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ST-4182E Whats a good controller to get for it ESDI?

Well the eBay deal for the LTRASTOR - 802-18009-02B U12F went south. I was sent a PCI video card which I finally got the shipping label to send it back and hopefully get refunded.

The seller could not find the correct card.

Well I bought a DCT-6180-15T and have questions.

Should drive be setup as drive select 1? Should the cable have no twist?

I can only find the doc's on DCT6180-15TX

The differences I'm looking at is W4 default is for a 32k SRAM where my board has a 8k SRAM so I'm closing pin 2 & 3 to select 8K

My board has no jumpers for W2 W3 so they are open by default.

I'm hoping the switch setting are correct

SW1-1 closed factory configured default
SW1-2 Primary port 1F0h-1F7h enabled open default
SW1-3 Auto-deselect disabled open default ---- what is this setting for?
SW1-4 BIOS EPROM enabled closed default
SW1-5 BIOS ADDRESS
SW1-6 BIOS ADDRESS
SW1-7 Interrupt after reset enabled closed default
SW1-8 Track buffer enabled closed default

Other issue I had to leave a ST-22 MFM floppy controller in the system to use the floppy drive. I set the AT bios to show no HD's installed. I changed the BIOS address on the DTC-1680-15T to D4000h

My 1st attempt W4 was set wrong and I'm not sure on the cabling before I try again I would love to make sure on the cabling and if the switches have the same meaning between the DTC-6180--15t and the DTC-6180-15TX

How should the led on the HD act before I run the debug program if it's setup correctly?

Any help greatly appreciated...
 
No twists in an ESDI cable, at least for primary--but if you do that, you can't have an MFM controller sharing that 1Fx address. I assume that you mean the DTC6180. You'll have to figure something out for the floppies. The DTC6280 has floppy support--and, in fact, can support 4 floppy drives.

You might have luck setting the ST22 to secondary, BIOS disabled. That would be JP1 closed and JP3 closed. That would still let you use the FDC on the card.
 
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I can only use the floppies on the primary setting JP1&2 open. I was already using the card with JP3 closed. I did try it open, no joy on the floppies. All this was done w/o the DTC card in the system.

FYI I've now tried 3 oddball MIO cards with floppy interfaces, after I disable the IDE port the floppies show as not working press F! and then they do work. I guess I need to locate a floppy only card that works with an AT. I also tried 2 8bit XT HD cards with the same results.

I think plan B buy another ESDI card with a floppy interface. Insane hobbyist working here... :crazy:
 
Yes I do. I also just found a sysgen omni2bridge 8 bit controller that I can disable the BIOS and use in an AT. FYI this is being done in a IBM 5162 system.

I have to stop now before for wife forgets I exist. I'll continue tomorrow.

Thanks for Chuck for that SCSI tip. I'll try that if the Sysgen card fail to work. I'm betting it just might be what I needed.
 
All the MIO's I tried, setup to just use the floppy controller, and all the 8 bit HD floppy controllers including the Sysgen one, always show a 601 error press F1 and then it boots from floppy. The DTC-6180 card is not in the computer. I still don't understand this. The ST-22 floppy controller works and boots perfect on the primary setting. I was able to install the DTC-6140 and bring up the bios program to LL format the drive by setting JP1 OPEN JP2 CLOSED that used HD port address 1F0-1F7, 3F6-3F7; however, the HD led remains on the LL format program does't find a drive.

I need to locate a card that has a floppy controller built in. I'm also out of slots and to use a separate floppy controller I've been pulling out my network card.

FYI I did select no BIOS on the Sysgen card SW2 was all off.
I did try the Adaptec AHA-1540CF and got the same issue as all the other floppy controllers.

I'm using Gsetup to setup the CMOS.
 
The Sysgen with bios disabled is a plain old AT-compatible controller as far as the system is concerned--assuming that it's set as 3fx,IRQ 6, DMA 2.

Well, like I mentioned, I've got two DTC controllers, the one I've used most is the 6282, which does have a floppy controller.
 
Working with the AHA-1540CF SCSI adapter I got it 1st showed a 601 error w/o the DTC6180 in the system but after I pressed F1 it booted to the floppy. I put the DTC6180 in with
SW1-1 on FACTORY SET
SW1-2 OFF Primary port1F0h-1F7h
SW1-3 OFF Auto-deselect disabled
SW1-4 ON Bios EPROM enabled
SW1-5 OFF BIOS ADDRESS C8000h
SW1-6 OFF w/sw1-5
SW1-7 ON Interrupt after reset enabled
SW1-8 ON Track buffer enabled

On boot to floppy it no longer had the 601 error. I was able to run Debug g=c800:5 program to LL format and verify the drive. I fdisk'd and formatted the drive with 3.3 DOS and transfer the system. The computer booted successfully to the C: drive.

Now the weird issue. The LED on the HD is always on. What am I missing. The LED has never shut off from the start of the process.

Does the LED on the drive show it the selected drive? The LED connected to the DTC6180 show the drive working normally.
 
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Since this is the only drive on the controller, I think that your explanation is reasonable. The LED and bezel on my ESDI drives were removed as part of the installation, so I can't say much more than that.
 
Thanks for all your insight and help. I was also surprised at the great BIOS setup program on the DTC controller. It automatically set the drive type as TYPE 1 and then allowed the whole drive to be used. I was also surprised that the whole error table was already presented and I did not need to enter anything. The drive speed is much faster than any MFM drive I've used and very quite. It was nice to finally explore this drive type.
 
ESDI is the immediate predecessor to IDE; in fact, as far as viewed from the controller-to-PC interface standpoint, there's almost no difference--the same commands are supported. ESDI's main competition was SCSI, so there's a lot of carryover between drive models.
 
I found this in the online doc's.

Front Panel
-----------
The WREN 3 is available with a black front panel. The panel has a
single red rectangular LED which indicates the drive is selected when
glowing. A flashing LED indicates the presence of a nonrecoverable
fault. A fault indication is displayed irrespective of DRIVE SELECT
status.

I further read that a DTC-6000 controller has issues with using the DEBUG in DOS 5 and above. I had this issue and used DOS 3.3 to DEBUG g=c800:5 to LL format the drive then used DOS 6.22 to fdisk and format it.
 
Al Kossow said:
They also get MFM vs ESDI mixed up as you found out
https://www.ebay.com/itm/274704477562 is NOT an MFM drive
People get confused because ESDI used the same 34/20 pin connector pair as ST-412(MFM/RLL) drives
Click to expand...
Real problem is people using MFM to refer to an interface, even though MFM and RLL define a way to store data and have absolutely nothing to do with the interface. ST-506, ST-412, ESDI, and early IDE and SCSI all can be MFM drives. So there's no "MFM vs. ESDI", because MFM is not an interface.
 
Just found this on minuszerodegrees.net:

Known problem - POST error of 601

Note: The following is not the result of a bug/defect.

With the second (06/10/85) and third (11/15/85) BIOS revisions, removing the IBM Fixed Disk and Diskette Drive Adapter and substituting a third-party replacement solution can (can, not always) result in a 601 error during POST (Power-On Self Test). There is something in those revisions that expects the 'IBM Fixed Disk and Diskette Drive Adapter' (or compatible card). The symptom is not seen with the first BIOS revision (01/10/84).

In this situation, the 601 error is the POST warning you that it not find the 'IBM Fixed Disk and Diskette Drive Adapter'.

Note that if experienced, this does not stop the boot process; following the 601 is a prompt to press the F1 key to resume, although, operation may be compromised.

Substituting the IBM BIOS with a third-party one, is a known workaround.

A fix is to use a replacement solution that behaves the same as the 'IBM Fixed Disk and Diskette Drive Adapter', i.e. the POST will believe that an 'IBM Fixed Disk and Diskette Drive Adapter' is fitted.
Click to expand...

This is what I was experiencing with all attempts to put a different floppy controller in the computer. I'm using a XT286 motherboard with this same issue.

It did clear up after I installed a different HD controller w/o a floppy interface and once the HD was LL formatted on re-boot the 601 error disappeared.
 
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