McIDE-CF in my 8560

[MykeLawson]

Well, it arrived today, I got it installed in the machine, and did all the reference disk voodoo. However, as is usually the case when it comes to something I touch, things are going very slowly. The machine has 6MB of RAM, a dual Async card, and an ESDI controller with one drive (C. I have tried several configurations of the McIDE-CF card, and if there are any cards plugged into it, the Boot Options selection will show stuff, but it just hangs and I can't navigate. If I just let it try to boot normally, it will boot from my C: drive, but even with the bootable RefDisk in drive A:, it will not boot from that drive anyone. I can still access drive A: after things boot from drive C:. I will guarantee you that I just have to figure out how to configure the McIDE-CF card. But with all the possible settings, I would be far older by the time I'd get through them.

My hope is that I can keep my current drive C: as my boot drive, and have the internal and external CF cards be the second and third drives in the system. I have 64MB CF cards that I plan to use. I even thought that it could be that they were not formatted, so I stuck them in my Win10 machine and formatted them as FAT. Does anyone have any insights or suggestions?

 

[Maikudou]

Seems like incompatibility with mcide-cf, mine also does not boot from working refdisk in a: if I enable mcide bios,

To dos to start to see cf card I had to partition/format it with fdisk from that machine

 

[MykeLawson]

Well, this is what I finally came up with after testing several configs. I did email Mark and started down this path based on some ideas he had. Still not sure why I cannot see both CF cards. I'd like to have the 2GB card as the internal card, and the 64MB card as external, so I'd have a real easy way to get lot's of data on and off the machine.

 

[Krille]

If I just let it try to boot normally, it will boot from my C: drive, but even with the bootable RefDisk in drive A:, it will not boot from that drive anyone. I can still access drive A: after things boot from drive C:.

Do you press the A key to select booting from drive A:? If you don't, it will boot from drive C: by default.

My hope is that I can keep my current drive C: as my boot drive, and have the internal and external CF cards be the second and third drives in the system. I have 64MB CF cards that I plan to use. I even thought that it could be that they were not formatted, so I stuck them in my Win10 machine and formatted them as FAT. Does anyone have any insights or suggestions?

As a general rule, partitioning and formatting should be done on the actual computer where you intend to use the CF cards. The reason is that XUB might use a drive geometry that is different from what Windows 10 uses.

Are you trying to use two compact flash cards on the same IDE channel, as master and slave? Many, if not most, CF cards refuse to work as slaves for some resaon. Note, I'm not familiar with the McIDE-CF so this might not be possible, but if you can, try them as master, each on their own IDE channel.

Seems like incompatibility with mcide-cf, mine also does not boot from working refdisk in a: if I enable mcide bios,

Have you tried pressing the A key?

To dos to start to see cf card I had to partition/format it with fdisk from that machine

Yes, thats the correct way to do it.

On a sidenote, I'm surprised to see that they ship these boards with a custom version of XUB r624. As far as I know, there's no reason to as I added support specifically for these controllers in r625.

 

[Maikudou]

> have you tried pressing the A key
Of course, by not booting I mean it tries to do that, but hangs with drive light on. The same floppy boots fine in the same drive if I disable mcide bios, have to remove the card for that as I can’t load reference disk once bios is enabled

 

[MykeLawson]

> have you tried pressing the A key
Of course, by not booting I mean it tries to do that, but hangs with drive light on. The same floppy boots fine in the same drive if I disable mcide bios, have to remove the card for that as I can’t load reference disk once bios is enabled

Mine did the same thing. I wish I had the time to develop a full test procedure to test all the perturbations, but I'll have to do bits at a time. I have to go through an email replay I got from the McIDE folks about a couple other scenarios to try. hopefully I can get to that tomorrow.

 

[MykeLawson]

Winner, winner, chicken dinner... Mostly. Here are the latest test runs and results:



It looks like Test Run #9 is going to be a keeper; as I am not going to tempt the 'fates' right now. I did see a few interesting things though:
1) Pressing 'A' during boot, does say it is going to boot from A: but it never does. It starts to read from drive A: and then reverts back to booting from drive C:.
2) Pressing F2 and then selecting drive A: has the same results.
3) In order to get to the Ref Disk in drive A:, I have to boot to the C: prompt, change to A:, and then run SC.EXE to get into the Ref Disk programs.

So, this configuration will work for me. Sure is weird and not what I would have expected though. But, I can run Windows 3.1 and the drives show up properly.

 

[Krille]

I'm a bit confused by the table. Chan A Config says "Secondary" and Chan B Config says "Tertiary" but in the Results column both drives are at I/O address 170h and they are also Master and Slave. The best chance of getting this to work is if each drive is Master on its own IDE channel. That would make one drive Master @170h and the other Master @1E8h. I guess the ESDI controller resides at the Primary interface @1F0h so that is why you can't use that? It would certainly explain why no drives are being detected while connected to the Primary interface.

I'm also a bit perplexed about this business with you both not being able to boot from drive A: but the only advice I can give you is to try programming the controller with the latest version of XUB, specifically the ide_ps2l.bin-file.

 

[MykeLawson]

Even though this is the first time using the XT-IDE related stuff, I'm kinda perplexed as to the results as well. I would have expected to see the internal CF card show up as Master and the external as Slave, and not the other way around. I can understand the PATA/IDE interface as secondary, and the CF cards as tertiary, if assuming the ESDI drive commands the Primary position in the system. But not knowing how it is laid out, I guess I take what I can get. I will keep this link, and in the future, when I get hold of the right EPROM, burn a copy of the latest stuff and see if it changes. Thanks for the help folks.

 

[MykeLawson]

Well, I thunk I spoke too soon. Last night I went and powered on the machine, and only one CF card was detected. There was absolutely nothing changed from the previous power off. All it recognizes is the external port. So I'm back to square 1. Not really happy. I need to figure out what type of EPROM can be used on that card and see if I have one that I can burn version 625 of that ROM (ide_ps2l.bin). Hopefully, there weren't any tweaks made to it. I guess I ought to capture that is on the EPROM that is on the card currently.

 

[MykeLawson]

Well, maybe things are.... I'm starting to suspect the Cisco 64MB CF cards. I know a lot of these CF/IDE adapters can be very finicky when it comes to some cards. That said, any chance there are recommended brands and sizes for this thing? Or any of the XTIDE architecture stuff? And along with that, since I now have an open drive bay (failed 70MB ESDI drive), I was thinking of adding a PATA drive and use it on the IDE connector. And a similar question about known good makes & models before I go off half baked. Thanks

 

[Krille]

The ESDI drive failed? I'm sorry to hear that. Did you manage to backup the drive before it failed?

Have you tried swapping the CF cards between the internal and external connectors? Just to exclude the possibility that the connector is broken. Can you still access the Cisco 64 MB CF card on your Windows 10 machine?

By the way, the support page for the McIDE-CF has a link pointing to a download of the XUB used on these cards.

 

[MykeLawson]

Oh, it had two ESDI drives. The C: drive is fine. The D: drive has always been a bit flaky since I bought the machine. Originally, my plan was to replace the flaky 70MB with a 310MB IBM ESDI drive; till I heard of this thing. As for the internal vs external; yes/no/maybe. From the test results, I have had two cards installed to see it was great, then a day later, it won't recognize it. Right now, the only CF card installed it the SanDisk internally. I have another project that is particular about the type of CF card that is used. I may look for another SanDisk card on eBay and try to do some testing. Or go down the Parallel IDE road.......

 

[Krille]

From the test results, I have had two cards installed to see it was great, then a day later, it won't recognize it.

Yeah, the way I see it, you need to figure out what's broken. Whether it's the CF card or the McIDE-CF adapter (the connectors are very delicate parts). Swapping the CF cards should help with figuring that out.

 

[MykeLawson]

Update: I have been running the machine, on and off a few times a day, with just the internal CF SanDisk card, and there hasn't been one single hiccup. The next time I have to go in the machine, I'm going to move the CF card the the external port, and get the info off the CF card so I can order a duplicate. I'm not convinced the issue isn't with timing, or compatibility. Who knows, since I have no idea what, or how the code and card work. I'll also check to see if I have a compatible EPROM and burn a copy of the latest version for some future testing. I have no ideas if there were tweaks done to the code in order to work in an MCA environment.

 

[thisisamigaspeaking]

I know a lot of these CF/IDE adapters can be very finicky when it comes to some cards. That said, any chance there are recommended brands and sizes for this thing? Or any of the XTIDE architecture stuff?

I've had some mixed results. I have two Transcend 512MB cards, one of the 80x variety with a rainbow on the label, the other a 220I 220x Industrial. The rainbow one works great on my NuXT, but the industrial one stutters sometimes, although it is faster when it's working. In the McIDE-CF the industrial one works great.

As far as the McIDE-CF, I had no issues at all with it. I only have an external CF though. I put the BIOS at 0xC0000. Chan a primary, external master, int 14; chan b secondary, int 15. I did disconnect my ESDI drive. As to the floppy, I have a Gotek (with flashfloppy firmware) and it works fine for booting etc.