• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

XTIDE tech support thread

Hi. Just built two XT-IDEv2 cards. One of them works fine. The other one is making me pulling hair. The BIOS is found at D000, the LED flashes as BIOS tries to detect HDD but writes out "Master at 300H: not found". I beep-checked maybe half of the traces. From the symptoms (BIOS works, LED flashes) it seems to me, that the error must be somewhere between IDE, 74LS245 and ISA slot. Am I right ?
 
are you using the same BIOS on both, and both are configured for chuck-mod operation?
I've gotten boned by that a couple times where I forgot to set the operational mode in the BIOS configuration and it appears as if the card is then broken.
To complicate the problem, if you just re-flash the BIOS with the new setting and reboot, it still won't work. Once you've "talked" to the drive in a mode the card is not configured for, you have to power cycle to get the drive out of that state.
Anyway, it would be an easy test to move both the BIOS chip and the '245 out of the working card and into the broken card (maybe one at a time) to see if that fixes it. then you'd at least know it's not a solder problem.
 
;) yes I am using official release 2.0.0b2. I tried to build it myself too at an early stage, but at that time neither of the cards worked so I played safe and resorted to official. I will have to examine more traces. I will post again when I find the issue. Now I know where to look. Thank you.
 
hargle has helped me some with teach support for version 1.0 original xt-ide card, and here is where i am, can anyone help?

COMPUTER: tandy 1000 tl/2, 80286 intel 8mhz processor, no math co-processor, 640 kb ram, ROM chip, MS-DOS 3.3 on ROM chip and i have MS-DOS 6.22 that i can boot up with on floppy. The only card installed in the computer is the XT-IDE controller card. I have the card installed, and a Quantum Maverick 270 MB (megabyte) IDE hard disk drive (HDD) connected to the card [also have a 540 MB WD or Maxtor that i can use if necessary]. When i boot up, this is what happens:

the banner displays and reads out the following:

-=XTIDE Universal BIOS (XT)=-
V1.0.0_RC1 (01/17/10)
Copyright 2009-2010 by Tomi Tilli
---> 00h Floppy Drive A
Floppy Drive: 3.5" DD
selection timeout 8s [will county down to 0seconds, then boot from floppy drive]

in the background the computer display reads out:

BIOS ROM version 02.00.00
Compatibility Software
copyright (C) 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988
Phoenix Software Associates Ltd.
All Rights reserved
IDE Master at 0300h: not found
IDE Slave at 0300h: not found


anyone got some suggestions to get the computer to read a IDE Hard Disk Drive?

is the Floppy Disk Drive [here on out called FDD abbreviated for (F)loppy (D)isk (D)rive which is a 720 kb drive ] using the i/o address 300h? please help if anyone has a TL/2 and got their XT-IDE card to work on it sucessfully or anyone else with some ideas. thanks in advance!
 
I don't own a Tandy but what have you tried before ?, My first thought would be to upgrade to a newer version of the xtide bios as you seem to be using a very old RC version 1.0.0, Have you tried v1.1.5 or any newer versions of the bios.


alexandere said:
hargle has helped me some with teach support for version 1.0 original xt-ide card, and here is where i am, can anyone help?
Click to expand...
 
yes, get the latest BIOS first:
http://code.google.com/p/xtideuniversalbios/

Your card should be capable of upgrading the BIOS chip onboard. It may require the moving of a jumper to allow writes to go to the flash part.
Make sure your card is configured for IO space 300h. Don't touch the settings for the BIOS memory address- we can already see that it is working fine on your machine.

Your floppy drive is not conflicting at that address. Since it is booting to floppy, that pretty much means there is no conflict.

Next up, make sure your HDD is configured as MASTER or SINGLE DRIVE by changing jumpers on the drive itself.
Use an 80 pin cable.
Try all your drives too.
Just because you are putting a hard drive into an old computer, does not mean you have to use an old hard drive too. I use 8-10Gig drives from the early 2000's- they are quieter, use less energy and are more compatible.
 
Upgrade it to 768k and see if that makes a difference. It did for me. You will need 4 64k x 4 DRAMS.
Tandy does some funny stuff with video and top of memory on some of the 1000 models.
 
I just wasted a hour and a half on a v2 card because of the frigging chuckmod jumpers.
Could someone PLEASE, Please, please, update the jumper config on the wiki page to say Highspeed for V2 operation, or compatibility mode for v1 support.
I assembled my unit, looked at the jumper page for the config, and was going nuts not being able to see the card.
(My v1 with the hargle mod saw it just fine, go figure.)

So today I built a XT-CF-Lite and a XTide v2, and both work great, the speed of the v2 is better, (296 vs 228 on coretest on a Tandy 1000sx.)
Fun day of building kits.

Later,
dabone
 
The Lite will equal V2 read speed and offer faster writes, but needs BIU mode enabled - I'll be posting a utility to enable the same soon, or you can selected BIU offload mode in the xtidecfg.com utility before flashing. To achieve the highest speeds though you need a CompactFlash card supporting multi-sector transfers - I believe all microdrives have this support, and certain SanDisk Ultra ("30MB/s") cards (and no doubt many others).
 
Al Hartman said:
One thing I noticed that was missing from the blog was detail about the serial cable needed to do a commport boot. You say to hook up a cable, but give no pinout of the cable needed.
Click to expand...
I modified the UART section in the Wiki to point to the Serial Drives procedure found elewhere.
No point in duplication.
That procedure specifies the serial cable type.
 
Can you use the serial port as a standard COM port? I had assumed it was only for use with the card...but I see from the jumper tables that you can assign it standard COM port addresses and IRQ's...

Now I just need to get mine built! If anyone has any thoughts on my component shopping list I posted in another thread, I would appreciate hearing them...hopefully I'm on the right track...

Thanks,

Wesley
 
wesleyfurr said:
Can you use the serial port as a standard COM port? I had assumed it was only for use with the card...but I see from the jumper tables that you can assign it standard COM port addresses and IRQ's...
Click to expand...
In my recent conversations with member lynchaj, he wrote, "It can act as a regular serial port if you want."
 
modem7 said:
In my recent conversations with member lynchaj, he wrote, "It can act as a regular serial port if you want."
Click to expand...

Hi

Sorry, what I said earlier that needs to be qualified a just bit. The XT-IDE V2 *can* act as a regular serial port but in the default configuration it uses a 4x clock. As a result the serial port goes four times faster than a regular serial port for comparable settings.

To use the XT-IDE V2 UART as a regular serial port with regular settings you would either need to change the UART clock back to the normal (1.8432 MHz) or make adjustments in software or settings to accommodate the higher speeds.

Apparently the extra speed serial port is necessary to make the remote boot feature palatable. Personally I've not used it before so maybe Hargle or the others can chime in on it.

The serial drives are linked on the wiki and explained here

http://code.google.com/p/xtideuniversalbios/wiki/SerialDrives

Thanks and have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch
 
Correct me if I'm wrong Andrew but a 14.7456 MHz crystal such as this should work and allow speeds up to 921.6 kbps (8x multiplier), right?

If so, people with a 10 MHz (or faster) CPU might benefit from using this crystal (an 8088 at 4.77 MHz can handle at most 460.8 kbps so I presume a 10 MHz CPU would be required for 921.6 kbps).

Has anyone tried this?
 
Krille said:
Correct me if I'm wrong Andrew but a 14.7456 MHz crystal such as this should work and allow speeds up to 921.6 kbps (8x multiplier), right?

If so, people with a 10 MHz (or faster) CPU might benefit from using this crystal (an 8088 at 4.77 MHz can handle at most 460.8 kbps so I presume a 10 MHz CPU would be required for 921.6 kbps).

Has anyone tried this?
Click to expand...

Hi! Yes, that's the theory anyway. The default XT-IDE V2 comes with a 7.3... MHz oscillator installed. Its easy enough to swap out if someone feels so inclined. I am only aware of a couple of people actually using the serial port remote boot capability at all. It doesn't seem real popular although I could be wrong. Maybe it just needs more exposure?

Thanks and have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch
 
lynchaj said:
Maybe it just needs more exposure?
Click to expand...

Maybe. Or maybe it's just too damn slow. :D

[PIPEDREAM]
Imagine this card with the aforementioned crystal and some kind of Bluetooth dongle to make the serial communication wireless. No cables, decent speeds(?) and absolutely silent floppy- and harddisk drives (since they don't actually exist).

Would be awesome I think (assuming it all works of course).

Oh well...
[/PIPEDREAM]
 
I was lucky enough to pick up an XT-IDEv2 card from Andrew Lynch. (Thanks, Andrew!)

I have it plugged into a Tandy 1000 TL, but the card is not recognized at boot-up. I did run the 'setuptl.com' Tandy 1000 TL setup program to set the BIOS to load from disk first. I also verified that the system was able to boot from floppy by running PC-DOS 7.0. I'm assuming that the card is not working because of the need to change IO Port, etc. I've changed the jumpers to:

K4 / K5: compatibility mode
P10: 0320h
JP1: enable ROM
JP2: enable writing to ROM
and the ROM jumpers were set by Andrew for a 28C64 EPROM

I set the IO base address to 0320h because, according to this:
ftp://ftp.oldskool.org/pub/tvdog/tandy1000/documents/tandymap.txt
The Tandy 1000 TL should have the hard drive assigned to 0320h - 032Fh. (Hopefully I'm reading the document correctly.)

Unfortunately, I'm unable to get the xtidecfg.com utility to run. When I run it on the TL the screen fills with a pixelated background the cursor goes to the bottom & the system hangs. This happens under DOS 3.3 (in ROM) and under PC-DOS 7.0 (booted from floppy). I tried plugging the card into a Pentium-III system with an ISA slot (Asus P3V4X motherboard) but the system wouldn't post. I can run the utility on the P-III system when the XT-IDEv2 card is not plugged in.

2 questions:
1. Does the above configuration for a Tandy 1000 TL seem reasonable?
2. What is the best way to get the ROM configured & onto the EPROM?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top