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XTIDE Universal BIOS

Today I have been testing the XTIDE Universal BIOS in a IBM PS/1 2011 but it doesn't work. This is a special machine, as it has a DOS in ROM feature. I suspect that the booting procedure is not standard.

-With v2.0 builds, the computer boots as if the XTIDE Universal BIOS was not present. I have downloaded the trunk source code and inserted some OUT instructions to show debug in a ISA POST debug card, and I can confirm that the ROM is being loaded, but it never shows or detects any hard drive.
-With 1.1.5 release and Late Initialization DISABLED, the BIOS detects the hard drives but the boot menu is never shown. It always boots from the foreign hard drive if it is installed. If the foreign hard disk is missing then it boots from the first hard disk connected to the IDE port managed by the XTIDE Universal BIOS. Also if the computer is configured to boot from DOS in ROM, then the system doesn't boot, it stops after the XTIDE Universal BIOS hard drive detection.
 
DOS in ROM what a marvel that was. r505 works well for me on the TeraDrive.
However I've found what appear to be other issues with beta 3 and r550.
Neither auto detect any hard drives attached.
I've put some more information over here.

To think, I came here looking on how to get a 32K image working for the sake of nice flashy menus.
Then I get caught up in all this, I love weekends! :D
Flashing to an XTIDE v2 card set for 8K ROMs (with 32K ones just will not flash, fails reporting the bytes read do not match bytes written).

For the TeraDrive it shows the six screen menu, drop to DOS and then the XTIDE Universal BIOS fires up.
Does the PS/1 do anything like that?
 
nestor said:
-With v2.0 builds, the computer boots as if the XTIDE Universal BIOS was not present.
-With 1.1.5 release and Late Initialization DISABLED, the BIOS detects the hard drives but the boot menu is never shown. It always boots from the foreign hard drive if it is installed. If the foreign hard disk is missing then it boots from the first hard disk connected to the IDE port managed by the XTIDE Universal BIOS.
Click to expand...

Sound like the main bios installs INT 19h (boot loader) handler after ROM initialization so it replaces XTIDE Universal BIOS boot loader. v2.0.0 uses it to detect drives. v1.1.5 can detect drives during ROM initialization (late initialization disabled) but INT 19h handler is required to display boot menu.

Also if the computer is configured to boot from DOS in ROM, then the system doesn't boot, it stops after the XTIDE Universal BIOS hard drive detection.
Click to expand...
If I remember correctly the v1.1.5 has INT 18h handler that is used to jump back to boot menu for certain boot failures. It wasn't very useful feature so it was removed. I think this is why you cannot boot to ROM DOS with v1.1.5. But that means the main bios does not replace INT 18h handler (ROM boot). I think XTIDE Universal BIOS can then be made to work by using INT 18h handler to detect drives.
 
nestor said:
With v2.0 builds, the computer boots as if the XTIDE Universal BIOS was not present. I have downloaded the trunk source code and inserted some OUT instructions to show debug in a ISA POST debug card, and I can confirm that the ROM is being loaded, but it never shows or detects any hard drive.
Click to expand...

I'm very interested in this as I'm stuck on getting the BIOS to initialise on a Tandy 1400FD laptop. Maybe the problem could be the same. Would you be willing to make your modified BIOS available?
 
From the latest on SVN, revision 561.
Building a BIOS for a 5160 XT, I removed options MODULE_SERIAL, MODULE_SERIAL_FLOPPY,
and ELIMINATE_CGA_SNOW, and added MODULE_BOOT_MENU.

When it boots up the menu flashes up for an instant and disappears.
The Timeout doesn't show up in the configure pgm.

Any idea why?

Thanks,
Bill
 
Are you using the latest build xtidecfg, The "Selection Timeout" for the Boot Menu is under "Boot Settings"

I use the Hotkey bar but i just rebuilt the bios on my XT 5160 to use the Boot Menu and it worked fine, I don't use MODULE_SERIAL, MODULE_SERIAL_FLOPPY in my builds as i have no use for them but i leave ELIMINATE_CGA_SNOW in, I removed MODULE_HOTKEYS and added MODULE_BOOT_MENU back in and rebuilt the bios r561.

wrljet said:
From the latest on SVN, revision 561.
Building a BIOS for a 5160 XT, I removed options MODULE_SERIAL, MODULE_SERIAL_FLOPPY,
and ELIMINATE_CGA_SNOW, and added MODULE_BOOT_MENU.

When it boots up the menu flashes up for an instant and disappears.
The Timeout doesn't show up in the configure pgm.

Any idea why?

Thanks,
Bill
Click to expand...
 
Yes, I had rebuilt the xtidecfg pgm. I wasn't sure if it shared settings with the other makefile.

I changed my build options to remove the MODULE_HOTKEYS and now it works.

One other possible issue, in the previous attempt, I had read the exiting config fro the old
Flash before reconfiguring. Not sure if that affects the options it saw from the
ROM vs. the newly read-from-disk ROM image.

Thanks for your post -- it got me going.

Malc said:
Are you using the latest build xtidecfg, The "Selection Timeout" for the Boot Menu is under "Boot Settings"

I use the Hotkey bar but i just rebuilt the bios on my XT 5160 to use the Boot Menu and it worked fine, I don't use MODULE_SERIAL, MODULE_SERIAL_FLOPPY in my builds as i have no use for them but i leave ELIMINATE_CGA_SNOW in, I removed MODULE_HOTKEYS and added MODULE_BOOT_MENU back in and rebuilt the bios r561.
Click to expand...
 
I don't include both as i mainly just use the Hotkey bar now, But i just rebuilt and included both and it does seem to be working, The only thing i did notice is: Press F2 and the boot menu pops up as normal and the " A " drive is highlighted, If i leave it as is and press Enter the machine boots to the " C: " drive as configured in xtidecfg, But if i move it down to the " B " drive and back up to " A " press enter and the machine boots from the A: drive fine, Apart from that it seem's to be working fine.

Krille said:
MODULE_HOTKEYS and MODULE_BOOT_MENU are supposed to work together but you guys are saying they don't? Am I reading this correctly?
Click to expand...
 
Didn't work for me, but perhaps as I mentioned above, when it didn't work I had read the existing config
off the EEPROM that was built with another set of options. I haven't retried that build yet with a fresh config.
 
Last edited:
Malc said:
The only thing i did notice is: Press F2 and the boot menu pops up as normal and the " A " drive is highlighted, If i leave it as is and press Enter the machine boots to the " C: " drive as configured in xtidecfg, But if i move it down to the " B " drive and back up to " A " press enter and the machine boots from the A: drive fine
Click to expand...

This should now be fixed in r562.
 
wrljet said:
when it didn't work I had read the existing config
off the EEPROM that was built with another set of options.
Click to expand...

XTIDECFG does not allow to read old settings if they are no longer compatible but it is determined by comparing version information. It is very much possible that I have changed something and forgot to change version information. So it is most likely that reading old settings caused the problems.
 
aitotat said:
XTIDECFG does not allow to read old settings if they are no longer compatible but it is determined by comparing version information. It is very much possible that I have changed something and forgot to change version information. So it is most likely that reading old settings caused the problems.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I figured that was probably a dumb mistake on my part, but it didn't occur to me until I had already blown the second new build into the EEPROM and configured it from scratch (which worked).
 
Hello,

I have an old Commodore 386SX-25 with a 40 MB hard disk. I replaced it with a Quantum 20 GB, installed the Universal BIOS of course, and was able to fdisk and format the drive. But the computer won't boot from it. Once booted from a floppy I'm able to see and use the C drive. Then I found a 4 GB and things worked as it should.

The obvious questions:
- does anybody know why the 20 GB doesn't boot?
- does anybody how to get it to work?

Thank you very much for any help!

Kind regards, Ruud Baltissen
www.Baltissen.org
 
Hi,
Maybe a silly question but did you set the primary partition as active if yes do you have all the system files on your drive. I suppose you installed DOS, are you?

Cheers,
diskers

RuudB said:
Hello,
I have an old Commodore 386SX-25 with a 40 MB hard disk. I replaced it with a Quantum 20 GB, installed the Universal BIOS of course, and was able to fdisk and format the drive. But the computer won't boot from it. Once booted from a floppy I'm able to see and use the C drive. Then I found a 4 GB and things worked as it should.

The obvious questions:
- does anybody know why the 20 GB doesn't boot?
- does anybody how to get it to work?

Thank you very much for any help!

Kind regards, Ruud Baltissen
www.Baltissen.org
Click to expand...
 
PS. You won't be able to get a single partition above 4GB when using FAT16. For bigger partitions you should use FAT32.
 
diskers said:
PS. You won't be able to get a single partition above 4GB when using FAT16. For bigger partitions you should use FAT32.
Click to expand...

I'm already happy with a system disk of 50 MB and a data disk of 500 MB.
The reason I use these big hard disks is quite simple: I have more than enough of them. I wished I had more of the smaller ones.

Kind regards, Ruud Baltissen
www.Baltissen.org
 
diskers said:
Maybe a silly question but did you set the primary partition as active if yes do you have all the system files on your drive.
Click to expand...
Weird, it seems my first answer is missing.
Anyway, I did. But I just took a 40 GB disk and gave that one a try as well. And... that one worked W/O any problem. So one would expect the 20 GB drive to be faulty. But that one now works flawlessly in a Pentium-III system.
Whatever it was, the original problem is solved and that matters. I can only thank you (and all who read this thread) for your time!

Kind regards, Ruud Baltissen
www.Baltissen.org
 
I ran into another problem. I wanted to install Netware 3.12 and the install program says there is no hard disk present. I told the setup of the computer there isn't a hard disk present. If that is where the install programs looks for the HD, it has a point. So I just picked the biggest one and restarted the computer. Now the Universal BIOS was acting a bit strange: it said there was a foreign HD at 80 and the real one was found at 81. Booting from 81 worked fine except I got a D drive that was the same one as C. And E was what first used to be D. But Netware was stil complaining there was no HD.
In the end I picked a 4 GB one and told the Commodore it was a 233 MB HD. I partioned and formatted it and the install program found no trouble for the rest.

Is this a known issue, or maybe new? Is there something I can do to get around this problem?

I hope to hear from you. Any advise, info or request to test something is welcome!

Kind regards, Ruud Baltissen
www.Baltissen.org
 
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