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Forthcoming XT-IDE Board - Cast Your Vote

Forthcoming XT-IDE Board - Cast Your Vote

  • As original XT-IDE, with a 40-pin header only

    Votes: 4 10.5%

  • With a 44-pin header and board space to mount a 2.5" IDE HDD (i.e. a hard-card)

    Votes: 7 18.4%

  • With an optional Compact Flash socket (as master or slave) and a 40-pin header

    Votes: 26 68.4%

  • With a Compact Flash socket only

    Votes: 1 2.6%
  • Total voters
    38
  • Poll closed .
pearce_jj said:
In summary, over the original XT/IDE card, this board is faster (up to 500KB/s in a PC/XT), works in PC/XT slot 8, has spare ROM capacity for user ROM code (24KB free), can be used in AT class systems with reduced wait-states (1MB/s in a 12MHz 286), is powered entirely from the ISA slot so needs no molex power supply for the media, and we're currently working on BIOS autodetection of IO ports, so that no BIOS re-flash will be needed if the IO port is changed.
Click to expand...

As someone who has helped test the board for the past few months, I have to say that this ties for 1st place for "vintage computing hobby project that most got me excited" (and that includes my most recent software project!). It is truly the shit. 500KB/s in a vintage machine turns using a 5150 from a chore to a joy. You can transfer software onto/off of the CF card simply by putting it into a card reader. It's almost insane how much this rejuvenates the hobby.
 
Trixter said:
As someone who has helped test the board for the past few months, I have to say that this ties for 1st place for "vintage computing hobby project that most got me excited" (and that includes my most recent software project!). It is truly the shit. 500KB/s in a vintage machine turns using a 5150 from a chore to a joy. You can transfer software onto/off of the CF card simply by putting it into a card reader. It's almost insane how much this rejuvenates the hobby.
Click to expand...

Yes, this looks fantastic. One thing I have been wondering is if there is a chance in hell of getting a long board w/ all the XT- projects on it? I.E. XT-IDE/XT-CF (this would be this project as it has no IDE HDD support) and XT-FDC. It would be fantastic and a major slot savor if you could get all three on one board. Out of the three this is probably the most useful as it allows data exchange easily with modern HW but I am sure there are people interested in having HD FDD in their machines or real IDE HDD.

So when can we buy one or tow pre-assembled again??? ;)
 
Shadow Lord said:
Yes, this looks fantastic. One thing I have been wondering is if there is a chance in hell of getting a long board w/ all the XT- projects on it? I.E. XT-IDE/XT-CF (this would be this project as it has no IDE HDD support) and XT-FDC. It would be fantastic and a major slot savor if you could get all three on one board. Out of the three this is probably the most useful as it allows data exchange easily with modern HW but I am sure there are people interested in having HD FDD in their machines or real IDE HDD.
Click to expand...

You ask too much, sir!

But seriously, with the ability to put a real CF card onto the machine, there's almost no need for floppies. I don't personally understand why people want to add HD floppies to their 808x machine.
 
Trixter said:
You ask too much, sir!

But seriously, with the ability to put a real CF card onto the machine, there's almost no need for floppies. I don't personally understand why people want to add HD floppies to their 808x machine.
Click to expand...

I agree but there are people who still want to use real floppies. In any case, would be nice but this is great as is...
 
Trixter said:
500KB/s in a vintage machine turns using a 5150 from a chore to a joy. You can transfer software onto/off of the CF card simply by putting it into a card reader. It's almost insane how much this rejuvenates the hobby.
Click to expand...

Trixter, thanks very much for posting this! BIOS development has been progressing well with the very kind help of Tomi (see XTIDE Universal BIOS R473 and beyond); we now have proper support for all three transfer modes (IO/Mem/DMA) and auto-detection of port address.

However there seem to be problems with this board; the prototypes are dying. Trixters might even be the only working board at the moment. For whatever reason, the issue seems to affect DMA transfers first, which either stop working, generate NMI or go really slow. And things go downhill from there.

My thoughts are that it could be flux residue eating away at things or perhaps the CPLD isn't generating enough output (it's quoted at 8mA). But the issue needs to be resolved before we can push this forward, and I'm totally stuck on the issue so really need some input on this!
 
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It's not flux. It might be electrical stress. I'd like to spin another 5V PTH version using your current. Where are the latest board and RTL schematics?
 
Mine still works just fine--booted it up yesterday. I wonder what I'm doing right? I'm currently running with a Microdrive just for fun. 5GB is way more than any XT should have. ;)
 
I agree that floppy usage in a PC should be avoided if possible. Sometimes it is not possible, such as when running games and other programs contained on non-DOS booters or some install program that refuses to run in emulator or virtual machine.
 
Chuck, I'm glad yours is running! Are you using DMA mode?

eeguru said:
It's not flux. It might be electrical stress. I'd like to spin another 5V PTH version using your current. Where are the latest board and RTL schematics?
Click to expand...

Hi eeguru, thanks for posting. PCB files and ISE source are up on my site now, I'd really appreciate any input you may have (and however harsh!).
 
I don't know that's been tested explicitly, but since moving to 8-bit transfers and the associated simpler logic, there have been no issues like that.
 
pearce_jj said:
However there seem to be problems with this board; the prototypes are dying. Trixters might even be the only working board at the moment. For whatever reason, the issue seems to affect DMA transfers first, which either stop working, generate NMI or go really slow. And things go downhill from there.
Click to expand...

Any progress with this issue? Are there any other problems with these cards?
 
Well, I did find strange behaviour with the pull-ups on the DIP switch. On the V1 and V2 boards, the switches are tied to 5V via 10k pull-ups, yet the voltage at the CPLD inputs remains at 3.3V. This seems odd so I've drawn out a V2.1 board with the switches tied to 3V3 instead, at least that should correct that (if indeed it is a problem).

I can't understand why the boards are giving up though. I really need some serious electronics expertise on them, and unfortunately am absolutely snowed under with work at the moment, as too are other project contributors I think.

In the mean time I've designed a 7400 series based 'lite' version and just received the PCBs back. Not made one up yet.
 
The board has a 32KB in-system reprogrammable flash-based ROM, 8-bit port-mapped IO, same-speed reads and writes, full IDE port functionality (i.e. control register is visible), XT-IDE Universal BIOS compatible via adapter type 'XT-CF' (but requires manual port selection), on-board and external LED connections, CompactFlash and Microdrive compatible (requires 5V support).

Compared to the XT-CFv2, it goes without memory-mapped IO, DMA transfer mode, IBM PC/XT slot-8 compatibility, PC/AT reduced wait-states, and 3v3 Compact Flash card operation. Both boards use the same ISA slot bracket that enables the media to be removed without opening the machine.
 
Hi All,
Some members, like me, of the vintage-computer board were just informed by lynchaj (another member of this forum) that he's going to produce some XT-IDE v2 PCB in a near future.

Are there some volonteers to which we could order pre-assembled boards build from PCBs of this forthcoming stock ?
 
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