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Anyone Selling XT-IDE Cards?
- Thread starter tempest
- Start date
rosaage
Experienced Member
Got my kit today. What would be the best to use, leadfree or 60/40 solder? And what about flux and cleaning? This is the first time I am soldering something besides repair jobs and small kits at school.
Traditional multi core 60/40 is by far the easiest. Clean if you want to with toothbrush and warm water or isopropyl alcohol depending on the exact type. If using lead free you need higher bit temperature - and it smells bad.
glitch
Veteran Member
Wow, that got to Norway pretty quick! I use 63/37 lead/tin solder with an organic acid core, which is water soluble, for the assembled units. I recommend 63/37 rosin core if you're not going to wash it or don't want to deal with organic core (which *MUST* be washed, or it causes issues). Personally I prefer Kester "44 Core" if I'm using rosin core.
I don't use lead free unless a customer requests it. That happens so infrequently that I don't think I've even got a roll of it on the shelf. It does require more heat. The board I shipped was finished in leaded HASL (Hot Air Solder Leveling) for the pads, and I'm betting that most of the components shipped in the kits are tinned with leaded solder too (most of them are pre-ROHS).
I don't use lead free unless a customer requests it. That happens so infrequently that I don't think I've even got a roll of it on the shelf. It does require more heat. The board I shipped was finished in leaded HASL (Hot Air Solder Leveling) for the pads, and I'm betting that most of the components shipped in the kits are tinned with leaded solder too (most of them are pre-ROHS).
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What is the link to the Git repo? I can't seem to find it.
glitch
Veteran Member
Where can we buy this glitch XT IDE controller card? Iam intrested in one for now, like to use it as an overview example for now..
If people want to buy the pcb only, isnt it better to make a small kit with pcb + bracket + screws (because maybe this bracket could be hard to get, if it is included it makes things a lot easier)
I only dont like the color of the pcb, but for an first try-out example i dont care.. Hopefully it would be possible when ordering some bare pcb`s the color can be changed or text on the pcb can be editted.
If someone can give me the link i will purchase one. I only hope that the shipping costs would not max-out to much.
If people want to buy the pcb only, isnt it better to make a small kit with pcb + bracket + screws (because maybe this bracket could be hard to get, if it is included it makes things a lot easier)
I only dont like the color of the pcb, but for an first try-out example i dont care.. Hopefully it would be possible when ordering some bare pcb`s the color can be changed or text on the pcb can be editted.
If someone can give me the link i will purchase one. I only hope that the shipping costs would not max-out to much.
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rosaage
Experienced Member
I'm having trouble getting it to work, It won't boot from hdd and fdisk reports "no fixed disks" Is there some kind of menu I can enter to test if the card is working?
Boards arrived today!
One slight problem -- KiCad apparently changed cathode designations on diodes and LEDs between the version that the rev 2 board schematic was created with, and the new KiCad libs. So the LED is backwards on the silkscreen. I also eliminated a discrete resistor by using a spare from one of the resistor packs. Other than that, it works!
As you can see from the picture, the board house I do prototype runs with wasn't able to do selective hard gold for the edge connector. I'm getting quotes from a few of the production shops I've used in the past, including PCBCart, which I believe is who did the rev 2 run. I'll probably remove the unused ISA fingers to save on plating costs.
You dont use gold on the ISA interface fingers? ( i hope this isnt tin only)
You said that you are trying to get the full kit to a price of $85 when it is assembled, how much would the price be if i need to assembled it my self?
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Chuck(G)
25k Member
Do you see the XTIDE BIOS signon message?
glitch
Veteran Member
*grumble* Please go back and read the rest of the development thread -- that's a prototype board, which had HASL fingers, the production boards have true hard gold plated edge fingers. The color's blue because, for me at least, it gives excellent trace contrast. Plus I like it. As this is an open source project, the Gerber files for the current in-production revision are available on GitHub. You're free to run the boards in any color you wish, but a single board with hard gold edge connector is probably going to cost more than $100 USD. ENIG finish is not sufficient.
The Keystone bracket is available through the normal channels, the brackets included in the kits are from Mouser. They had plenty on hand.
$85 assembled is the assembled price, the blank boards are $8 each, and the parts kits are $20 each. Unless you just happen to have all of the parts for the XT-IDE in your shop, my price on the parts kit is, IIRC, cheaper than just the ICs from Mouser. Not exactly making bank on the parts kit, and the board is basically at cost + shipping. I'm hesitant to start offering partial kits because then I either have to pick the kits as each order comes in, or put together (and store) a bunch of different kit configurations.
And do be mindful that this is a *hobbyist* run and the design is covered by the GNU GPL under which I've licensed it. That means if you buy one, use it in your $10 million CNC machine, and then your CNC machine dies, it's not my problem.
The Keystone bracket is available through the normal channels, the brackets included in the kits are from Mouser. They had plenty on hand.
$85 assembled is the assembled price, the blank boards are $8 each, and the parts kits are $20 each. Unless you just happen to have all of the parts for the XT-IDE in your shop, my price on the parts kit is, IIRC, cheaper than just the ICs from Mouser. Not exactly making bank on the parts kit, and the board is basically at cost + shipping. I'm hesitant to start offering partial kits because then I either have to pick the kits as each order comes in, or put together (and store) a bunch of different kit configurations.
And do be mindful that this is a *hobbyist* run and the design is covered by the GNU GPL under which I've licensed it. That means if you buy one, use it in your $10 million CNC machine, and then your CNC machine dies, it's not my problem.
glitch
Veteran Member
If you get the BIOS message but don't get any drives identified, make sure you chose the correct port parameters for your switch settings. Also the XT-IDE Universal BIOS config tool for version 1.1.5 (the one I ship in the assembled units) will incorrectly tell you to add 0x200 to the base I/O address for the second address -- this is wrong, you add 8 to the base address.
SpidersWeb
Veteran Member
Just for the sake of a quick answer I'll requote glitch, it was at the bottom of page 12.
glitch said:
Edit: I posted this without seeing glitch had already replied, but oh well, there it is again.
rosaage
Experienced Member
I have a bad fealing now. It does ram count then tries floppy. After this it starts basic. No new messages relating to the xt-ide.
glitch
Veteran Member
Did you choose a ROM address that conflicts with something else in your system? Is the ROM enabled (SW1 ENA should be ON)
rosaage
Experienced Member
I have no idea. I used the default values (i think), sw2 set to 1100000 and sw1 10001111
It is an IBM Portable Personal Computer (5155) with IBM cga card in slot 1, ibm floppy controller in slot 3 and the XT-ide in slot 4. Currently 1 floppy drive connected.
glitch
Veteran Member
Hmm, doesn't sound like there should be any conflicts. Those switch settings should be the default of 0xD000 for ROM and 0x300 I/O base. You said the EEPROM programmed fine using the DOS utility?
rosaage
Experienced Member
Yes, no errors after selecting 64 page size and flashing. This was on a pentium II system running 98se with a pci ethernet card, pci soundblaster and a ati rage II on agp. Could I have flashed something else?
glitch
Veteran Member
It's unlikely. Try booting the XT-IDE in the Pentium 2 system, it should come up with the XT-IDE Universal BIOS menu.
compu_85
Experienced Member
I'm using the latest bios in mine... so far so good.
I did initially have an issue with address conflicts. This caused random bits to end up in the eeprom when I tried to flash it with the software tool.
-J
I did initially have an issue with address conflicts. This caused random bits to end up in the eeprom when I tried to flash it with the software tool.
-J