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XT-IDE in an Amstrad 1640?

Andrew Baker

Andrew Baker

Experienced Member
Joined
Mar 6, 2022
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73
XT newbie here, I have recently aquired a complete amstrad 1640DD system that had a dead miniscribe hardcard. I would really like to set it up to boot straight off the internal storage without having to use the floppy disks, the computer came with all the disks including one that has utilities to do just that.
What I want to know is if this is possible with XT-IDE and how to do it. the manual does not offer up much about the HDD setup.

Thanks!
 
Andrew Baker said:
What I want to know is if this is possible with XT-IDE ...
Click to expand...
If I type the following text into a search engine, I get lots of information indicating people with XT-IDE's in their PC1640:
amstrad pc1640 xt-ide

Andrew Baker said:
XT newbie here, ...
Click to expand...
Andrew Baker said:
... the manual does not offer up much about the HDD setup.
Click to expand...
The PC1640 is an XT-class machine, and so there is no CMOS SETUP. Hard disk drive controllers for XT-class machines have a BIOS expansion ROM, and that fully controls the drive attached to the controller. In the case of an XT-IDE/XT-CF card, the BIOS expansion ROM on the card contains the software of: XTIDE Universal BIOS (a.k.a. XUB).

It should be a matter of plugging in a fully functional XT-IDE/XT-CF card, and watching the PC1640 boot from it. You should be able to see that in some of the videos brought up in the aforementioned search.

If you can, acquire a complete working solution, that is, XT-IDE/XT-CF card and CF and if required, CF-to-IDE adapter. And, booting to DOS. In that way, you will avoid some problems, one example of many being, 'The particular make-model of CF is incompatible with the particular make-model of XT-IDE/XT-CF card'.
 
got it, one thing I will need to sort out is formatting the CF card, I have one in my other XT a kaypro that it's booting off of that has a custom label on it of 64 megabytes reported as FAT format. I don't know if that's the original size or not.
The other card i have is a 2 gb card and I assume the max partition size for dos is less than that? can I just make a 60-ish megabyte FAT partition on it using a modern computer? though i'm guessing it's not that simple.
 
when the xtide is installed the computer tries to boot it and just hangs there, it doesn't give up and move on the the floppy, allowing me to format in the system in DOS.
 
Hi Andrew!

It helps to know which XT-IDE/XT-CF card you have and which version of XTIDE Universal BIOS it has installed. Also which version of DOS you're using.

You should be able to boot from floppy by pressing A when you see the XUB initialize and it starts to detect drives. Once DOS has booted you might need to run "FDISK /MBR" to fix the hanging when booting from CF card. Note that this requires FDISK from MS-DOS version 5 or higher to work. Another way to fix this problem is to wipe the CF card with a utility called WIPEDISK but if you do that you will need to repartition and format the CF card as well.

Before installing DOS to the CF card I recommend making sure that the latest version of XUB has been installed on the XT-IDE/XT-CF card.

A 2 GB CF card should work just fine but the max partition size depends on the DOS version. You should definitely NOT partition the CF card on your modern computer.
 
Andrew Baker said:
The other card i have is a 2 gb card and I assume the max partition size for dos is less than that? can I just make a 60-ish megabyte FAT partition on it using a modern computer? though i'm guessing it's not that simple.
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You can do that directly on the Amstrad by using the well known MS DOS tools "fdisk", "sys", "format", "copy" and(or) "xcopy" and then it fits automatically to your machine and MS-DOS version.
 
Andrew Baker said:
got it, one thing I will need to sort out is formatting the CF card, I have one in my other XT a kaypro that it's booting off of that has a custom label on it of 64 megabytes reported as FAT format. I don't know if that's the original size or not.
The other card i have is a 2 gb card and I assume the max partition size for dos is less than that? can I just make a 60-ish megabyte FAT partition on it using a modern computer? though i'm guessing it's not that simple.
Click to expand...
It depends on the DOS version. Don't forget MS-DOS 3.2 or 3.3 only admits up to 32 Mb partitions. DOS 4.0 and higher admits up to 2 Gb partitions; in such case I would recommend 5.0 as it has bugs fixed and it looks to let more RAM free for programs than 4.x.
 
could i make a dos 6.22 boot disk using my other XT and use that to format the CF card? also I don't know what XUB is.
 
you can use any dos version you want (which supports the disk / partition size you want to have). And xt-ide bios makes the booting totally independent from the choosen PC (of the DOS era).
 
I'm getting somewhere, Fdisk and the amstrad supplied format utility seem to work fine, however when it has me do FORMAT C: /S , it just says format failure. screwy CF card maybe?
 
Andrew Baker said:
I'm getting somewhere, Fdisk and the amstrad supplied format utility seem to work fine, however when it has me do FORMAT C: /S , it just says format failure. screwy CF card maybe?
Click to expand...
Are Fdisk and Format from the same DOS version? If you used Fdisk from 6.22, specified a larger than 32 Mb partition, and Format from DOS 3.2, it should fail.

If don't, as 1ST said, unfortunately not all CF cards are compatible with XT-IDE. I use AGFAPHOTO and they work great.
 
Hi,

i can't beleive nobody proposed the picoMEM
I designed it FOR the Amstrad PC at the origin....
 
I got a 256mb sandisk and it is worse somehow? it won't get past the amstrad format utility now, before it would.
I am using fdisk and format on the same dos version.
 
Andrew Baker said:
I got a 256mb sandisk and it is worse somehow? it won't get past the amstrad format utility now, before it would.
I am using fdisk and format on the same dos version.
Click to expand...

CompactFlash (CF) cards are not exactly the same as a hard drive, despite generally supporting an ATA/IDE compatible interface mode.

The most likely issue, though, is that some versions of MS-DOS (especially older ones) limit partition/drive sizes to a maximum of 32 MB.
 
Fdisk seems to be working fine and the 2gb card worked with the format utility. maybe i'll try specifying a smaller size instead of using the default one in fdisk.
 
the computer had a miniscribe 8245 in it which i think is around 20 MB? I'll try something closer to that.
FreddyV said:
Hi,

i can't beleive nobody proposed the picoMEM
I designed it FOR the Amstrad PC at the origin....
Click to expand...

MicroCoreLabs said:
Hi,

i can't beleive nobody proposed the XTMax…
Click to expand...
I am well aware that there are options, I am trying to get what I already have working, if this fails I will likely fall back on one of these.
 
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