• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

XTIDE tech support thread

Success !!!!

Success !!!!

I've been following this thread hoping to get my board to worked. Well it finally worked and I was able to recover both drives that had gone bad.

I purchased a small solder station in place of my old low power weller pen type. I resoldered every joint. The station really got me a better flow. I put the chips back in and re-installed the card.

When I fired up the computer the HD was back listed on the menu:smile:. I then issued a fdisk /mbr and then fdisk. It was spooky. I then added 4.5M of dos files to a dir and then copied them to another dir. Spooky it worked. I then tried a dos file manager program and it worked. Installed old PCTOOLS 7 and it worked.

Many thanks to all that put their hard effort into this project. Sorry If I caused extra work for anyone I knew in the end it would be my crappy soldering that caused it to fail.

framer
 
framer said:
I knew in the end it would be my crappy soldering that caused it to fail.
Click to expand...
That's been my story more than once too.
Yes, there are a couple oddball drives out there that just don't work, but for the vast majority of 'em out there, if the card isn't working right, unless an IC itself is fried, the most likely culprit is soldering. I don't have 1 card that doesn't work. Some of them not immediately and required a touchup here and there, but even my 1st prototype cards are still humming.
Glad you got everything right!
 
Now I need to go back and fix the 1st card. I may have killed the board getting that resistor pack off. I still got three holes not cleared. I need to order another resistor pack also as the old one is now in a better place.....


framer
 
If one gets the boot menu, but no hard drives are detected (I tried 2-3 different ones + various cables), could it still be a soldering problem? I have assembled both my cards, and neither works. :-( One gets to the menu, one is not even detected. I even made sure to not have any I/O conflicts in my PC.

Apart from visual inspection and carefully resolder what looks bad, is there any meaningful ways to measure connectivity across spots? I saw there exists some diagnostic tools requiring Hargle's BIOS but I'm not sure if they will help me at the moment.
 
I took lynchaj's advice and pulled all the IC's from my 2nd board and reflowed all the soldered connections, even though they all visually looked OK. When I reinserted the ICs and installed the card in my machine my data corruption issues were gone! Both of my boards are working 100% now as far as I can tell.

I have tried 4 different IDE drives and a CF adapter. 2 of my IDE drives (both identical 20G WD drives) that were working fine previously are now dead, 2 other IDE drives work fine. I can't boot from the CF adapter but if I boot DOS from a floppy I can change to the C: drive and go from there.
 
strollin, Have you tried a fdisk /mbr on the dead drives? I had 2 dead ones and this fix it. Good luck.


Anders, Yes, the soldering could still be uour problem. I'd re-soildered three times and it looked good to me but still didn't work, I was using a small pen type weller soldering iron of low wattage. It wasn't giving me a good flow because when I got my hand on a real solder station flowed through much better and presto the board works perfect.

framer
 
framer said:
strollin, Have you tried a fdisk /mbr on the dead drives? I had 2 dead ones and this fix it. Good luck.


Anders, Yes, the soldering could still be uour problem. I'd re-soildered three times and it looked good to me but still didn't work, I was using a small pen type weller soldering iron of low wattage. It wasn't giving me a good flow because when I got my hand on a real solder station flowed through much better and presto the board works perfect.

framer
Click to expand...
When I connect the WD drives to a "modern" computer they cause the computer to hang while attempting to id the drives so no chance to invoke fdisk. I've had these drives for years, installed them in multiple machines with multiple OSs such as Win 2000, Win XP, DOS and various flavors of Linux. (Turned out to be a jumpering issue)

I just did more testing on my WD drives. When they are installed as the master, the machine hangs before the drive can be id'd. If I install them as a slave, the machine hangs as soon as the drives are id'd.
 
Last edited:
strollin said:
When I connect the dead drives to a "modern" computer they cause the computer to hang while attempting to id the drives so no chance to invoke fdisk. I've had these drives for years, installed them in multiple machines with multiple OSs such as Win 2000, Win XP, DOS and various flavors of Linux. I find it very scary that they both failed immediately after being attached to the XTIDE. I am convinced that the XTIDE killed these 2 drives, perhaps there is some sort of incompatibility regarding this particular model of WD drive that doesn't effect other brands/models of drives.

I just did more testing on my dead drives. When they are installed as the master, the machine hangs before the drive can be id'd. If I install them as a slave, the machine hangs as soon as the drives are id'd.
Click to expand...

If you can get the machine to boot off another harddrive, try going into the bios and dissableing the auto feature (IE, tell the bios there is no drive there)

Depending on the MFG of your drives, there are diagnostics (Most boot right off of the floppy or CD)
Maxtor has MAXblast, Westerndigital has their version,etc

just so long as you can get the machine booted, it dosent matter whats entered into the CMOS setup, the diagnostic programs
WILL find the drive if its not totally fried.

While ive never heard of something like this happening, perhaps its possible you accidently flashed the firmware of the drives themselves while flashing the XT-IDE controller

Hope it all works out!
 
strollin said:
I am convinced that the XTIDE killed these 2 drives, perhaps there is some sort of incompatibility regarding this particular model of WD drive that doesn't effect other brands/models of drives.
Click to expand...
What are the model number of these drives, so others might be able to try or avoid using the same ones.
Perhaps edit this wiki with your results:
http://wiki.vintage-computer.com/index.php/XTIDE_TestResults
You admitted that you had soldering issues which caused data corruption, so blaming XTIDE itself toward killing your drives is a little harsh I think. Not trying to be a dick, just fair.
 
I've got egg on my face! My 2 WD drives are working again! These drives don't have a table written on them to show the jumper settings like most IDE drives. On the circuit board itself it ids the jumpers as Master, Slave, CS. I have always put the jumper on the jumper labeled Master and they worked in the past. Last night I went to the WD website to see if there was any helpful software as salamontagne suggested. While there, I saw a table showing the jumper settings that showed that when the drive was used by itself that NO jumper should be installed, Master should be jumpered if it was a master with a slave and slave should be used when installed as a slave. When I removed the jumper I was able to boot the machine, fdisk, format, etc...

Anyway, I retract my statement that the XTIDE killed my drives. I still have questions about what happened but they aren't as important now that the drives are working again. My first question would be: Why were the drives first recognized by the XTIDE BIOS then later not recognized? Another question: When the drives were jumpered as slaves and installed with a master drive, why did the machine hang as that was a correct jumper configuration?
 
hargle said:
... You admitted that you had soldering issues which caused data corruption, so blaming XTIDE itself toward killing your drives is a little harsh I think. Not trying to be a dick, just fair.
Click to expand...
I posted that the problem turned out to be a jumpering issue on my part so I do retract the statement. However, the soldering issue I had was only on card #2, card #1 is where the drives were first id'd by the XTIDE BIOS then it stopped iding them which you have to admit points at the XTIDE.
 
Hi Hargle,

Yes, I saw the posting about "killing drives" and it concerns me. Not that it is impossible but extremely unlikely and I think something of that nature would have surfaced during the testing done already. The XT-IDE project has been tested quite a bit so something that significant would have showed up before now. There is nothing inherently different about the XT-IDE interface than any other IDE interface. It is just a bunch of TTL signals and grounds and that's it.

As I see it, IDE drives are intended to be installed by consumers and as a result their electrical interfaces are fairly robust. It would take some very extreme measures to kill a drive and next to impossible using only the TTL voltage levels on the interface. I have and I am sure others have too installed IDE cables reversed, off by one, off a row, etc and have never killed a drive by misinstalling it. I've had drives die of equipment failures and being dropped but actually damaging the drive through the IDE interface is highly unlikely if it is even possible. IMO, killing a drive would require reversing biasing the power inputs or introducing non-TTL voltage levels and XT-IDE doesn't even come close.

The real danger is "perception". The comment has been made and can't easily be recalled. Hopefully future builders will read the comments in context and view the whole situation. I fear this issue resurfacing on occasion akin to "urban legends" and the like. However, this is normal stuff for amateur and hobbyist projects and I have seen similar issues on the N8VEM home brew computer project. As soon as the hobbyist picks up a soldering iron and touches the PCB you essentially lose any control on the outcome. It usually works but some times it doesn't but in either case there are no guarrantees. It is "Caveat Emptor" all the way as I see it.

You are doing a great job and have the patience of a saint. Its an admirable thing to give back to the community but no one said it would be easy or painless. Good luck!

Thanks and have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch
 
Glad to see you made some progress!

In the past, with 80-pin cables, I've had some issues 'Forceing' a harddrive to work as Master or Slave - The 80 pin cable standard has the connections for "Cable select" or CS. With some boards, they refuse to recognise what the jumpers are set for and try to set the drives themselves....and then the harddrives themselves try to work what they are jumpered for.

Did you get the WD diagnostic software? Its VERY helpfull in troubleshooting drive issues. Another thing that you might try is useing 40-pin-only cables. Its possible the drive is attempting to work in UDMA (Ultra-DMA) mode, which the XT-IDE controller might have some issues with. Unfortunetly, aside from booting into the WD package and disableing UDMA mode, Its a default. I'm not even sure its possible to disable it on the drive. Ive seen it as an option on a hard disc diagnostic, but i forget now which one it is.
What was the model of the drives? I have about a dozen spare drives, maybe when my friend gets his card in, I'll verify your experiances.
There may be a way to work around it.

strollin said:
I've got egg on my face! My 2 WD drives are working again! These drives don't have a table written on them to show the jumper settings like most IDE drives. On the circuit board itself it ids the jumpers as Master, Slave, CS. I have always put the jumper on the jumper labeled Master and they worked in the past. Last night I went to the WD website to see if there was any helpful software as salamontagne suggested. While there, I saw a table showing the jumper settings that showed that when the drive was used by itself that NO jumper should be installed, Master should be jumpered if it was a master with a slave and slave should be used when installed as a slave. When I removed the jumper I was able to boot the machine, fdisk, format, etc...

Anyway, I retract my statement that the XTIDE killed my drives. I still have questions about what happened but they aren't as important now that the drives are working again. My first question would be: Why were the drives first recognized by the XTIDE BIOS then later not recognized? Another question: When the drives were jumpered as slaves and installed with a master drive, why did the machine hang as that was a correct jumper configuration?
Click to expand...
 
strollin said:
I posted that the problem turned out to be a jumpering issue on my part so I do retract the statement.
Click to expand...

That was a right thing to do, but some readers may not get past your earlier posts. You should consider editing posts #20 and #23 to indicate that the problems turned out to be soldering issues and a cockpit error.
-Dave
 
strollin said:
I've got egg on my face! My 2 WD drives are working again! These drives don't have a table written on them to show the jumper settings like most IDE drives. On the circuit board itself it ids the jumpers as Master, Slave, CS. I have always put the jumper on the jumper labeled Master and they worked in the past. Last night I went to the WD website to see if there was any helpful software as salamontagne suggested. While there, I saw a table showing the jumper settings that showed that when the drive was used by itself that NO jumper should be installed, Master should be jumpered if it was a master with a slave and slave should be used when installed as a slave. When I removed the jumper I was able to boot the machine, fdisk, format, etc...
Click to expand...

WD has been doing that for a very long time, and I think they are the only ones to do it. Most other manufacturers don't distinguish between Master in dual drive config, or Master in a single drive config.

I'm not sure why WD does that. Anyone ever heard any reasoning?
__
Trevor
 
strollin said:
I've got egg on my face! My 2 WD drives are working again! These drives don't have a table written on them to show the jumper settings like most IDE drives. On the circuit board itself it ids the jumpers as Master, Slave, CS. I have always put the jumper on the jumper labeled Master and they worked in the past. Last night I went to the WD website to see if there was any helpful software as salamontagne suggested. While there, I saw a table showing the jumper settings that showed that when the drive was used by itself that NO jumper should be installed, Master should be jumpered if it was a master with a slave and slave should be used when installed as a slave. When I removed the jumper I was able to boot the machine, fdisk, format, etc...

Anyway, I retract my statement that the XTIDE killed my drives. I still have questions about what happened but they aren't as important now that the drives are working again. My first question would be: Why were the drives first recognized by the XTIDE BIOS then later not recognized? Another question: When the drives were jumpered as slaves and installed with a master drive, why did the machine hang as that was a correct jumper configuration?
Click to expand...

One thing I do know is that WD has always been notorious for being the only one of the major brands that is pedantic about the distinction between "master" and "single". With most other manufacturers, there is a single setting for master/single, and a separate setting for slave, that's all. With WD drives, those are actually three different settings. As a consequence, WD drives often cause problems when set to "master" without a slave drive, or "single" with a slave drive.
 
Hi! At least with the N8VEM DiskIO board I have found the WD drives to be quite sensitive to configuration. Those drives are the least likely to work on the DiskIO IDE although they seem to work fine on the XT-IDE board. With N8VEM DiskIO board the WD drives will work but need additional qualification on the two "chip select" signals and /RD and /WR to work properly.

Some kinds of IDE drives are less sensitive and accept a broader range of signals like Seagate and Maxtor. They have their issues too but at least they work reliably on the N8VEM DiskIO. Again, XT-IDE works with those drives with no problem. Certain kinds of CF adapters are sensitive although those $8 IDE to CF adapters on eBay seem to work just fine.

It just depends on a lot of factors and the only solution I've found is to keep a wiki page with a record of what works and what doesn't. I am confident that for any given IDE device you could find at least one IDE part that won't work with it since the variation between IDE implementations and IDE devices is so wide it is impractical if not impossible for an IDE interface to support every conceivable IDE device.

Thanks and have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch
 
Thats kinda where i was going....WD drives have been notorius for spec issues. I wasnt trying to "point" the finger in regards to the XT-ide controller. Usually, i try the cable select option first, then try jumpering the drive if that dosent work.

Hopefully, My friend Chris will get his assembled controller soon, as i have a couple of WD drives I'll try out and post the results.

Sorry about the babble, i posted and then realized that it might seem i was pointing the finger and i thought it best to correct that


digger said:
One thing I do know is that WD has always been notorious for being the only one of the major brands that is pedantic about the distinction between "master" and "single". With most other manufacturers, there is a single setting for master/single, and a separate setting for slave, that's all. With WD drives, those are actually three different settings. As a consequence, WD drives often cause problems when set to "master" without a slave drive, or "single" with a slave drive.
Click to expand...
 
I finally got around to soldering the sockets on last night. The printing on the card showing
the address ranges seems to make the soldering job more difficult than it should be. I think
there is just poor contrast of the solder pads on the white letters making them more difficult to see.
I find it best to have a strong light shining from behind me onto the board at an angle to make
the pins showup better.

My declining vision probably isn't helping matters any ! I'm sure one day I'll appreciate having
those addresses so handy....

Thanks again for a great job on this project.
 
Hey guys,

I got my XT-IDE cards yesterday in the mail, and decided to try it out today. I pulled out an older Western Digital WD1200 120gb IDE hard drive out of storage, plugged it in, and after some fussing with my 1.44mb floppy controller (I had to tell it that 'no hard drive is present'), the XT-IDE card worked like a champ! It recognized my WD, and I was able to FDISK, format C-F drives, and badda bing badda boom, instant limitless storage for an XT!

I want to say that I was absolutely impressed with the quality of the cards I received -- they didn't look home-made at all to me. Very professional and well done! I really appreciate all the effort that was put into these.

Now, it's got me kind interested in building one of my own. It's not something I've done before, as I'm a software programmer and not a hardware guy, but it makes me wonder if this would be something good to learn from? The one time I tried to do some some soldering, I got solder all over the place, and it never worked. :-) Can I still get one of those kits anyway??

Anyway, thanks again, and great job!!

Mike
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top