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Tertiary EIDE (ATAPI) controllers

Anonymous Coward

Anonymous Coward

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I have a soundcard with what I believe to be a tertiary EIDE controller (presumably for attaching ATAPI CD-ROM drives). I have the following configuration options to choose from:

IDE1 I/O: OFF/1E8h/168h/1E0h
IDE2 I/O: OFF/3EEh/36Eh/3E6h
IDE IRQ: OFF/3/5/7/9/10/11

I would like to be able to connect a compact flash card to it. Are there any drivers that allow you to configure, format and use hard drives running on tertiary IDE controllers?
Normally I'd just plop in an extra IDE controller, but my system is SCSI based and I have no more ISA slots available.
 
Do you have any card with unused ROM socket (like network card)? If you have, you could use XTIDE Universal BIOS since it can be configured to find IDE drives at any port.
 
It supports normal 16-bit IDE transfers and 8-bit XTIDE transters (AT-IDE to two 8-bit data ports, not single 8-bit data port for actual XT-IDE drives). 16-bit transfers are only implemented on AT build. 32-bit transfers for VLB and PCI controllers are not yet implemented. IDE ports, bus width, IRQ and number of controllers (1 to 5) can be configured from idecfg.com.
 
Yes that will work as long as you have a card that can accept 8kB EPROMs (2764) or EEPROMs (2864 that the XTIDE can flash).

I have this 8-BIT ISA network card that has a socket for 2764 EPROM chip. I tried a SEEQ 28C64A EEPROM in it and it works. Those SEEQ chips are the ones that were used on the old XTIDE cards before Atmel EEPROMs.

EEPROMs cannot be flashed when they are inserted on EPROM sockets but you can always move it to XTIDE card to be flashed.

Some cards have socket for 16kB 27128 EPROMs. I don't think the 8kB EEPROMs work in those and 16kB EEPROMs cannot be flashed with XTIDE. Some cards have jumpers to select 8kB or 16kB EPROM so the 2864 EEPROMs will work when jumpered to 8kB.
 
Is the XTIDE able to write 2764 ROMs as well?

The card I will be using is a 3com 3c597TX. I downloaded the user manual and it doesn't have any mention about the PROM sizes supported. However, I was able to find out that the 3c509B can take either 2764, 27128 or 27256 chips, so I'm hoping it will be the same since they are roughly the same vintage.
 
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XTIDE can only write 2864 EEPROMs. If the 3c597TX supports 2764 then 2864 should work too.
 
Whoa, so you're telling me that for my $40 I didn't just get an 8-bit IDE controller, I also got a ROM flasher for some model of chips? Can it burn anything to the chips, or just the XTIDE BIOS?
 
I just thought I would update on some of the progress I've made so far. I ended up getting two 28c64 EEPROMs and flashing them with the AT-IDE BIOS. I installed one of the ROMs onto a 3COM 3c597TX ethernet adapter which I configured for 8kb at D400. Unfortunately I was unable to test with a tertiary IDE controller because the soundcard I ordered for this system is having a conflict with my graphics system, so I ended up going with a Winbond multi I/O configured for a secondary IDE address instead.

For the most part, everything seems to work pretty well. This is a great way of adding compact flash or large hard drives to older systems without having to bother with one of those fancy extended BIOS controllers. I did find one minor problem however, and it has to do with my SCSI controller (Adaptec AHA 2742W). When I have for example my compact flash plugged into the IDE controller, I am not able to boot from my SCSI controller using the AT IDE boot menu. However, if I unplug the CF card from the controller and reboot, I am able to boot from my SCSI controller using the AT IDE pop up menu just fine. In my case it's not really a big deal, since my CF card is externally mounted and can be removed. However, I could see this potentially causing problems in setups where internal devices are used.

Overall, I am very impressed!
 
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