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LBA and DC-4030VL

H

Hatta

Experienced Member
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May 27, 2010
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Has anyone used the DTC-1181 LBA expansion board? This is supposed to add LBA support to computers with old BIOS so they can use large hard disks.

I have one such computer, using a Promise DC-4030VL caching disk controller. I tried using the XT-IDE universal bios, but it is not compatible with that controller. Having the 4030VL and XT-IDE bios installed at the same time makes the computer run extremely slow, and it usually hangs before getting to the C:> prompt. Is the DTC-1181 likely to be compatible? Or will it interfere with the operation of the 4030VL like the XT-IDE bios does?

I'm currently running with drive overlay software, but it drops my DOOM framerates by about 20-25%. The VLB caching controller with DDO is still faster than my ISA multifunction card, so I'm not terribly concerned about that. But I'd still like to squeeze that last bit of performance out of it.

If this card is expected to work, does anyone have one? There's one on eBay for $50 shipped, but that's a bit much I think.
 
Have you installed the drivers for the 4030VL (thats the Vesa Local Bus version correct)? There is a 80286 CPU on that board that needs a driver (and should do LBA to the built in RAM).
 
It doesn't need drivers. The drivers are for the second IDE port. I know because I used that exact card for five years. But, IIRC, I had about a bazillion partitions among the several drives I was using.
 
Yes, this card was sold to me by Stone. I have the manual and driver disk, but nothing mentions LBA unfortunately. A little more googling and I see some vintage mailing list posts mentioning firmware upgrades for this card that do support LBA. But I unfortunately they don't seem to exist on the internet anymore. If someone has a card with such an upgrade, I'd love to get my hands on dumps of those ROMs.
 
Is this card the same as the "EIDE4030Plus"? That card has a LBA BIOS on it already and supports drives up to the INT 13h limit of 8.4GB. Maybe if a ROM dump could be obtained, see if it will work on the older card.

http://web.archive.org/web/19970620085324/http://www.promise.com/html/sales/EIDE4030PLUS.html
http://web.archive.org/web/19971011211448/http://www.promise.com/html/sales/EIDE4030PLUS-Launch.html

Here is the old ROM upgrade info. Maybe Promise still has it around:
http://web.archive.org/web/19980505171400/http://promise.com/html/support/LBA-BIOS.html
 
There are a few options in the ROM bios on how the card works, look there. I have the last Plus version of the card but havn't had to set it up in ages.
 
njroadfan said:
Is this card the same as the "EIDE4030Plus"? That card has a LBA BIOS on it already and supports drives up to the INT 13h limit of 8.4GB. Maybe if a ROM dump could be obtained, see if it will work on the older card.
Click to expand...

It's not exactly the same, but it looks similar. I'd definitely try the BIOS on my card if you can dump it. Same goes for the Plus version.

Here is the old ROM upgrade info. Maybe Promise still has it around:
http://web.archive.org/web/19980505171400/http://promise.com/html/support/LBA-BIOS.html
Click to expand...

Good job digging that up. I had tried the archive but didn't find that page. I did call the number, and it still goes to Promise tech support, but the extension given doesn't work anymore.

I found an archive that claims to be an "LBA fix", but the contents of the archive appear to be the regular driver. I dunno, maybe I'm missing something: ftp://ftp2.ibspan.waw.pl/pub/mirror/ftp.mpoli.fi/hardware/HDD/PROMISE/PT-MBLBA.ZIP
 
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This card is not the plus version, it's the first version. But if you partition the drive(s) you should be able to use more of the drive.

Hatta, how big is the drive you are using?
 
It's a 6.4 gig Seagate drive. The odd thing is that the BIOS on the 486 will detect the full capacity of the disk, but DOS(6.22) fdisk can't partition anything over 500mb. I don't need anything huge in here, but half a gig is a bit small.

What's the difference with the PLUS version anyway? Any chance it's the same card with the bios upgrade pre-installed?
 
If DOS 6.22 can't partition over 500MB I will say to you that the BIOS is the culprit because DOS 6.22 *can* use a 2GB partition. In fact, it can use multiple 2GB partitions. What leads you to say that the BIOS is detecting the full capacity of the disk?

I don't know anything about the PLUS version other than that it's a different product.
 
Stone said:
What leads you to say that the BIOS is detecting the full capacity of the disk?
Click to expand...



When I run the autodetect, it correctly identifies the CHS settings, which match the ones on the sticker. Here's what I get:

Cyl: 13328
Head: 15
WPcom: 65535
LZone: 13328
Sect: 63
Size(MB): 6150

I guess it was 6.2gig. Not sure what WPcom and LZone are. But the rest match the sticker. 13328 * 15 * 63 = 6150*2048 (why the factor of 2?). I'm guessing 1024*15*63=472 * 2048, 472 being about what fdisk saw. Typical 1992 bios problem. And my motherboard is a no name (EFA I think?) brand so no chance of finding an updated bios.
 
I think that autodetect and the BIOS limitation are two separate features. Just because the disk can tell the BIOS it parameters doesn't mean the BIOS can handle them. I'd say you've got the 1,024 Cylinder Barrier in the BIOS. That = 504MB.

WPcom = Write Precompensation, an MFM value. IDEs don't need this.

LZone = Landing Zone, another MFM value telling the machine where to park the heads. IDEs don't need this either.
 
Like Stone has said, the DC4030VL only does up to 504MB, there was an upgrade LBA BIOS. The following is from the compnote.txt from the pt-comp.zip from the site Hatta posted in post #7 of this thread.

Code: 
5. DRIVES LARGER THAN 528MB (All IDE controllers other than EIDE2300Plus)

Under DOS and Windows there is a limitation of 528MB for each hard drive 
(504MB as reported by FDISK). For a small charge there is an upgrade BIOS 
available for the DC200/200M, DC4030VL-1, and DC4030VL-2 controllers which 
will do LBA (Logical Block Addressing) and allow DOS to recognize drives 
larger than 528MB. To receive this upgrade BIOS, call 408-452-1180 and 
follow the voice prompts for if you have a DC4030VL series controller and
want to support drives larger than 528 MB under DOS.
 
Did you say that the board can support large drives without the Promise card? Have you tried it this way? If not, try it with an ISA IDE interface card. If it recognizes the whole HD I might have a VLB IDE card without a BIOS onboard. I seems like the Promise's BIOS is the source of the problem.
 
I've tried it with an ISA IDE card and no it does not recognize the full capacity of the disk. I've used this ISA IDE card with the XT-IDE bios and it works well. It's slower than the VLB caching controller with DDO though, so I'll stick with that. I really just need to get my hands on that BIOS upgrade for the card.

If that doesn't turn up, I may just buy a pile of 512MB CF cards, a CF-IDE adapter, and physically swap volumes as needed.
 
Hatta said:
I've tried it with an ISA IDE card and no it does not recognize the full capacity of the disk.
Click to expand...
That says that the motherboard's BIOS is causing the problem. This issue has nothing to do with the Promise card. Can you try another motherboard?
 
I have a PT - 4030VL PLUS card, If anyone wants a copy of the rom and doesnt mind writing out instructions on how to grab it, I can give it to you. Hatta I think you mentioned you wanted it?

If anyone has the users guide / drivers that would be super helpful to me if I could get a copy of it.

Let me know guys.

Mark
 
Check out this thread. I'm pretty sure the LCS-6941 firmware posted there will work in the DC-4030VL as well as this controller is pretty much identical. I havn't tried it yet myself though but I will soon.
 
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