An early, possibly British i486. Do you know the brand?

[Robertjam98]

Does anybody know what manufacturer is this "e" logo? I got this system and playing with it for a while now, motherboard is DFI 486-33UNB AIO?

 

[Plasma]

Looks like a barebones DFI system (motherboard/case/psu), completed and sold by an independent PC shop.

 

[Robertjam98]

Looks like a barebones DFI system (motherboard/case/psu), completed and sold by an independent PC shop.

Thank you for that, but what does that mean for the BIOS? I was hoping to find updates, currently it gives me this:

40-0100ZZ1211-00111111-070791-U461/M6-F

 

[Plasma]

You would look for a BIOS specific to your motherboard, but I don't see any available.

You can try another BIOS for a motherboard with the same chipset, but there's no guarantee it will work. I would try this Mr. BIOS first.

 

[1ST1]

What is the reason why you want to do the update?

 

[Robertjam98]

What is the reason why you want to do the update?

I'm having a hard time even setting up 20Gb hdd and I'm happy with only detecting the 504M, but no luck so far. Any partition I build gets lost after restart, EZ Drive and Ontrack both error as soon as they start partitioning.

My BIOS is AMI 1991, It does not auto detect hard drive, also checking AMI BIOS from that era, one year later, 1992, they did a major upgrade and added Large support and autodetect. I was hoping I can get that on my system.
I'm considering XT-IDE and even installing a new IDE ISA card, but first I want to see if I can add anything (Large HDD, Sata or Flash card) for the standard 504Mb

Any advice is much appreciated.

 

[T-R-A]

FWIW: Your best bet is to find an IDE (not EIDE) drive under 504/540MB. Had a Shuttle HOT403 MoBo with that very same BIOS and was never able to break the "barrier" until I found an Acculogic EIDE card to interface with the (at that time) new WD 1 GB HDD I had spent $300 for (this was in 1994).

 

[Ruud]

I'm considering XT-IDE and even installing a new IDE ISA card,

XT-IDE, yes but a new IDE card? No. I don't see any reason why the original would not work. You only need to find a way to implement the XT-IDE ROM. I did this for my Commodore 80286 machines and it worked out fine. If the XT-IDE hack works for a 80286 machine, I don't see any reason why it shouldn't work for a 80486. The EPROM hack is another matter. If you have room in your EPROM/FlashRAM and can find the routine that checks for external ROMs, it could work.

 

[Robertjam98]

XT-IDE, yes but a new IDE card? No. I don't see any reason why the original would not work. You only need to find a way to implement the XT-IDE ROM. I did this for my Commodore 80286 machines and it worked out fine. If the XT-IDE hack works for a 80286 machine, I don't see any reason why it shouldn't work for a 80486. The EPROM hack is another matter. If you have room in your EPROM/FlashRAM and can find the routine that checks for external ROMs, it could work.

I though maybe my onboard IDE controller is faulty. I'll try the XT-IDE first then

 

[1ST1]

XT-IDE controller is 8 bit slot only, so your drive will be only at half speed.

 

[Plasma]

Perhaps confusingly, the XT-IDE Universal BIOS (XUB) can be used with any IDE interface, not just the XT-IDE. So if you are using the XUB with your existing 16-bit interface, it won't be any slower, and will add support for larger drives.

Without the actual XT-IDE card, you just need a place to put the ROM. The boot ROM socket on a NIC is a common solution.

 

[Ruud]

I though maybe my onboard IDE controller is faulty.

I didn't think of that. If that is the case, unless your onboard IDE interface can be disabled, make sure you get a card that is configurable: a lot of cards have a fixed I/O address. And just popped up: you will need an IDE-only card unless you can disable the onboard FDC or disable the FDC of that card.

 

[Robertjam98]

Perhaps confusingly, the XT-IDE Universal BIOS (XUB) can be used with any IDE interface, not just the XT-IDE. So if you are using the XUB with your existing 16-bit interface, it won't be any slower, and will add support for larger drives.

Without the actual XT-IDE card, you just need a place to put the ROM. The boot ROM socket on a NIC is a common solution.

Indeed, that's correct.

@Ruud you were right, I got a Lan card with a XT-IDE on it and system started behaving correctly. I didn't need to use a second controller.

@1ST1 interestingly the drive speed (10GB Diamond) is 8x, I benchmarked using NU, this is obviously compared to the time appropriate drives. So theoretically even if I loose half speed, using DOS 6.22, ISA is not the bottleneck.

Great experience, you guys are the best