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Need help when use isa-to-usb card in IBM 5160!

Many many moons ago i bought a " Practice Kit " on Ebay from a chinese seller, The kit consisted of a PCB and a bag of various sized SMT components, I found it extremely useful and eventually found my own way of doing things, Doesn't matter if you make mistakes as the kit cost very little. I still have it and still use it.
[ Just an example ]
lazaros said:
.....This is beyond my skills.
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Is anybody working on new boot rom code or dos driver for the isa - usb boards or a new board ???

Or is this subject dead and buried now.
 
pietja said:
......So in the end i still don't know why de bios wont work in an Olivetti or a 5160......
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Don't know if you got any further with this but, I have the 1.5 bios working in my IBM XT 5160 with a Sony V20 fitted, It works with a couple of flash drives 1Gb / 2Gb i tried, CF cards in adapters did not work in the 5160 and gave the error:
Non-System disk or disk error
Replace and press any key when ready
Click to expand...

I tried the same bios / CF cards in adapter in my IBM XT 286 ( With AMI bios ) and booted successfully in to DOS 6.22 with no issues that i noticed.
 
Malc said:
It's dead and buried you fool, Let it R.I.P
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No. Over the weekend i was sorting out some stuff and came across a box of old laptop hard drives and wondered if one would work with adapter connected to my lo-tech isa - usb card, My initial thoughts were no it won't work but curiosity got the better of me and i had to try it.

I grabbed a Toshiba 1443MB drive tested it and it worked fine, Quiet too for an old drive. I have an ide2usb adapter so connected that to the drive and as i do with the flash drives i used the HP format tool to partition / format and install DOS 6.22 system files using my XP box, I installed a few additional DOS files, Config / Autoexec etc. I shut down my XP box and turned it on again and it booted very fast into DOS 6.22, It worked perfectly.

Over to my IBM XT 5160 i go and plug the drive/adapter into the isa - usb card, The boot rom is disabled on the card because i want to try it with the DOS driver first, I fired up the XT and on driver initialization for the isa - usb card i see ' drive not found ' bah!, Sticking my ear close to the drive i can hear the drive struggling to spin up so obviously the isa - usb card was unable to provide enough power for the drive, Luckily i had another adapter with a molex connector for powering these drives, I plugged the adapter into the drive and the power lead in the PSU molex connector, I then connected the ide2usb adapter to the first adapter via the desktop side of the ide2usb adapter, Powered up the XT and this time the DOS driver found the drive and designated it the letter D because i already have a working C drive in the machine. I could access the laptop drive D and saw all the files i put on there, I could also read and write to the drive just fine.

My next test was to see if the XT would boot from the laptop drive, I disabled the C drive and enabled the Boot Rom on the card, Fired up the XT the Boot Rom initialized and found the drive and proceeded to boot from the drive with success, The laptop drive was now the C drive and i could access the drive and read / write as i did with the DOS driver. Its a bit slow in an XT but it worked. :)
 
I think it's been about 18 months since the first batch of the lo-tech prototype isa - usb boards were sent out and a bit later another batch was sent out, I bought one from the second batch, I don't know how many were actually sold but surely i can't be the only one with a built and working board, So come on guys don't be shy, Please step forward :)
 
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