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XTIDE tech support thread

I'm not sure if this thread is the right place to report on device compatibility, but I just wanted to put it out there that I recently tested a 44-pin laptop IDE to SD converter equipped with an "FC1307A" bridge chip against my homebrew 8-bit XTIDE card and it seems to work fine with the current BIOS release. The exact device seems to be sold under a multitude of brand names, here's the Amazon listing for the one I bought.

(The card is part of a custom board set but but essentially replicates an XT-CF-lite v2b, IE, it's the 8-bit only IDE subset that doesn't work with most "real" hard drives.)

I'll probably be doing some more extensive testing on it in a few weeks after running off a board that has the 44 pin laptop header directly on it, but through a sort of Rube Goldberg cable setup I was able to fdisk/format a 2GB SD card with DOS 5.0 and it passed Check-It 3.0's disk diagnostic.
 
Yes i have one of those and a couple of 40 pin models with the FC1307A chip, They work very well with my XTIDE cards, Though they do not work when connected to my lo-tech isa - cf card, i posted about them a while back, I like em.
 
bladamson said:
On the rev 4 schematic... http://minuszerodegrees.net/xtide/rev_4/XT-IDE Rev 4 - schematic diagram - at 15MAR2018.pdf

Down about area D-1 way down at the bottom left of the schematic, in the ROM area, we can see that the resistor pack is pulling D7 low. What is the purpose of this?
Click to expand...

I believe it's in the ide standard to do it to help detect if there are no devices present; I don't know if xtide relies on it but I went ahead and included it in my XT-CF rev.2- equivalent card.
 
I wonder why it's part of the ROM area. I was under the impression that populating the ROM area was optional. But if RP2 is left out, and that connection really means D7 on the IDE connector rather than D7 on the rom or something (which they surely don't mean, because that would be very strange, which is why I was asking lol), then things wouldn't work, eh? Why not use one of the unused pins on RP1 instead?

You say you tied yours to the IDE D7 line, where those latches circle into each other?
 
bladamson said:
I wonder why it's part of the ROM area. I was under the impression that populating the ROM area was optional. But if RP2 is left out, and that connection really means D7 on the IDE connector rather than D7 on the rom or something (which they surely don't mean, because that would be very strange, which is why I was asking lol), then things wouldn't work, eh? Why not use one of the unused pins on RP1 instead?
Click to expand...
In the 'optional Boot ROM' of the diagram is a note that includes, "RP2 always required, or 10K resistor between pins 1-2".

Yes, the diagram would have been 'cleaner' if RP1 had been used instead, or RP2 moved to outside of the 'Optional Boot ROM' box.
 
modem7 said:
In the 'optional Boot ROM' of the diagram is a note that includes, "RP2 always required, or 10K resistor between pins 1-2".

Yes, the diagram would have been 'cleaner' if RP1 had been used instead, or RP2 moved to outside of the 'Optional Boot ROM' box.
Click to expand...

Aha, very good. Thank you.

Apparently I need to learn to read. XD
 
I cannot find any documentation for the RS232 port pinout on a Rev 2 XTIDE board. Can anyone point me to the appropriate pictorial or information?
 
Malc said:
I never fitted the components for the serial port on my R2 cards, There is some info here on the serial settings https://retrobrewcomputers.org/n8ve...334/38699551/44294913/XTIDE REV2 settings.png bottom right.
Click to expand...

Thanks - I have that diagram and managed to completely miss it. Interestingly, if that's correct then the schematic is wrong. By tracing the PCB layout from the schematic, RTS and CTS end up reversed when you do so. But I think the diagram is correct. If you crimp a 10-pin header and an IDC style DB9 on a ribbon cable, the latter ends up with a classic "AT" style serial connector pinout.
 
Is there a thread yet dedicated just to listing compatible devices with the XT-IDE and ISA-CF cards?
Compact Flash, DOM, Hard Drives, CF-IDE adapters, SD-IDE adapters, and so on. Which are known to work, which don't, with which card, what XUB version, etc?.
If not, I think it might be worth making one. Post pictures of the devices that work/don't work, maybe benchmark specs if you'd think them relevant, that kind of thing.

Most I've heard about work, but if there's any known to have issues, it would serve as a "buyer's guide," so people know which ones are known to be reliable and which are to be avoided for use with these cards.
 
I used a Syba CF2IDE adapter with a 4GB CF Card using my Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus with the IDE adapter connected to the primary (local bus) IDE and secondary (ISA) IDE and it worked without issues.
 
blackepyon said:
Is there a thread yet dedicated just to listing compatible devices with the XT-IDE and ISA-CF cards?
Compact Flash, DOM, Hard Drives, CF-IDE adapters, SD-IDE adapters, and so on. Which are known to work, which don't, with which card, what XUB version, etc?.
If not, I think it might be worth making one. Post pictures of the devices that work/don't work, maybe benchmark specs if you'd think them relevant, that kind of thing.

Most I've heard about work, but if there's any known to have issues, it would serve as a "buyer's guide," so people know which ones are known to be reliable and which are to be avoided for use with these cards.
Click to expand...

Back in the early days when the XUB home was on the old google code site there was a "Drive compatibility" page and a "Benchmark" page, It's a good idea but i'd recommend listing system specs as well, ie: Make - Model - System Bios details. What works in one system may totally crap out in another different system. I don't recall a specific thread ever being started other than the XUB hardware thread on here, There's probably loads of "What works and what don't" scattered all over the place on this forum.
 
Malc said:
Back in the early days when the XUB home was on the old google code site there was a "Drive compatibility" page and a "Benchmark" page, It's a good idea but i'd recommend listing system specs as well, ie: Make - Model - System Bios details. What works in one system may totally crap out in another different system. I don't recall a specific thread ever being started other than the XUB hardware thread on here, There's probably loads of "What works and what don't" scattered all over the place on this forum.
Click to expand...

I started a thread here: XTIDE Device Compatibility List

If anybody has a list/pictures of the CF cards, adapters, and whatnot that they've tested that they'd like to contribute, feel free to pitch in!
 
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I have both a Rev. 3 and a Rev. 4 XT-IDE board, and neither boots into the XT-IDE menu on my AMIBIOS motherboard. It's a 486 motherboard with three VLB slots, the rest are ISA.
 
Sir_Fartalot said:
I have both a Rev. 3 and a Rev. 4 XT-IDE board, and neither boots into the XT-IDE menu on my AMIBIOS motherboard. It's a 486 motherboard with three VLB slots, the rest are ISA.
Click to expand...
Check the AMIBIOS settings to make sure it can support booting from external or 3rd party (ISA/VESA card) ROMs. I haven't used an AMIBIOS in years, so I don't remember exactly where the setting would be, it might even show up as a LAN boot ROM or something. I think (and since it's been a while, I might be wrong) that the VESA motherboards handled the IDE and I/O controller cards through the motherboard's BIOS, rather than a ROM from the card, so it might not have been set up for it.
 
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blackepyon said:
Check the AMIBIOS settings to make sure it can support booting from external or 3rd party (ISA/VESA card) ROMs. I haven't used an AMIBIOS in years, so I don't remember exactly where the setting would be, it might even show up as a LAN boot ROM or something. I think (and since it's been a while, I might be wrong) that the VESA motherboards handled the IDE and I/O controller cards through the motherboard's BIOS, rather than a ROM from the card, so it might not have been set up for it.
Click to expand...

Thank you - I did try to look for something of that nature, but could not locate or determine anything appropriate. Anything to do with shadow RAM, maybe? Maybe I also have to change the default ROM address on the XT-IDE? What you say about the VESA motherboard handling the BIOS for the I/O controller directly sounds interesting, and it also might have something to do with the ROM address on the XT-IDE. This coming week-end I will try another motherboard with the XT-IDE cards.
 
Shadow RAM just copies the BIOS into RAM so it can be accessed quicker, so I doubt it.
My money is on the BIOS just not looking for option/LAN boot ROMS. What's the make/model of the motherboard?

Well, good luck. I'm really just shooting in the dark here. As I said, It's been quite a while since I've played with a VESA motherboard.
 
HDD detection

HDD detection

Hi, I'm struggling a bit with HDD detection. 486 computer with ISA-only slots, AMIbios from 1991, with the 504mb limit. No onboard devices of any kind, it requires an ISA IO card for disk/serial/parallel.

I have a Blue Lava board 4.1 and wrote 2.0.0b3 bios as a start, using ide_atl.bin. This works with an old/dumb IDE controller and CF->IDE as the hard drive. XTide comes up, detects the card, and boots and I can install DOS.

I'm now trying with a newer Promise DC-2032, which is an ISA IDE controller that has floppy/serial/parallel. It's dual IDE and it boots at 1F0 primary and 170 secondary and IRQ 14 primary and 15 secondary (says so in the manual, which I have). This was not detecting the hard drives at all but I do see the banner and it will boot the floppy drive. To make sure the card worked, I ordered a 256MB CF card, pulled the drive settings from a more modern computer, and configured it with the Promise card. Successfully partitioned and installed DOS (without XTIDE). This works just fine, I can add it to the system BIOS and boot and use that drive normally.

So back to XTIDE, I have a few questions as I try different things.

- Is interrupt mode required? For my older card I had it set to off and it works.
- If I were to enable interrupt in XTIDE, do I set it to the same interrupts at the card? Primary IDE = int14, secondary int15? Or do they need to be different interrupts?
- How should I be thinking about control block address? My board has no doc on it but others have suggested 3F6 for it and not the default.
- Would any of the other primary/secondary XTIDE options matter in xtidecfg? Block mode transfers, chs translation method, write cache, CHS, LBA? All set to default settings right now.
- I'm using device type 16-bit ISA/VLB/PCI IDE for AT builds, I assume that to be correct as no other choice made sense.

I also tried versions 580 and 602 of the bios from 2019 but same result, won't detect my drive. I have multiple CF cards all configured and working with DOS - 256mb, 1GB, 4GB, 8GB. None of them work or are detected by XTIDE with this card. I also tried with the BIOS installed on a 3com 3C509B-TP which again works fine with my old IO card, not with the Promise.

Input or ideas on how to better detect my HDD would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
 
I'm confused by your request, since if you have working 16-bit IDE controllers for your 486, why are you trying to add the XT-IDE at the same time? Maybe a clearer explanation of what you're trying to do might help. As for your interrupt questions: Interrupt mode is not required. If you want to enable interrupts, don't pick an interrupt already used by another card.
 
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