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XTIDE Universal BIOS v2.0.0 beta testing thread

Thank you for reporting this bug, Heather. I've confirmed it but still haven't found when or where it broke (which revision). In case you don't know, you can use the ALT key during the end of drive detection to accomplish the same thing when needed.
I haven't tried the ALT key so I'll test that this evening. I'm glad you were able to get the same results on your end. :)

Note that the boot menu code is included in the large builds only. I just tried the large AT build of beta 3 (ide_atl.bin) in Bochs and that works. What build were you using?
I'm using the 8088 (ide_xtl.bin) code. The version where I had trouble with the boot menu not working was from the v2.0.0 beta3 build that is available on the Google code site.

Thanks so much for the amazing work being done on this!

Heather
 
I haven't tried the ALT key so I'll test that this evening.
ALT key during boot works perfectly so the bug only occurs when using F6 to start the serial scan. I really have to say that serdrive is amazing. Using a 460.8kbps serial connection is so much faster than a real floppy drive. :)

So far, the only other issue I have is a known problem with certain CF cards being used as a slave drive. I've only found two of the CF card models I have that work perfectly as a slave drive. Please let me know if there's anything else I can test or do to help with this project. :thumbsup:

Thank you!

Heather
 
The CompactFlash slave drive issue is a known limitation of many CompactFlash cards unfortunately. Please post the details of the cards that do work though!
 
Hi!

I tried beta 3 on my newly purchased xt-cf-lite card, but on boot up it doesn't detect my CF-card.

If I run auto configure in XTIDECFG, everything seems to be correct: It is identified as "XTCF PIO". I've tried setting the drive parameters manually, but it makes no difference. However, I'm not sure about the correct settings of the other parameters.

If I use the BIOS from Sergey's site (http://www.malinov.com/Home/sergeys-projects/xt-cf-lite), everything works fine.

Is this a known issue or could I be doing something wrong?

The flash card is 512MB in size and the computer is an IBM 5162 (XT-286).

The original hard disk controller is still present in the computer, but no hard disk enabled in BIOS.

Björn
 
Nope. Just want to make sure the file loads into my programmer correctly. Back in the day when I programmed EPROMs with a commercial programmer, we always put the checksum on the sticker that went on the window. It came in handy when we weren't sure if an EPROM was corrupted or a file loaded into the programmer correctly.
 
I built up an XT-CF-Lite v4 and flashed in the preconfigured Bios and it seems to work just fine with a Kingston 32MB card. Next project is an XT-IDE.
 
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Are you going for the Vintage-Computer Rev 2 board? If you do, and you don't already have a high speed serial port, I would suggest adding the UART components. They don't cost very much and I've found it very useful. :)

Good luck,

Heather


Yep, Will add the extra parts. I bought two XT-CF-Lite V4 boards with enough parts to build both along with 2 bare XT-IDE-v2 boards. I still need to order the parts for those but I like fully populated boards.

I just finished restoring my Compaq Portal Plus (General clean up, LL format the ST225 HD and rebuild keyboard) and tested the XT-CF-Lite in it. Ultimately it'll go into the other portable (dual floppy) but the system board is giving me fits at the moment. It was working up until a week or so ago then decided to throw ROM errors. Still trying to diagnose the problem.

Chuck
 
Not sure if this is an XT-IDE Bios issue but here goes:

I've been experimenting using my P4 XP Home PC and Using a 128 Mb Compact Flash card and a cheap chinese USB card reader i can partition / Format and load Dos 6.22 on the CF card and make the partition active, I can boot from the card via USB into Dos no problems.

I take the CF Card and plug it into a CF card adapter in my 486 box which is running the latest R567 bios and the machine boots up into Dos no problems.

Now here's the problem, I take the same CF card from my 486 box and plug it into my IBM XT 5160 which is also running the latest bios R567, I turn on the machine and i get " Missing operating System " ?

Now if i partition / Format and load Dos using the 5160 i can take the card and put it in my 486 and the USB card reader on my P4 and it boots into Dos no problems.

As i said i'm not sure if this is a bios issue but any idea's ?

Thanks.
 
Thanks but didn't work, just hangs at " Booting C: " now, Tried " sys c: " also but no difference, I'll try building a new bios for the XT, Can't think what else to try at the mo.
 
You need to do "fdisk /mbr" on the XT, so that XT-compatible boot code is written to the MBR. The hang you're experiencing is boot code that doesn't run on on an XT (ie. uses 286 or later CPU instructions).
 
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