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XT-IDE Lite Rev 2 in Compaq Portable 1

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juanschawrtz

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I purchased an XT-IDE Lite Rev 2 from TexElec.com

I have verified that my BIOS is Revision C (see attached photo)

I have read that the older Motherboards revisions require two ROM chips and that seems to be the case with mine.
This COMPAQ Portable/Plus Maintenance Guide (Excerpt) confirms that an older (000004 REV B) system board did require 2 ROMs, at locations U40 and U47, while later system boards required only 1 (Rev C or later) ROM at location U40, but there is no explanation for the requirement.
Click to expand...
When I boot the machine, the boot sequence proceeds straight to booting from the floppy. the XT-IDE BIOS deal doesn't ever show up. I've tried different ISA ports, but I'm not sure if I need to adjust the jumpers or anything. Was just looking for some advice to get it going.
 

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I’m not really sure about the two rom requirement. Mine is an early system, had 1983 stamps inside, and is a somewhat early board with two sets of dip switches, and it came with the B BIOS, but it only had one rom. I programmed an eeprom with C (later versions weren’t archived at the time) and it only needed one rom.

I guess the next time I have it apart I’ll have to confirm exactly which revision board it has.
 
jafir said:
I’m not really sure about the two rom requirement. Mine is an early system, had 1983 stamps inside, and is a somewhat early board with two sets of dip switches, and it came with the B BIOS, but it only had one rom. I programmed an eeprom with C (later versions weren’t archived at the time) and it only needed one rom.

I guess the next time I have it apart I’ll have to confirm exactly which revision board it has.
Click to expand...
Mine has two sets of dip switches and stamps of July 5, 1983 inside. I'm wondering if the XT-IDE card itself is perhaps not working.
 
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juanschawrtz said:
I purchased an XT-IDE Lite Rev 2 from TexElec.com
Click to expand...

So, the Lo-tech XT-CF-lite rev.2, per [here].
Technical information on the card is at [here].

Photos suggest that the default is that jumper positions 1,2 and 3 have jumpers on them.

1 jumpered = ROM base address of C8000h
2 jumpered = I/O port base address of 300h
3 jumpered = ROM enabled

Because the XTIDE Universal BIOS (a.k.a. XUB)(located in ROM) is not displaying anything at power-up time, a ROM related issue is suggested.

* You have verified that you have revision C of the motherboard BIOS, something required to support BIOS expansion ROM's (such as the XUB).
* Verify that jumper position 3 has a jumper on it.
* There is a possibility that the ROM base address of C8000h is conflicting with something. Try removing the jumper on position 1. That will change the base address of the ROM to D8000h.

If still no change after removing the jumper from position 1, on your Portable, try running the RAYXTIDE tool from [here]. RAYXTIDE should report that it found the XUB, and at the address that you are expecting it to be found at (either C8000 or D8000 per jumper 1 status).
 
modem7 said:
So, the Lo-tech XT-CF-lite rev.2, per [here].
Technical information on the card is at [here].

Photos suggest that the default is that jumper positions 1,2 and 3 have jumpers on them.

1 jumpered = ROM base address of C8000h
2 jumpered = I/O port base address of 300h
3 jumpered = ROM enabled

Because the XTIDE Universal BIOS (a.k.a. XUB)(located in ROM) is not displaying anything at power-up time, a ROM related issue is suggested.

* You have verified that you have revision C of the motherboard BIOS, something required to support BIOS expansion ROM's (such as the XUB).
* Verify that jumper position 3 has a jumper on it.
* There is a possibility that the ROM base address of C8000h is conflicting with something. Try removing the jumper on position 1. That will change the base address of the ROM to D8000h.

If still no change after removing the jumper from position 1, on your Portable, try running the RAYXTIDE tool from [here]. RAYXTIDE should report that it found the XUB, and at the address that you are expecting it to be found at (either C8000 or D8000 per jumper 1 status).
Click to expand...
Thank you so much. I changed the jumper and there was no change. I also placed the card into the 8-bit portion of a 16-bit ISA slot on a "newer" Compaq Pentium 75Mhz machine and it didn't pop up there or in the COMPAQ INSPECT program when checking the ISA slot cards. I'm thinking the card itself may have been DoA.
 
So we replaced the card and I can now see the XTIDE BIOS at POST and it sees the card.

However, when attempting to boot from the CF card, I get "Boot Sector Not Found".

If I take the XTIDE card and CF card out and put them in another system(Compaq Presario CDS774 Pentium 75Mhz era), it boots right into DOS.
 
dhau said:
On your portable, use MS-DOS 5.0+ boot floppy and use fdisk /mbr command
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I have a user near me that may have a disk I can use. If not, I'll order one on ebay. Out of curiosity, why would it be different to run it in the portable under DOS 5/6 versus on a Pentium machine booted into DOS 5/6?
 
Where are you? If you’re in the US I can stick a floppy disk in the mail.
 
Send me a message with your address and I’ll mail you a floppy or two. Do you have a preference for version of DOS?
 
jafir said:
Send me a message with your address and I’ll mail you a floppy or two. Do you have a preference for version of DOS?
Click to expand...
It looks like I can't PM people on here as I just recently joined. As for the version, anything bootable and 5+ so I can get this XTIDE guy working would be awesome. Whatever is easiest.
 
dhau said:
On your portable, use MS-DOS 5.0+ boot floppy and use fdisk /mbr command
Click to expand...
That won't help. The "Boot Sector Not Found" message is emitted by the XUB when it can't find the boot sector signature. In other words, it failed to read the boot sector properly. Since the same setup works in the other computer we can conclude that it's either a hardware problem with the Portable 1 or the CF card (or possibly the XT-CF board) is not compatible with a computer that slow.
 
Krille said:
That won't help. The "Boot Sector Not Found" message is emitted by the XUB when it can't find the boot sector signature. In other words, it failed to read the boot sector properly. Since the same setup works in the other computer we can conclude that it's either a hardware problem with the Portable 1 or the CF card (or possibly the XT-CF board) is not compatible with a computer that slow.
Click to expand...
The seller of the card said that they were used for Compaq Portables previously. What I'm not following is how the XUB would see it on one system and not another. It does see the CF card in the Primary slot and shows its name but simply does not see the boot sector. So weird.
 
Krille said:
That won't help. The "Boot Sector Not Found" message is emitted by the XUB when it can't find the boot sector signature. In other words, it failed to read the boot sector properly. Since the same setup works in the other computer we can conclude that it's either a hardware problem with the Portable 1 or the CF card (or possibly the XT-CF board) is not compatible with a computer that slow.
Click to expand...
Not quite, I had CF cards that worked fine on 286 plus, but not on XT-CF. After I did the mbr rewrite, it worked fine. The boot sector is not missing, it has some bytes, but it doesn't work in XT.

In any case, having a boot disk never hurts. It can be used to recover from bad flashing of XT-CF, or to upgrade and/or reconfigure XUB to latest level: https://www.xtideuniversalbios.org/binaries/

Usually sellers sell it in compatibility mode, and with 8086/8088 bios. If you have V20, you can use that to speed up disk operations by ~30%, and if you enable "XT-CF PIO8 (BIU offload)", it gets even faster. But this probably won't work on Olivetti M24/AT&T 6300.
 
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dhau said:
Not quite, I had CF cards that worked fine on 286 plus, but not on XT-CF. After I did the mbr rewrite, it worked fine. The boot sector is not missing, it has some bytes, but it doesn't work in XT.

In any case, having a boot disk never hurts. It can be used to recover from bad flashing of XT-CF, or to upgrade and/or reconfigure XUB to latest level: https://www.xtideuniversalbios.org/binaries/

Usually sellers sell it in compatibility mode, and with 8086/8088 bios. If you have V20, you can use that to speed up disk operations by ~30%, and if you enable "XT-CF PIO8 (BIU offload)", it gets even faster. But this probably won't work on Olivetti M24/AT&T 6300.
Click to expand...
Yeah, removing the XTIDE card and CF completely and putting it into a newer machine works. In fact, it works in the Portable 1 as far as recognizing the XTIDE BIOS and the CF manufacturer.

It came with the 2 disks containing Compaq Setup/Diagnostics and a DOS 3.10 Boot and additional disk. However, the DOS 3.10 just sits indefinitely without the XTIDE card in. If the XTIDE card is in, it scans the disk for a moment and then reboots.
 
juanschawrtz said:
The seller of the card said that they were used for Compaq Portables previously. What I'm not following is how the XUB would see it on one system and not another. It does see the CF card in the Primary slot and shows its name but simply does not see the boot sector. So weird.
Click to expand...
Looking at some XUB source code that I found, if the XUB is unable to read the boot sector (the very first sector), displayed is "Error" then a space, then the error code that INT13 returned.
If instead, the boot sector is read, the XUB looks for the 55AA signature in the data read from the sector (55AA signature is located at the very end of the data).
If the 55AA signature is not found, the XUB displays "Boot sector not found".
Per what Krille wrote.

The {XT-IDE Lite + CF combination} boots successfully in a different computer, and so we know that the CF has a boot sector that contains the 55AA signature.

So with the {XT-IDE Lite + CF combination} in the Compaq Portable 1, the XUB is successfully getting the model information from the CF, then reading the boot sector from the CF, but the known-good 55AA signature in the boot sector is not appearing in the data read !!!!

I think, out of curiosity, on the Compaq Portable 1, I would use something like Disk Editor (used in physical drive mode) from Norton's Utilities to view the data read from the CF's first sector.
 
modem7 said:
Looking at some XUB source code that I found, if the XUB is unable to read the boot sector (the very first sector), displayed is "Error" then a space, then the error code that INT13 returned.
If instead, the boot sector is read, the XUB looks for the 55AA signature in the data read from the sector (55AA signature is located at the very end of the data).
If the 55AA signature is not found, the XUB displays "Boot sector not found".
Per what Krille wrote.

The {XT-IDE Lite + CF combination} boots successfully in a different computer, and so we know that the CF has a boot sector that contains the 55AA signature.

So with the {XT-IDE Lite + CF combination} in the Compaq Portable 1, the XUB is successfully getting the model information from the CF, then reading the boot sector from the CF, but the known-good 55AA signature in the boot sector is not appearing in the data read !!!!

I think, out of curiosity, on the Compaq Portable 1, I would use something like Disk Editor (used in physical drive mode) from Norton's Utilities to view the data read from the CF's first sector.
Click to expand...
As soon as I get a proper boot disk, I will attempt to do that as the CF card "drive" should then be accessible via DOS and I can copy any programs to it.

Another thing to that might be of note is that I went with revision 2 of the Lo-tech XT-IDE Lite since it only took up one ISA slot and I have a two other expansion cards(memory and network). Revision 3 looked like it wanted two of my available 3 ISA slots.
 
I obtained a boot disk and I think I'm seeing a different issue now that may or may not be related.

1. I have put both 5.25" disk drives on another machine and read disks on them.
2. I have booted from the Compaq Diagnostics disks(both Setup and Inspect) and the machine the tests.

I thought my DOS 3.10 floppy disk was bad as the machine will boot to the XTIDE(and straight to floppy disk before I had it the XTIDE card). Once it tries to boot from the floppy disk, it will read the disk for a few moments and then the drive light will turn off and the computer will be completely hung... it will not respond to Ctrl-alt-del.

Is it possible that some RAM on the motherboard is bad and that is causing the hang when the disk attempts to load what's needed into it?
 
juanschawrtz said:
I obtained a boot disk and I think I'm seeing a different issue now that may or may not be related.

1. I have put both 5.25" disk drives on another machine and read disks on them.
2. I have booted from the Compaq Diagnostics disks(both Setup and Inspect) and the machine the tests.

I thought my DOS 3.10 floppy disk was bad as the machine will boot to the XTIDE(and straight to floppy disk before I had it the XTIDE card). Once it tries to boot from the floppy disk, it will read the disk for a few moments and then the drive light will turn off and the computer will be completely hung... it will not respond to Ctrl-alt-del.

Is it possible that some RAM on the motherboard is bad and that is causing the hang when the disk attempts to load what's needed into it?
Click to expand...
Sorry, that should've said passes all of the tests on the long tests on the COMPAQ diagnostic disk after it boots off of it. So, I know the drive is good. It consistently boots off that COMPAQ disk, but both the DOS 3.10 and DOS 5.0 disks I've tried spin for 20-40 seconds and then stop. Bizarre.
 
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