XTIDE Universal BIOS v2.0.0 beta testing thread

[UPI]

On my 386DX 33, running XTIDE ide_at.bin 2.0.0B3 on a Kingston NIC, I get "Error 80h!" if I set the first boot device as "00h" (shows as 0h in XTIDECFG).
In other words, when I don't have a floppy in the drive, I get the above error but it will continue to boot on the HD.

 

[UPI]

My application takes 30 more seconds to initialize than usual with this XTIDE/Kingston KNE20T NIC (D8000 for ROM) setup. I am using the same JC1120E Winbond W83757AF controller and the same model of Seagate HD for the tests.
The normal setup is an 80GB Seagate with a WD 9.06 overlay and it takes 3 minutes to get the application initialized. With XTIDE and another Seagate 80GB w/no overlay, it takes 3.5 minutes.

What XTIDE performance tweaks are recommended for this setup of 386DX with a 16 bit controller?
Any other suggestions?

Thanks

 

[aitotat]

Error 80h means timeout and that is normal in this case since you try to boot from floppy drive (00h = Floppy Drive A) without any diskette in it. Next in line is first hard disk and that works.

About the performance issue. Have you enabled shadow RAM? Overlay software is run from 32-bit RAM but XTIDE Universal BIOS is run from 8-bit ROM unless you enable shadow RAM.

 

[UPI]

Having an error pop up may be disconcerting to my customer.

I have "Shadow System BIOS" and "Shadow Video BIOS" enabled. Is this the same?

Thanks

 

[UPI]

I am also having lockups with the application. It doesn't always initialize when running on XTIDE.
It is a resource hog running Pharlap Memory Manager and a custom High Speed ISA 8 Channel Serial board.

I am running a 27C256 with a ROM address of D8000 because that at least works some of the time.

I wish I knew what I was doing because overlays are a PITA and also PATA drives are getting harder to find. The equipment this is running in is worth approx $70k and there are hundreds in the field. Long term support is key.

 

[sergey]

Having an error pop up may be disconcerting to my customer.

This is an open-source project licensed under GPL2 license, and not a commercial product. While the GPL2 license allows almost any use of the software, including commercial use, resale, etc. (as long as you make sure the source code is available), it specifically declines any warranty or responsibility for any problems. If something fails and your customer's data gets corrupted you're on your own

Other than that specific error codes simplify troubleshooting. So I personally prefer 'Error 80' instead of generic 'Floppy Disk Failure' message.

I have "Shadow System BIOS" and "Shadow Video BIOS" enabled. Is this the same?

It is not. Check your CMOS Setup for "Shadowing" options. Usually there is a list of options like "Shadow 16KB ROM at XXXX", where XXXX is the address. Enable the option(s) with address matching your XT-IDE card. For example if you have your card configured with 8 KiB ROM at address 0CE00h you need to enable shadowing for address 'CC00' (since it is 16KB block in this example, the shadowing will be enabled for the 0CC00h-0CFFFh block). If you have a 32 KiB ROM, you'll need to enable shadowing for two consecutive blocks covering that ROM.

 

[UPI]

Other than that specific error codes simplify troubleshooting. So I personally prefer 'Error 80' instead of generic 'Floppy Disk Failure' message.

I don't believe I have ever seen a computer that gives an error on every boot when no floppy is inserted. I would agree if a floppy were present and unreadable, but that is not the case here.
As far as shadowing goes, the two I listed are the only ones shown in the CMOS. I will scour it again tomorrow to make sure.

Thanks for the feedback.

 

[aitotat]

I don't believe I have ever seen a computer that gives an error on every boot when no floppy is inserted. I would agree if a floppy were present and unreadable, but that is not the case here.

You are right about that. Maybe I should just hide the timeout error (and only display other "real" errors) or try something else. The default setting tries to boot from hard disk first. I think most people prefer it since it is always possible to boot from floppy using hotkey.

As far as shadowing goes, the two I listed are the only ones shown in the CMOS.

It is very much possible that your BIOS does not support shadow ram for other than main and video bios. AMI BIOS on my 286 is like that. Since you have 386, you can use emm386 and probably other similar memory managers to set shadow ram.

 

[UPI]

Since you have 386, you can use emm386 and probably other similar memory managers to set shadow ram.

Please excuse my ignorance as I am not a programmer nor do I have much understanding of the ISA bus or boot ROMs:

The application that runs the machine was built using Phar Lap's DOS Extender. In other words, it is compiled into the EXE so I don't think another memory manager is possible.

Is it possible to tack XTIDE onto the MB BIOS? I have attached the binary of the BIOS.

 

[Krille]

I am also having lockups with the application. It doesn't always initialize when running on XTIDE.
It is a resource hog running Pharlap Memory Manager and a custom High Speed ISA 8 Channel Serial board.

Can you tell us more about this application? Can you determine what causes it to not initialize? What settings did you change with XTIDECFG? What make/model is the serial board? Advantech or Moxa or something else (since you say "custom")?

 

[UPI]

Can you tell us more about this application? Can you determine what causes it to not initialize? What settings did you change with XTIDECFG? What make/model is the serial board? Advantech or Moxa or something else (since you say "custom")?

Sometimes it just locks up during loading of the program when it is still displaying standard DOS text and sometimes it crashes. Sometimes it reaches the graphical display (Real Mode???). Again, the executable was compiled with the Phar Lap TNT DOS Extender builtin to the EXE.

I have no clue how to determine the cause of the crashes because I know almost nothing about DOS extenders, memory addresses, DEBUG, memory dumps, memory maps etc. It sometimes just locks up and sometimes it crashes with all kinds of TNT errors and sometimes it starts fine.

I am currently using the 8kb AT version of XTIDE beta 3. I tried it completely stock and then with only 1 controller enabled and then with the floppy as the first boot device. I had also tried the bone stock 16kb version. I seemed to have more success with it set to D8000 than anything else. I have tried it with a Kingston NIC and a 3C509B NIC with no difference seen. I am running it on a 27C256 PROM.

The serial board is a custom built unit (by Electroglas) running an 80186 processor on board. It is addressed using the 12-16MB memory addresses. The motherboard can only have 12MB installed or it will conflict with the serial board. I do not know much more than that.

I am afraid that Phar Lap TNT is bumping into XTIDE or that slower hard drive operation is causing timing issues but I have no clue how to determine either.

 

[Krille]

Can you please test the RAM with memtest86 to make sure it's not a hardware problem?

 

[UPI]

Can you please test the RAM with memtest86 to make sure it's not a hardware problem?

The PC/machine runs fine w/o XTIDE installed but I will test the RAM to be absolutely sure.
I normally run on an 80GB drive with a Western Digital 9.06 overlay. I would like to get away from the overlays and even away from hard drives to get to XTIDE with CF.

 

[aitotat]

I normally run on an 80GB drive with a Western Digital 9.06 overlay.

Did you format the drive after you installed XTIDE Universal BIOS or did you just uninstall the overlay (if that was even possible)?

 

[aitotat]

I found two bugs in beta 3. The first one is quite bad: slaves drives are not initialized properly during reset. They are detected fine but do not work after that. Another bug I found is related to minimum time to display hotkeys. Delay did not work because initialization cleared the counter. Fix for both bugs is in SVN. I'll do some more testing before releasing new version.

 

[UPI]

Did you format the drive after you installed XTIDE Universal BIOS or did you just uninstall the overlay (if that was even possible)?

I am using a completely separate drive (no overlay but the exact same model of Seagate ST380215A) with XTIDE that I FDISK'ed and formatted while booted on XTIDE.

One interesting note: XTIDE will recognize the 80GB w/overlay but it just hangs at "Booting C>>C". I don't really plan to use XTIDE with drives using an overlay, but I would think it would still work.

Can you please test the RAM with memtest86 to make sure it's not a hardware problem?

memtest86 passes fine.

 

[UPI]

I don't know if this will be useful, but I was able to set a switch to print out a memory report from the application.

 

[Malc]

Just updated my 486 box to r520 and i now get " Non-System disk or disk error, Replace and press any key when ready " when trying to boot from C: drive, So I grabbed another Hard drive / caddy ( i use removable caddy's on this box ) and swapped the hard drive, Ran fdisk / partitoned and formatted the drive and installed Dos 6.22 but still get the same error. I reverted back to r519 and all is fine again.

I found two bugs in beta 3.

 

[aitotat]

Just updated my 486 box to r520 and i now get " Non-System disk or disk error, Replace and press any key when ready " when trying to boot from C: drive

I'm not sure what caused this. I didn't have any problems with Master and Slave Drive combination but I did not try with only one drive. I tweaked the reset a bit more and tested on two different systems without problems. I hope it now works.

 

[aitotat]

One interesting note: XTIDE will recognize the 80GB w/overlay but it just hangs at "Booting C>>C". I don't really plan to use XTIDE with drives using an overlay, but I would think it would still work.

It is the overlay software that hangs since at that point execution has moved to the boot sector code. I'm not sure but I suspect that the overlay software expects the same parameters that it detected when it was installed (main BIOS probably had 504 MiB limit). Now it gets different parameters from XTIDE Universal BIOS and does not work with them.