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8-Bit IDE Controller

aitotat said:
How does the EEPROM flashing work? I have almost completed the setup program for XTIDE Universal BIOS but i'd like to include flashing to it.
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It basically writes to the EEPROM as if it was a big SRAM, however, it have to be timed as most EEPROMs require some pauses between each 1 Byte, 32 Byte or 64 Byte write. The flasher does reprogram the system timer in order to get the pauses rigth.

See http://wiki.vintage-computer.com/index.php/XTIDE_project#The_Flasher for more info on the different timings currently supported.
 
XTIDE in IMC Traveller 286 - working

XTIDE in IMC Traveller 286 - working

OK, I just tried it. Disconnected the ST-125 drive from the WD1003-WA2 controller (I needed the power connector for my IDE drive), connected up a blank 160GB Samsung drive (it was the only working one I had lying around), and powered on. The Samung drive was detected as drive 0 by the XTIDE controller, but the machine didn't want to boot, not even from floppy. I troed all the boot menu entries, but no.

So I disabled the IDE drive (I knew from previous tests that the machine would boot from floppy if no IDE drive was present), booted and ran the gsetup program, in that I set drive 0 (this is for the WD1003 controller) to type 0 (zero) which is "not installed", exited and rebooted the machine.

After a power off, add IDE drive, power on, I could fdisk, format and sys the drive.
And my machine now happily boots from the 2 GB primary partition on this 160GB drive. :)

Are there any other tests you wish me to perform?
 
Glad you got that figured out; it would have been difficult to troubleshoot having a controller in there with its own setup, but the drive not attached is most certainly going to cause some headaches. Once you get the power figured out, XTIDE may or may not co-exist happily with your other drive. You are likely the first to try it in such a combination.
Likewise, with any other computers that have their own setup and drive tables, make sure they are always set to "none" or XTIDE will think there are other hard drives in the machine, and install itself as the D: drive.

As for tests, try helltest as available on the wiki:
http://wiki.vintage-computer.com/index.php/XTIDE_project

It's a read/write/verify program that can assist in pulling out problems with signaling and noise issues or bad data points. IF you run it for 20 minutes or so without errors and can then verify the same data on a different machine, I think it's safe to say your controller and drive is golden.
 
Late to the game -

Late to the game -

Hi guys,

Finally got my beta card assembled and have been testing with only partial success. Test machine is a clone 386/387 machine with AMI BIOS, running DOS 6.2 and 16M of RAM. Board is set at port 300, base D000, IRQ 5, DMA 1.

I've tested with both the original system IDE drive (boots to Win95 if left to its own devices) and with a 1GB solid state drive. Both drives boot successfully using the Goldstar EIDE multifunction controller in the machine.

FINDCARD works (finds the card if there, doesn't find it if it is removed) but the various write utilities don't seem to work consistently. I received the card with BIOS .10 on it; I downloaded BIOS .11 and tried to load it but it only seems to have partially "taken" - the card now shows BIOS .11 on signon but the flash failed because bytes D000:0000-9 read 3E instead of the expected values. I get the same result when I try to run SETCARD - the write fails, with the first 10 bytes showing 3E.

The card itself seems OK in that the signon banner appears and both the old hard drive and the new flash drive are recognized as drive 0 - for the vintage drive, it returns "Drive 0: Conner Peripherals - Error! This drive is too old to support LBA access", for the solid state drive it returns: "STI Flash 8.0.0" so the IDE interface and query functions seem to be working.

The other strange behavior is that extended memory often (but not always?) seems to disappear after I try to run anything that writes to the XTIDE interface, so there is apparently a conflict somewhere.

Must be something simple. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Jack
 
There have been a number of reports of the flash utility failing, but the thing obviously wrote properly because if every byte wasn't correct, the checksum would fail and the BIOS wouldn't sign on. I suspect that perhaps with the 386 test platform, that the flash utility is running too fast for the flash part or some kind of timing thing is going on. It worked though, so we won't get too hung up on it. the flash utility will likely be reworked a bit if/when we switch to atmel flash parts.

The conner drive erroring out seems normal too. As it says, it's too old.
Use a newer drive that supports LBA, or wait til the new version of the BIOS comes out which will support CHS access. Something in the 2-10G range is ideal. DOS 6.22 can see up to 8.4G so you might as well take advantage of that.

Absolutely no idea why your memory would disappear, but you really shouldn't be using this card in a 386 anyway, so we're not going to worry about that either! It sounds to me like everything is working just fine. ;)
 
Success - RTFM

Success - RTFM

OK, so everything with an IDE slot isn't really a target. Moved over to a Canadian XT clone -"Tsunami XT" - retrieved from a thrift shop for $1.98. Reset the board to default 300, D000 and everything seems fine, though glacial in comparison to the 386. FLASH works as expected, as does SETUP. I ended up breaking my 1GB drive into a number of smaller partitions to speed up directory reads and I'm now booting directly from the C: partition.

I'm including a picture of the XTIDE with flash drive attached.

Great job, thank you!

Jack
 

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solid state drives

solid state drives

I bought a half-dozen of them on eBay from seller acxistech. He may still have some left, though I don't see a current listing. At one point, he had 25 or so. They were listed as "SSD-M01G-3100 SiliconDrive 1GB Module"


Jack
 
yeah, that's super cool SSD adapter! For the production run, we will also be using the 90 degree IDE headers so that you can do stuff like this without needing the card to be in the last slot.

I just picked up a couple of these:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170402805769

Haven't gotten them yet, but will report back when I do. These should make easy work of making a CF device available as removable media...
 
hargle said:
I just picked up a couple of these:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170402805769

Haven't gotten them yet, but will report back when I do.
Click to expand...

I first bought 3 of those (not from the same seller as those above) and one was defective. I wasted a lot of time testing it because sometimes it detected the drive correctly, sometimes wrong and sometimes it didn't work at all.

Then i bought 5 more (i expected defective ones this time) and again one of them was defective. So don't waste too much time if something doesn't seem to work properly.
 
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I hope that you won't use SEEQ EEPROMs on future cards. I just found out how to corrupt EEPROM very easily: just select System information from Norton Commander 5.51. Thats all and it corrupts the EEPROM every time.

I think that NC detects ROMs by trying to write to them and SEEQ has no software write protection. Good thing that XTIDE has hardware write protection (jumper) but it is too much trouble to change the jumper position every time the BIOS needs to be updated.
 
aitotat said:
I hope that you won't use SEEQ EEPROMs on future cards. I just found out how to corrupt EEPROM very easily: just select System information from Norton Commander 5.51. Thats all and it corrupts the EEPROM every time.

I think that NC detects ROMs by trying to write to them and SEEQ has no software write protection. Good thing that XTIDE has hardware write protection (jumper) but it is too much trouble to change the jumper position every time the BIOS needs to be updated.
Click to expand...

I haven't been following this closely lately, but why not have an I/O port
to un-lock for writing, vs. relying on the EEPROM itself?

Bill
 
wrljet said:
I haven't been following this closely lately, but why not have an I/O port
to un-lock for writing, vs. relying on the EEPROM itself?

Bill
Click to expand...

well, that would require hardware changes, and we're going to go into production with the current design in a few days.

we will have atmel parts. lutiana, who is going to handle the obtaining the parts, lives nearby jameco and can pick them up in person, and can assure us that we get the rev C's of atmel and not these junker SEEQ parts. Then we will have software locking, so we won't have to make any other mods.
 
hargle said:
well, that would require hardware changes, and we're going to go into production with the current design in a few days.

we will have atmel parts. lutiana, who is going to handle the obtaining the parts, lives nearby jameco and can pick them up in person, and can assure us that we get the rev C's of atmel and not these junker SEEQ parts. Then we will have software locking, so we won't have to make any other mods.
Click to expand...

Do you mean revision 'B' (28C64B)? That's the one with software-protection.
 
hargle said:
sorry, yes.
i'll send along the datasheet to lutiana so we can be assured to get the exact part.
Click to expand...

I'm not doing the work and it's not my business, but, why don't *we* buy the parts from a more serious supplier where you specify (and receive) precisely what you want?

Jameco has always struck me as a half-baked operation.

Bill
 
wrljet said:
I'm not doing the work and it's not my business, but, why don't *we* buy the parts from a more serious supplier where you specify (and receive) precisely what you want?

Jameco has always struck me as a half-baked operation.

Bill
Click to expand...

I agree with that, jameco are totally inconsistent with their parts, that's for sure.

the deal here is that lutiana has a wholesale dealer connection with them, so we can (hopefully) buy in bulk at a cheaper rate, plus since he's local, there's no shipping charges. Plus, since he's local, he can muscle them into giving us the parts that we want there on the spot. (hope he's been working out!)

it is still possible that they might not be able to beat price costs from another supplier, we will just have to see what kind of price they come up with, then compare it to digikey and or mouser or other. suggestions are welcome. I am putting together a parts list this weekend. The one on the wiki is a little stale.
 
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