PS/2 30 286 won't detect drives on ISA cards

[kishy]

Hey there

I've established which cards I own that my PS/2 30 286 can boot from (basically, cards which have their own BIOS). The following cards though cannot seem to be used in it:

• IDE-PLUS V2
• JPN CA8390
• UN1072

The settings I am using are to disable every feature except for IDE, because I need to use the motherboard floppy controller and get a 601 if I leave floppy features enabled on the cards. The machine then boots to BASIC in ROM if those things aren't disabled. Other ports are disabled because I don't want to run into possible resource issues and don't need them.

If I use a card with a BIOS (and of course an appropriate drive), notably my WD WD1002A-WX1, Adaptec ACB-2072, or Juko D16-X, I am able to access the drive from a DOS boot floppy, the machine is able to boot from the drive, all that good stuff.

Why not the BIOS-less cards? I thought everything AT and up knew about IDE and how to handle it "out of the box"?

Now, of course, I could just use one of the cards that are working but that seems kind of silly since they're 8 bit and the machine could work with 16...basically I'm prepared to live with 8 bit but would like to find the optimal setup for this, which probably involves a 16 bit IDE card.

 

[IBMMuseum]

...Why not the BIOS-less cards? I thought everything AT and up knew about IDE and how to handle it "out of the box"?...

You figured it out about the BIOS on the adapter. Actually the AT isn´t aware of the IDE interface without some particular after-market adapters (I have a nice one that you set the drive type to 1, and it gets the parameters from the drive). The Model 30 286 (with some planar functions added) was the AT replacement, and in some areas it behaves like an AT.

In this case, the proprietary 20 and 30Mb drives conform to two entries in its drive table, and there are no drive parameter entries setable (aside from reburning the BIOS) by the end user...

 

[kishy]

You figured it out about the BIOS on the adapter. Actually the AT isn´t aware of the IDE interface without some particular after-market adapters (I have a nice one that you set the drive type to 1, and it gets the parameters from the drive). The Model 30 286 (with some planar functions added) was the AT replacement, and in some areas it behaves like an AT.

In this case, the proprietary 20 and 30Mb drives conform to two entries in its drive table, and there are no drive parameter entries setable (aside from reburning the BIOS) by the end user...

That's what I was afraid of. Oh well, I suppose 8 bit isn't the end of the world lol. Just seems like a waste of an 8 bit card though...

I'd like one of those original drives if only for the ease of setup and integration, but they're difficult to find and as I understand it quite unreliable.