XT-IDE boot menu appears, can select A / C etc, but will not attempt to boot.

[Scruit]

My Mitsubishi MP-3200 386 does not have an IDE controller onboard, but it has an Acculogic sIDE3+. The ROM on the sIDE3 is too old to detect the CF adapter I have, so I am working on XT-IDE.

I downloaded and built XT-IDE it from source, and found that the Motherboard has two slots for option roms I burned two eeproms, low/high, using ide-386, and was able to get to the the XT-IDE boot menu.

I already have a gotak and a floppy disk that can both boot to DOS 6.22.

When I see XT-IDE menu, it shows that the CF card is detected, but then stops. I can press A, C, F6 etc and have that option highlight on screen, but no other key seems to make it proceed with booting the selected option.

Am I missing something obvious, like a key combination or missing menu option? Or is this an actual problem I need to troubleshoot?

https://imgur.com/a/TBJqKoY

 

[Ruud]

I searched on internet for this sIDE3+ card but only found some pictures of cards with out a ROM. If it has, I start to wonder if the ROM is needed because the used interface is not standard. And that could be the reason the XT-IDE software has troubles with it. (but then I wonder why it does find the CF card) Intriguing.
Have you tried another IDE controller?

 

[Chuck(G)]

And this note from Microsoft.

I take it that you're not trying to use the XTIDE and the Acculogic board together...

 

[Scruit]

Ruud: thank you for your response. Your suggestion of "I start to wonder if the ROM is needed because the used interface is not standard" was the answer.

I wound up putting the sIDE3+ rom back in, without the XTIDE bios and it didn't detect the CF card.

Adding the XT-IDE eproms (split on high/low bytes) into the option rom sockets on the motherboard AND having the sIDE3+ rom in place at the same time, and boom... 512Mb CF card shows up, has 488Mb available.

Formatted c: with /s, and now I'm booting off the C: drive. Awesome!

I have a generic NOS 16bit IDE card on the way, and will swap over to that. The sIDE3+ is cool and all, but adds complexity that I don't need while troubleshooting this PC!

 

[Oldcoder]

Scruit,

How did you change the port to 1f0h? The limited documentation that comes with my AAPro XTIDE card only has switch positions for ports 200 -3xx?

I have been trying to get my RM VX/2 (16 MHz 386 PC-AT clone) to work with IDE.

The built in Bios wants the IDE at 1f0H. The card would only appear to be able to use ports 200 - 3xx, the XTIDE Bios that came with it is built for port 300h
As with your photo it detects the SAN DISK 32 Mb CF via a CF-IDE adapter but goes no further in booting.

Thanks

Peter

 

[Scruit]

My IDE card is the Acculogic sIDE3+ and it has jumpers for the address, and 170F is default.

 

[modem7]

How did you change the port to 1f0h? The limited documentation that comes with my AAPro XTIDE card only has switch positions for ports 200 -3xx?

I have been trying to get my RM VX/2 (16 MHz 386 PC-AT clone) to work with IDE.

The built in Bios wants the IDE at 1f0H. The card would only appear to be able to use ports 200 - 3xx, the XTIDE Bios that came with it is built for port 300h
As with your photo it detects the SAN DISK 32 Mb CF via a CF-IDE adapter but goes no further in booting.

You have to think of the XT-IDE card as a 'special' kind of IDE card, not a normal one. The motherboard BIOS knows nothing of it. You don't need to do anything in the motherboard BIOS. The XT-IDE card contains a boot ROM (a.k.a. BIOS ROM, etc), one that contains 'XTIDE Universal BIOS' software, and that handles all communications with the XT-IDE card and whatever IDE device is attached to it.

There are multiple reasons for the symptom you describe. You should open up a new thread about your problem, describing the symptom and what you've done already in attempting to fix it. But quickly, a common cause for a non-booting CF on an XT-IDE card is described in the first issue listed at [here].

 

[Oldcoder]

Thanks, I have now managed to get a Goldstar generic ISA IDE card working with the existing BIOS. I have als. o sort of sorted the XTIDE though there are significant issues particularly in trying to bot from it.

Main aspects seem to be: 1) although it gets enough power from the IDE card to read the identity on the CF in order to work it needs external power applying to the CF-IDE adapter I have. 2) There seems to be a clash with the CMOS settings between the original BIOS and RLL controller and the XTIDE. If I configure CMOS for no hard disks and remove the RLL controller I can access to XTIDE but not boot from it even using the XTIDE universal BIOS hooked at c800:0000. If I return the original RLL controller and restore the CMOS config to 1 drive I can boot off the RLL drive but it is not happy with the XTIDE CF. If I add a 2nd hard disk to the CMOS config then I can both boot of the original RLL drive and see the CF as an XTIDE data only drive (ie can not boot from it).

So sort of running with XTIDE. I'll take a further look when I next get some time.

Thanks for the input

Peter

 

[Krille]

Adding the XT-IDE eproms (split on high/low bytes) into the option rom sockets on the motherboard AND having the sIDE3+ rom in place at the same time, and boom... 512Mb CF card shows up, has 488Mb available.

You might want to try programming a ROM with XUB and insert that in the sIDE3+ controller. I don't think it needs the actual sIDE3+ BIOS, just a ROM in the socket. If you do that and it works then you will save some of that precious space in the UMA.

I have a generic NOS 16bit IDE card on the way, and will swap over to that. The sIDE3+ is cool and all, but adds complexity that I don't need while troubleshooting this PC!

I don't think there's anything special about the sIDE3+ controller. It seems to be a bog standard 16-bit IDE controller to me. You would just replace that with another 16-bit IDE controller.

 

[Scruit]

The answer wound up being that the XTIDE rom did not like playing with the sIDE3+.

- Without the sIDE3+ rom in place it would not see the IDE disk at all.
- WITH the sIDE3+ rom in place it would detect but not boot.

With a generic 16bit IDE card (NOS from ebay, $20) and the XTIDE ROMs in the option rom rockets as pictured above, it booted fine.

I started seeing a weird error running Prince of Persia where the game reported a system error on startup and then crashed the PC when it exited. I swapped in a NOS mechanical hard drive and it did the same thing.

Remembering that POP is written in assembly I wondered if a bad setting would cause it to JMP to a bad address (or some similar silliness) after having the setup program run on a floppy disk, then the copied to a hard disk. I deleted the setup data file and reran setup. Works fine now.

It may work fine on the CF card with the setup program ran again, but the spinning HD is ridiculously faster then the CF was, so I'll stick with it for now. LIkely I'll try to get the ide to sd working but I also worry that performance won't match the HD.