• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

HeadStart Explorer and XT-IDE v1.0

Denniske1976 said:
Since there are two JP jumpers and both are closed, according to stason.org (ST11M or R controller) the controller is at O/I Port 32C-32Fh and BIOS address E000h (XT only). So I guess it would be best to use these settings and reflash the BIOS in the XT-IDE card?
Click to expand...
I think that as far as XT-IDE BIOS address is concerned, you should stick with CC000 (at least initially).
 
Well, checked the 300-308 address and they all return FF. Flashed the BIOS at this and CC00 and still nothing :-( I even changed from Menu to A then C in the boot loader option, hoping this would work... Nothing.
 
Weird thing is: after flashing with 300h and CC00 it flashes succesful, but after a reboot it loads my floppy drive and I get a "Invalid COMMAND.COM in drive A" error. When I switch the computer off and on again it loads normal from floppy. But alas, still no harddisk found by FDISK. Although I can see that 300h - 308h have changed from FF to 01 values.
 
try this program:
http://www.waste.org/~winkles/id_dump.zip

It's been awhile since I wrote this, and I'm not in front of a machine to try it, but it should issue an identify device command to the xtide card and dump the data out to the screen. Technically no BIOS would be required, just the XTIDE at address 300h, and a working hard drive on the other end.

it will likely fill your screen with something. redirect it to a file and post it here.
 
Thanx for that, I do indeed get output:


0000:045A 0419 0000 0010 0000 0000 003F 0000
0008:0000 0000 2020 2020 2020 2020 2031 4A31
0016:314A 3030 3836 3734 0003 00C0 0012 3631
0024:4337 3044 3330 4942 4D2D 4441 4C41 2D33
0032:3534 3020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020
0040:2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 0010
0048:0000 0F00 0000 0200 0200 0003 0419 0010
0056:003F 2270 0010 0100 2270 0010 0007 0003
0064:0001 00B4 00B4 00B4 00B4 0000 0000 0000
0072:0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0080:0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0088:0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0096:0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0104:0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0112:0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0120:0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0128:0000 000B 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0136:0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0144:0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0152:0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0160:0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0168:0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0176:0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0184:0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0192:0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0200:0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0208:0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0216:0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0224:0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0232:0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0240:0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0248:0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
 
Is this a chuck-mod board? Since the model number is coming off with the bytes flipped; that is, that directly reads "IBM-DALA-3540", which is wrong. So I'm guessing that 1) it's a chuck-mod board, and 2) that the system board has the same 16-bit port IO bug as does the AT&T PC6300.
 
pearce_jj said:
Is this a chuck-mod board? Since the model number is coming off with the bytes flipped; that is, that directly reads "IBM-DALA-3540", which is wrong. So I'm guessing that 1) it's a chuck-mod board, and 2) that the system board has the same 16-bit port IO bug as does the AT&T PC6300.
Click to expand...

Wait....whut? Whaddayamean? I have a DALA-3540 drive with a 80-pin cable to the board.
 
Yes, but the byte ordering of strings should be reversed when written out like this, i.e. we should have seen 'BI-MADAL3-45 0'. Actually, is this a V2 board? As doesn't that have jumper-able chuck-mod or not?
 
From what I know this is a V1 board. There's only jumpers for BIOS enable, IRQ (not yard) and H and L for cable select (disabled, L). So JP1 and JP2 are closed and CS is L.
 
the output is little endian; it looks correct to me.
this is another good sign that things are working correctly and we do not have a conflict at 300h. i can't quite wrap my head around why this works but the BIOS can't install. Need to stew on this for a bit...
 
Thanks Hargle, so to be clear the first entry 0000: 045A should be interpreted as

Offset 0: 5A
Offset 1: 04

?
 
bah, i was just about to edit my post to revise my statement about the byte ordering, but you beat me to it.
looking at word3, the value is 0010h. that's the # of heads word, and it should be 16, which it is. when I run a similar program on other machines i see the same output.
basically the output is the raw value from the AX register after reading a word of data.

So the data is correct, my dyslexia sometimes gets the better of me.
 
ok, so now that we know we have a machine that does call the ROM, and we have verified that the connection to the drive is functional, and there are no conflicts in memory or IO space, we may want to pull Tomi into this discussion to see if there are any BIOS level things we can try. There are a few options in xtidecfg that you could try, like where it takes memory from (EBDA or stealing BASIC's vectors) or maybe the "late initialization" option
http://code.google.com/p/xtideunive...ems_on_Configure_XTIDE_Universal_BIOS_submenu

you could also try my original BIOS as another data point:
http://www.waste.org/~winkles/xtide_011.zip

I suspect that my BIOS will complain (although you won't be able to see it because of the boot logo) that this drive doesn't support LBA. The CF device should work.
You should also run the id_dump program with the CF device attached to make sure it's visible too.

wow this one is weird, but we are making progress.
 
Well, tried all kinds of settings but it always ends up with "no hard drives present" from FDISK, but this test.exe sera the IBM DALA drive.

In the end I changed something and now the computer hangs again at boot (which If course means the BIOS is loaded). I don't think I can get this working in an Explorer? :-(

I've put it aside for now, I've ordered a CF adapter from eBay so I'll see what happens with this and a 2GB CF card attached.
 
Try with XTIDE Universal BIOS v2.0.0 (beta 2) since it can change display mode to whatever text mode you like (80x25 color would be the correct one here). Mode change should clear screen and you should then see hotkeys and drive detection strings.
 
OK, just flashed BIOS 2.0.0.2 into the card and that went OK.... after a boot: no menu and also FDISK says "No fixed disks present".

Looking into CC00 with DEBUG it shows me the XT-IDE BIOS v 2.0.0.2 with the date etc.

Dang nabbit! :-(
 
have you tried this bios:
http://www.waste.org/~winkles/xtide_011.zip

it's mine, and I at least can answer to how it works and when it does things that it's supposed to do.
while you may not see a boot menu with this BIOS, I can at least have you poke around in debug to see if it ran enough to detect a HDD and where it stores other data. It's harmless to try.

You should be able to use xtidecfg to flash this BIOS into your card, just like the one modem7 generated for you.

After flashing and a reboot (or power cycle for good measure), this BIOS will attempt to boot the A: drive and if not present go to the C: drive.

If you boot to your DOS diskette, in debug, type: d 40:75
and the very first byte it displays will hopefully be a 01, meaning 1 hard drive was located. That's the same byte that fdisk.exe looks at to know if there are any hard drives attached.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top