultrastor SCSI controllers can also handle 3 drives on the same cable.

Any controller using the DP8473 FDC can be modded for three drive operation, usually with no more than a couple of added wire jumpers on board. I've done it with Future Domain 16-bit SCSI controller.

The side benefit is that all of these controllers pass the "TESTFDC" tests, including 128-byte MFM sectors.
 
I've only recently ever heard these called "tweeners" -- the term I've always heard was "middling".

My rig for this is really my dream-machine for the mid '90's... It's just new enough to run Win98SE, get on the LAN and use PCI cards, but just old enough to still have ISA slots and not be 'overkill' running certain time sensitive apps. I've gone through several K6/2, Celeron 600 and Pentium MMX setups, but this one is by far my favorites. I also use it as my MIDI composition rig since I've got not just my AWE 64 Gold and Morpheus in it, but also have the MT-32 and SC-7 available through my MIDI patch box. Sadly Win98 was really the last version of Windows to have PROPER MIDI support in the OS.

Shuttle 433 v4 Motherboard
AM5x86-133 P75 (set to 3x 50mhz FSB for 150mhz operation)
256 megs EDO Ram (4x 64MB)
4 Meg Trident 4000 SVGA
16 meg Voodoo 2
AWE 64 Gold
EMU Morpheus (4x Emu8K chips with 64 megs of soundfont RAM on one board)
UniSys U2000 (soft-set ISA NE2000 knockoff)
Adaptec 2940UW SCSI controller
Seagate Cheetah 18 gig 15K RPM U320 SCSI drive
External SCSI Zip drive
External SCSI Jaz drive
1.44m floppy (A:)
360k floppy (B:)
DVD-RW (leftover from old build that's now all SATA)
Commodore 1541 on XA-1541 cable (LPT 2)
Homebrew Covox knockoff (LPT 1)

I love this mainboard for its equal count of 4 PCI and 4 ISA slots (even if the center two share a backplane meaning it's either-or)... though it feels almost... dirty having this much RAM in a 486 motherboard.

Primarily I boot into Win98, but I do use it as a BeOS 5 machine as well since I was always a huge BeOS fan. (oh Johnny, did I back the wrong horse.)

Though I am STILL tempted to switch it back to being my K6/2-500 which is gathering dust on a shelf right now; sad part is I'm not that deep in PC-100 or PC-133 anymore, so I'd have half the RAM... I seem to be having SIMM's die en-masse the past six months or so.
 
deathshadow said:
I've only recently ever heard these called "tweeners" -- the term I've always heard was "middling".

My rig for this is really my dream-machine for the mid '90's... It's just new enough to run Win98SE, get on the LAN and use PCI cards, but just old enough to still have ISA slots and not be 'overkill' running certain time sensitive apps. I've gone through several K6/2, Celeron 600 and Pentium MMX setups, but this one is by far my favorites. I also use it as my MIDI composition rig since I've got not just my AWE 64 Gold and Morpheus in it, but also have the MT-32 and SC-7 available through my MIDI patch box. Sadly Win98 was really the last version of Windows to have PROPER MIDI support in the OS.

Shuttle 433 v4 Motherboard
AM5x86-133 P75 (set to 3x 50mhz FSB for 150mhz operation)
256 megs EDO Ram (4x 64MB)
4 Meg Trident 4000 SVGA
16 meg Voodoo 2
AWE 64 Gold
EMU Morpheus (4x Emu8K chips with 64 megs of soundfont RAM on one board)
UniSys U2000 (soft-set ISA NE2000 knockoff)
Adaptec 2940UW SCSI controller
Seagate Cheetah 18 gig 15K RPM U320 SCSI drive
External SCSI Zip drive
External SCSI Jaz drive
1.44m floppy (A:)
360k floppy (B:)
DVD-RW (leftover from old build that's now all SATA)
Commodore 1541 on XA-1541 cable (LPT 2)
Homebrew Covox knockoff (LPT 1)

I love this mainboard for its equal count of 4 PCI and 4 ISA slots (even if the center two share a backplane meaning it's either-or)... though it feels almost... dirty having this much RAM in a 486 motherboard.

Primarily I boot into Win98, but I do use it as a BeOS 5 machine as well since I was always a huge BeOS fan. (oh Johnny, did I back the wrong horse.)

Though I am STILL tempted to switch it back to being my K6/2-500 which is gathering dust on a shelf right now; sad part is I'm not that deep in PC-100 or PC-133 anymore, so I'd have half the RAM... I seem to be having SIMM's die en-masse the past six months or so.
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That looks like a nice machine - but it's overkill for what I need. My main priority is to ensure that there are no media formats (at least disks) that I can't read/write. Kind of 'future proofing' my disk collection!. In addition to all of this I may yet invest in a Kryoflux just to cover all the bases!

When I'm done with the tweener I might build something like yours to get the best out of my vintage game collection without worrying that I'll wear the key disk out, as by then thanks to Kryoflux I'll be able to create a new one!
 
One thing I personally think is important - the tweener should have USB and/or Ethernet networking or both. Another nice thing is parallel port in the back for laplink cables.
 
billdeg said:
One thing I personally think is important - the tweener should have USB and/or Ethernet networking or both. Another nice thing is parallel port in the back for laplink cables.
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Definitely networking - I've got a couple of Xircom PE2 parallel ethernet devices for that pending pending acquisition of some 8-bit network cards with DOS drivers. USB is harder in DOS but Win98 isn't bad and has drivers for most things I need. If I need laplink I'll have to use the serial port or get another parallel port.

Anyone know if DOS drivers for LS-240 drives exist? (No native BIOS support)
 
Phil Saunders said:
Definitely networking - I've got a couple of Xircom PE2 parallel ethernet devices for that pending pending acquisition of some 8-bit network cards with DOS drivers. USB is harder in DOS but Win98 isn't bad and has drivers for most things I need. If I need laplink I'll have to use the serial port or get another parallel port.

Anyone know if DOS drivers for LS-240 drives exist? (No native BIOS support)
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There were drivers for the SuperDisk under DOS. See http://web.archive.org/web/20060114...n.com/support/products/superdisk_drivers.html
 
I didn't read the entire thread, so apologies if someone already brought this up, but if you're planning on running your computer with more than two floppy drives attached at a time, do NOT run Windows 98, ME, or any of the later releases of Windows 95. These operating systems will most likely fail to boot with more than two drives attached. DOS and Windows NT 4.0 seem to have the best support for more than two floppy drives of any of the Microsoft operating systems, and Linux supports more than two floppy drives very well if you know how to set it up properly.
 
Phil Saunders said:
Definitely networking - I've got a couple of Xircom PE2 parallel ethernet devices for that pending pending acquisition of some 8-bit network cards with DOS drivers.
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Why use an 8-bit NIC on a Pentium machine when you can use a 16-bit ISA or even a PCI NIC?
 
Krille said:
Why use an 8-bit NIC on a Pentium machine when you can use a 16-bit ISA or even a PCI NIC?
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I suspect the system in question Phil is referring to in that comment is an 8-bit XT class system which only has serial and parallel ports. This is why he needs the need to use Xircom PE2 parallel ethernet devices in the interim until 8-bit nics are sourced to link the Tweener and XT class machine via ethernet instead of the Xircom PE2s.
 
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