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Help with Sergey's 8-Bit FDC and Serial Port board.

Malc said:
Sorry to hear about your sister, My little Niece was recently diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, Life can be so challenging at times. Can you not try flashing the AT28C64 in situ using XTIDECFG.COM ?
Click to expand...
My Sister has stage 4 as well. I'll try your suggestion
 
Summary of work so far.

IBM XT 5160 motherboard, V-20, 8087, Super XT BIOS.

AT PSU

CGA with composite out.

Memory card

XT-IDE with DOM

XT-FDC with Gotek

EtherLink II NIC

DOS 6.22, mTCP

This setup works. However, the F2 option doesn't show. If I remove XT-IDE with DOM, the F2 option comes up.
 
fjk61011 said:
Here is an observation. I can change the dip switches on Xt-ide without using xtidecfg an it still works.
Click to expand...
That is expected if the switches are the ones that control the base address of the XT-IDE's BIOS ROM (with the caveat that in doing so, you don't create a resource conflict).

However, that will not be the case if the switches you change are the ones that control the base I/O address used by the XT-IDE. If changing those switches, the XUB needs to be reconfigured to use the new base I/O address.

fjk61011 said:
This setup works. However, the F2 option doesn't show. If I remove XT-IDE with DOM, the F2 option comes up.
Click to expand...
Per example #2 at [here].

fjk61011 said:
I can't get the EtherLink II to work. I get a defective NIC or I/O address clash message
Click to expand...
If the Etherlink II is known-working, then a resource conflict sounds likely.
 
Just completed my Monster FDC and am running into an issue. In the default firmware configuration it works fine and I see the Monster firmware splash and "Press F2 to configure" during boot. However if go into the firmware, activate the secondary controller and write the settings to EEPROM I no longer see the splash at boot and have no way to get into the configuration again. I'm only able to recover by using a device programmer or Sergey's xiflash utility to re-write the original image - which of course will undo the changes I wanted. Is anyone else seeing this?
 
shirsch said:
Just completed my Monster FDC and am running into an issue. In the default firmware configuration it works fine and I see the Monster firmware splash and "Press F2 to configure" during boot. However if go into the firmware, activate the secondary controller and write the settings to EEPROM I no longer see the splash at boot and have no way to get into the configuration again. I'm only able to recover by using a device programmer or Sergey's xiflash utility to re-write the original image - which of course will undo the changes I wanted. Is anyone else seeing this?
Click to expand...
What flash ROM / EEPROM are you using? What is the system you have? 8088/286/anything newer? What is the CPU frequency? If it is a newer platform, by any chance do you have BIOS shadowing turned on?
 
Progress:

IBM XT 5160 motherboard, Super XT BIOS, V-20, 8087.

XT PSU

CGA with composite out.

Memory card

Parallel Port Card

XT-FDC with Gotek

XT-IDE with DOM

DOS 6.22, mTCP

This setup works. However, the F2 option doesn't show. If I remove XT-IDE with DOM, the F2 option comes up.

Also, I have a XIRCOM PE3-10TP on the parallel port and can run mTCP programmes. TZ settings courtesy of Mr Brutman on SlashNET #vc. I also set up a Microsolutions BackPack floppy drive. I swap it and the XIRCOM as needed.

When I try to boot from the XT-IDE and DOM in the DTK XT clone the system boots to Starting MS-DOS... and then hangs.

Have to sort that now.
 
SymptomI added an XT-IDE card to my early IBM 5170 (contains a type 1 motherboard), and when the XTIDE Universal BIOS (XUB) on the card tries to boot from MS-DOS 6.22 on the attached CF card, "Starting MS-DOS..." is displayed on the screen and then there is no further progress.
CauseSome sort of incompatibility between the XUB and the 01/10/84 dated IBM BIOS supplied in a type 1 motherboard. See note 1 below.

The DTK has 640 kb of memory.
 
sergey said:
What flash ROM / EEPROM are you using? What is the system you have? 8088/286/anything newer? What is the CPU frequency? If it is a newer platform, by any chance do you have BIOS shadowing turned on?
Click to expand...
Hi, Sergey. I had posted details on the Monster FDC GitHub issues, but in short I'm using an SST PH29EE010 EEPROM. The system is an IBM / Alaris 'Leopard' 486SLC2 running at 50Mhz. I believe BIOS shadowing is turned on, but I didn't think that affected peripheral ROMs - unless the OpenDOS memory manager is deciding to remap them (?).
 
fjk61011 said:
The xt-fdc on its own doesn't show its bios screen.
Click to expand...
So, video card and XT-FDC only.

I have written a DOS tool named RAYXTFDC.
Get the tool from [here] and run it on your vintage computer.
The tool will search for version 2.2 (only 2.2) of Sergey's Multi-Floppy BIOS, i.e. what you have on your card, and report the result.

Expect the tool to report that:
1. It found Multi-Floppy BIOS version 2.2; and
2. It found it at the address that you expect it to be at (i.e. as configured by switches/jumpers on your card); and
3. It reported no problems.

At the web page that I pointed to, is a link to an example screen output, showing you what to expect.
 
Ok, so this is odd. I have the Monster FDC jumpered for 0xE000 segment, the FDC BIOS splash screen appears during boot and I'm able to enter the configuration screen. However, after OpenDOS is running the RAYXTFDC tool is unable to find it:

Code: 
*******************************************************
*  RAYXTFDC version 1.1
*  Executed: 10/10/2022 15:07:16  (dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm:ss)
*******************************************************

 W A R N I N G  -  Version 1.x of this software. I.e. Not widely tested.
 W A R N I N G  -  Searching for version 2.2 of the Multi-Floppy BIOS only.

+--------------------------------------------------+
| Part 1 of 4 - Motherboard class                  |
+--------------------------------------------------+
CPU type           = 80386 or later
Motherboard class  = AT class (based on CPU type)

+--------------------------------------------------+
| Part 2 of 4 - ID the motherboard's BIOS ROM      |
+--------------------------------------------------+
Model byte at FFFFE   = FC        (AT or XT-286)
Date at FFFF5         = 06/06/92  (in clones, do not trust this date)
Checksum of last 8 KB = 000CCD1C  (simple byte addition)
CRC32 of last 8 KB    = 7B3C960D     
BIOS identified as    = [UNABLE TO IDENTIFY]

+--------------------------------------------------+
| Part 3 of 4 - Look for XT-FDC card's BIOS ROM    |
|               (Multi-Floppy BIOS version 2.2)    |
+--------------------------------------------------+
Searching for Multi-Floppy BIOS version 2.2 .....................................................................................................

 PROBLEM - I cannot locate the Multi-Floppy BIOS version 2.2.

      Some possibilities:
        * EEPROM on XT-FDC not flashed (i.e. is empty).
        * EEPROM on XT-FDC not enabled (via appropriate jumper/switch).
        * EEPROM on XT-FDC is faulty.
        * EEPROM on XT-FDC at an inappropriate address:
               - you set the EEPROM address jumpers/switches wrongly?
               - conflicting with something else? - try another address
        * Faulty XT-FDC card.
        * In the EEPROM is something other than v2.2 of the Multi-Floppy BIOS.
        * Updated version of this program required.

      Aborting ...

Problem is, if I use any other address the system either hangs during boot or fails to show the FDC splash information. Sergey had asked about BIOS caching, but it is turned off for all segments except 0xF000 which is the actual BIOS. Interestingly, the xiflash utility IS able to find the board at that address and successfully flash it.

Ok, wait a minute. Does it need exactly version 2.2? If so, I'll need to locate it. The one in the GitHub project is 2.6.
 
I pulled a backlevel source tree and built BIOS 2.2. RAYXTFDC still is unable to find it, while xiflash and OpenDOS 'mem /u' do correctly find it. Tried all possible addresses and only 0xe000 cooperates.
 
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