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8-Bit IDE Controller

At what size did IDE move away from CHS and over to the newer (LBA?) system? I have drives at home (45+) ranging in size from 170 meg up to 10 gig. I'd like to be able to use some of the 1 or 2 gig drives (of whic I have the most).

Any easy way to tell what system is used by a particular drive?
 
528MB - The maximun drive capacity that is supported by 1024 cylinders, 16 heads and 63 sectors (1024x16x63x512). This is the limit for CHS addressing in the original IBM PC/XT and IBM PC/AT INT 13H BIOS.
 
I'd love to have one of these. I'd buy a whole range of 8-bit IDE cards, but an all-in-one would be nice (floppy/IDE/MFM/sound/ram expansion/ethernet) or some combo of the aforementioned, since many machines (like my Sr. Partner) have only one or two ISA slots. Can't wait though, as even just IDE capability for my Sr. Partner would open up an essentially infinite storage possiblity - Zip drives, CD/DVD, HDD, tape, and more...
 
Ide to cf!!!!!

Ide to cf!!!!!

I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to these.

I should "warn" you, though, that I plan to use mine almost exclusively with CF cards + CF->IDE adapters. Shouldn't be a problem, right?

IDE to CF is the only realistic way to go on a vintage computer, CF cards have nothing but benefits.

Low power consumption, small space, light, shock proof, low heat, more than enough capacity and speed than any vintage computer will ever need.

My acculogic "as is" from the manufacturer, will only boot from a 128 meg CF Card, won't boot any higher capacity cards, but will format and use up to 512megs on a CF card connected as a slave drive (No major tests done here), it will fdisk and format to that capacity so I'm assuming I will be able to actually use the space, never filled a card yet to be absolutely sure.

This is what I use for my drive D: as a slave:

cfbackplane.jpg



THE BENEFITS ARE OBVIOUS!
 
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huh. I never thought about zip drives or tape drives.

I'm not sure how zip drives talk to the IDE controller. If it's just like a normal hard drive that uses INT13, then that should work just fine, but I suspect there are drivers required. Tape drives certainly don't use standard interfacing methods, so that's right out.

Since this controller is not a typical IDE controller, using industry standard IDE I/O ports, every IDE device that needs direct access to the hardware would require a custom driver to be written, and that includes CD/DVDs unfortunately.

I do plan on supporting DVD/CD drives eventually. I need to write an entire CD-ROM driver that MSCDEX would then talk to, and the driver development documentation I've read says that it will take roughly 4-6 weeks of full time work to develop such a thing. That likely equates to 20-40 weeks of part time work, especially if I get frustrated and abandon it. ;)

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Depending on how these cards go, and depending on how tortured and gray haired from stress andrew wants to end up being, I'd be totally on board for future geek projects, such as floppy controllers and USB devices and anything else anyone wants. I think I've found that BIOS and low level DOS work is certainly my calling in life.
 
huh. I never thought about zip drives or tape drives.

I'm not sure how zip drives talk to the IDE controller. If it's just like a normal hard drive that uses INT13, then that should work just fine, but I suspect there are drivers required. Tape drives certainly don't use standard interfacing methods, so that's right out.

Since this controller is not a typical IDE controller, using industry standard IDE I/O ports, every IDE device that needs direct access to the hardware would require a custom driver to be written, and that includes CD/DVDs unfortunately.

I do plan on supporting DVD/CD drives eventually. I need to write an entire CD-ROM driver that MSCDEX would then talk to, and the driver development documentation I've read says that it will take roughly 4-6 weeks of full time work to develop such a thing. That likely equates to 20-40 weeks of part time work, especially if I get frustrated and abandon it. ;)

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Depending on how these cards go, and depending on how tortured and gray haired from stress andrew wants to end up being, I'd be totally on board for future geek projects, such as floppy controllers and USB devices and anything else anyone wants. I think I've found that BIOS and low level DOS work is certainly my calling in life.


I connected a zip 250meg ide drive to my Acculogic, it gave no response whatsoever.

Deader than S%iT
 
i have an ATA and an ATAPI zip100


I bought two 250meg zip drives for $1.00 each :>

I figured for that price, why not, put one of them in my spare multi purpose computer.

The reads are reasonable, the writes: totally gag the system.
 
Do you really think on a 8bit PC computer you would notice?

Depends on what you're doing with it. If I'm using one 24/7 for data logging, that write-cycle limitation can be hit in just a few months.

If I'm used to a high-performance ISA bus-mastering hard disk controller with a big cache, I think I'd notice the speed difference, particularly where there are lots of little files.

On the other hand, if you just turn the box on every now and then to look at the quaint pictures and sniff the musty smell, you probably won't care.
 
Ide to cf!!!!! Babeeeeeeeeeeeeeey!

Ide to cf!!!!! Babeeeeeeeeeeeeeey!

Depends on what you're doing with it. If I'm using one 24/7 for data logging, that write-cycle limitation can be hit in just a few months.

If I'm used to a high-performance ISA bus-mastering hard disk controller with a big cache, I think I'd notice the speed difference, particularly where there are lots of little files.

On the other hand, if you just turn the box on every now and then to look at the quaint pictures and sniff the musty smell, you probably won't care.

I just have my 8bit computer loaded with programs made during that era, when someone wants to see how it works, I turn it on, the programs are all there, and viola, other than that I have 0 use for it.

More like a workable antique for the curious.

I could restore IT to ITS original condition, mfm hd and all that nice stuff, but after having many of them fail, I figure an IDE<>CF was less of a hassle.

No more taking the computer apart when hd's fail, not to mention the shipping costs to buy these old bricks.

I had a brand new MFM and two used ones die on my after medicore use,
that was enough for me.

:cool:
 
There are at least four different kinds of IDE Zip drives - the original ATA version, the ATAPI version which replaced it, an ATAPI2 version which seems to have replaced the original ATAPI Zip, and an ATAPI3 version which will probably replace the ATAPI2 .

source: http://home.netcom.com/~deepone/zipjaz/atapi.html

Interesting. I don't suspect you'll have any luck with zip drives though.
There's currently no support for ATAPI anything, and only basic ATA support through INT13 is available, so it would probably require a reverse engineering job on that guest.exe program to figure out how it's talking to the hardware to do anything. Not enough time or energy to take that one on. Since there's CF support though, and CF has all the advantages and more over zip, I think there's really no reason to pursue zips.

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Gerry,
you should try and market your CF-IDE->bracket device. Maybe we could sell them together as a deluxe kit with our card?

While I think adding a CD rom to my XT would be cool, having an IDE drive and CF support externally could be equally cool.

I wish we had 3 connectors on an IDE cable! I suppose I could always use 2 IDE cards...
 
Why not develop an ATASPI driver for the thing? It might let you use ASPI drivers to handle the more unusual ATAPI devices (e.g. Zip drives).

It shouldn't be that complicated, as ATAPI is basically a lookalike of SCSI, just done over the ATA bus.

Hargle, that's weird about your experience with MFM hard drives. The Quantum 30MB drive that I have in my XT clone is the original--and I use the thing quite frequently. I've got other 5.25" hard disks that are still working just fine--but they're all FH--and none is a Seagate.
 
you should try and market your CF-IDE->bracket device. Maybe we could sell them together as a deluxe kit with our card?

While I think adding a CD rom to my XT would be cool, having an IDE drive and CF support externally could be equally cool.

I wish we had 3 connectors on an IDE cable! I suppose I could always use 2 IDE cards...


I wish I had knowledge of electronics and programming, I would help out, unfortunetly, that stuff is beyond me.

I'm a photoshop and illustrator only guy!
 
Limited number of write cycles, slower speed... :confused:

Well how fast was an old 20, 30 MB drive ide and rfl. The Sandisk Ultra writes and read with minimum of 9 MB per second. I do not think a 20 MB drive can write 500 KB per second i would guess they did write and read at 100-200 KB per second.

I have no idea what the adapter and the old IDE do to the CF though but i can not see how an old HD could be faster than a CF.

JT
 
here's some interesting news:

I received Bob Watts' Acculogic card in the mail the other day, and tonight I took the ROM off and put our EEPROM on it, and well, it just worked!
All I had to do was change the base address of where our BIOS is looking for the code. (it will auto-detect eventually)

So, that means, that for all of you acculogic users out there, you will soon have a new BIOS image that should let you break that 528MB barrier.

What didn't work is the flash update program. Not sure what the reason is, but the eeprom when installed in the acculogic, is write protected. Any idea what that might be andrew? (I haven't looked at the datasheet yet)

Pretty cool! we have cloned the acculogic card. Now I really feel sorry for all those chumps who buy $200 cards off ebay.
 
here's some interesting news:

I received Bob Watts' Acculogic card in the mail the other day, and tonight I took the ROM off and put our EEPROM on it, and well, it just worked!
All I had to do was change the base address of where our BIOS is looking for the code. (it will auto-detect eventually)

So, that means, that for all of you acculogic users out there, you will soon have a new BIOS image that should let you break that 528MB barrier.

What didn't work is the flash update program. Not sure what the reason is, but the eeprom when installed in the acculogic, is write protected. Any idea what that might be andrew? (I haven't looked at the datasheet yet)

Pretty cool! we have cloned the acculogic card. Now I really feel sorry for all those chumps who buy $200 cards off ebay.

Any chance make a ROM for the ADP50L?

JT
 
Any chance make a ROM for the ADP50L?
JT
I did start working on the disassembly of it. There's a thread here somewhere about it.

It's way, way different (memory mapped IO) compared to our card, so it's going to be a completely different ROM altogether, which will require extensive BIOS updates and I will probably need someone to send me a card for testing.

Gotta get this one done first though. Maybe toward the end of the summer I can tackle that one.
 
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