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XT IDE throwing error after Ctrl-Alt-Del

dmark

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Has anyone encountered an issue where an 8088 PC can boot off an XT IDE volume on a cold start, but leads to an "Error 1h" every single time you hit Ctrl-Alt-Del?

This is with an XT Clone board (DTK PIM-TB10) with a Falcon BIOS, 512k of onboard RAM and a genuine IBM 63.5W PSU. I haven't run into any other issues with the system; seems quite stable.

The XT IDE is a XT-CF-lite rev.2 sourced from TexElec, running v2.0.0B3+ software. I've tried all combinations of jumper switch settings without any change in behavior.
The CF cards are Apacer Industrial CF5, formatted as a DOS boot volume using MS-DOS 3.3 fdisk/format.

Any advice on how to troubleshoot this would be appreciated! I'm fairly green when it comes to vintage PCs.
The last time I used a DOS system was the mid-90s, so I'm still in the process of getting back into the right mindset. :)
 
Has anyone encountered an issue where an 8088 PC can boot off an XT IDE volume on a cold start, but leads to an "Error 1h" every single time you hit Ctrl-Alt-Del?
If I had heard of that before, I would have probably added the symptom to the list at [here].

running v2.0.0B3+ software
The XTIDE Universal BIOS, frequently shorted by people to XUB.

Any advice on how to troubleshoot this would be appreciated! I'm fairly green when it comes to vintage PCs.
Over many years, the XUB has been improved, and bugs fixed. If I was in your situation, I would first ensure that I was running the latest version of XUB. The latest release of the XUB is 'Release R622 of 2.0.0 beta 3+', which is dated 16 DEC 2021. When the XUB displays its splash text, release R622 displays "v2.0.0β3+ (2021-12-16)". You will not see "R622". Is that the release on your XT-CF-lite rev.2 ?

Then I would experiment by changing over the Falcon BIOS to the ERSO one at [here].
 
Thanks for the response! I'll definitely eye through that known errors page tonight and see if I recognize anything.

As for the XUB version, what I have on mine is dated 2013-10-22, so good bit older than the latest version. It's disappointing that TexElec sold me a product with such an old BIOS. I bought it directly from their web store about a month ago. :(

Anyhow, I'll look into switching out the BIOS on both the motherboard and the XT IDE. I don't have the means to write my own ROMs, but I'll ask around in the local vintage computing community here in Seattle.
 

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Push the reset switch instead. Sounds like the card is not initializing properly on the soft reset. It can happen on certain hardware combinations at times.

It is nothing to deplete you from sleep worrying about..
 
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Push the reset switch instead.
Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, this case does not have a reset switch, nor any opening to wire one through. I could mod it if course, but would prefer a non-destructive solution if possible.

(And responding to your edited comment) -- it's not so much me worrying about it, but rather an inconvenience when using this machine. Not all older DOS programs/games have a way to exit out of them cleanly. I find myself needing to reboot the machine frequently. It would be great not having to flip the power switch back and forth all the time. :)
 
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Anyhow, I'll look into switching out the BIOS on both the motherboard and the XT IDE. I don't have the means to write my own ROMs, but I'll ask around in the local vintage computing community here in Seattle.
If the BIOS ROM chip on your XT-CF card is an EEPROM (the norm on XT-IDE and XT-CF cards), then you don't need an EPROM programmer to upgrade the XUB on the XT-CF card.
There is a draft procedure at [here].

I don't have the means to write my own ROMs, but I'll ask around in the local vintage computing community here in Seattle.
For the BIOS ROM on the motherboard, the list at [here] may assist you.
 
Has anyone encountered an issue where an 8088 PC can boot off an XT IDE volume on a cold start, but leads to an "Error 1h" every single time you hit Ctrl-Alt-Del?
Yep but not for a long time, My first choice would be to upgrade to the latest revision of the XUB r622 if that doesn't fix it try another CF card.
 
I figured out that my XT IDE indeed comes with a ROM of the flashable type (SST 39SFx to be exact) and proceeded to successfully upgrade the software to the 2021-12-16 release.

Unfortunately, this led to the device no longer recognizing my DOS 3.3 boot volume as... bootable (although the file system is otherwise intact, when booting off a floppy disk)... so I think I need to start over from scratch. Will report back once I have everything back up and running and tested that my original issue has been resolved!
 
Quick update: The DOS boot volume is up and running again after doing over the partitions and formatting. The Ctrl-Alt-Del issue remains, unfortunately. I tried to burn an EEPROM with the ERSO BIOS referenced above, but it didn't lead to a functioning computer. It might have been the wrong type of ROM IC (different pinout?) than what this motherboard expects.
 
Interesting!

I have a CF card that came with my original Lo-Tek XTIDE that refuses to boot when connected to my Glitchworks XTIDE even though all the software it was preloaded with seems to be intact and it booted fine last time I tried it with the Lo-Tek. Investigating the cause is on my to-do list. Could it be as simple as two different versions of XUB being involved?
 
Interesting!

I have a CF card that came with my original Lo-Tek XTIDE that refuses to boot when connected to my Glitchworks XTIDE even though all the software it was preloaded with seems to be intact and it booted fine last time I tried it with the Lo-Tek. Investigating the cause is on my to-do list. Could it be as simple as two different versions of XUB being involved?
The Glitchworks cards are supplied with v1.1.5 XUB which is older than the XUB version that is on your Texelec CF Lite, The XUB has gone through many changes, Including changes to the drive translation code.
In answer to your question Yes.

Edit: + The Lo-tech XT CF cards were not supported until later in the development of the XUB
 
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The Glitchworks cards are supplied with v1.1.5 XUB which is older than the XUB version that is on your Texelec CF Lite, The XUB has gone through many changes, Including changes to the drive translation code.
In answer to your question Yes.

Edit: + The Lo-tech XT CF cards were not supported until later in the development of the XUB
My Glitchworks XTIDE is in a 5160 and working just fine supporting two IDE-CF adapters that pretend to be C: and D: "drives." Pretty slick!

I'm now working on sorting out a much abused 5150 that had apparently been someone's parts donor. I had thoughts of putting the Lo-tech XTIDE in it and being able to swap cards between the two machines. But I put that idea to the side when one wouldn't boot off of cards set up in the other. I'm going to be updating XUB and retrying for interoperability.

Thanks!
 
The setup I put in my 5160 includes the Glitchworks XTIDE, a 40 conductor IDE cable from my junk box, and two minimal IDE-CF adapters. After sorting out a stack of CF cards I can now boot the machine up on any MSDOS version from 3 thru 6 as simply as shutting it down, swapping out the card in the C: "drive", and powering it back up. "Works just fine."

I bought the Lo-tech card as part of a "tested and working" set off of our favorite auction site. The set included a CF card loaded with various versions of PCDOS, MSDOS, utilities, diagnostics, and of course a few games. That all "works just fine" too. But in the process of sorting out the setup in the 5160 I noticed that the CF card that came with my "test" setup would not boot in the setup I was building for the 5160. If I boot off a floppy, I can see and run the software on the CF and IIRC it will boot if connected to the Lo-tech card it came with, just not with the Glitchworks. The plan such as it is it to take care of some other things on my list, clone the software to a safe place, and then experiment a bit to see why it won't.
 
I have a CF card that came with my original Lo-Tek XTIDE that refuses to boot when connected to my Glitchworks XTIDE even though all the software it was preloaded with seems to be intact and it booted fine last time I tried it with the Lo-Tek. Investigating the cause is on my to-do list. Could it be as simple as two different versions of XUB being involved?
Many times, when I have upgraded (or downgraded) to a different release of XUB 2.0.0 beta 3, I would see "Missing operating system" at boot. The answer was to either partition and format the CF, or restore the XUB release to what it was.
 
Heck, I'm still using Hargle's old BIOS on my 8088 boxes. Works just fine.
Hallo Chuck and Agent Orange,

Never heard of it so I went looking for it. First Google thinks I'm looking for "gargle" and then I found only two VCF sites. Of these two one was invalid and the second was pointing to ZIPs that could not be found anymore.
So any pointer to more info is welcome. Thank you in advance!
 
You'll have to ferret what you need out from my collection of hargle code. but here it is.
I have more, but this might do it for you. Most of this dates from the very first version of the XT-IDE, which is still in a system and doing just fine, thank you. It's the one I did the "chuck mod" on, which is why you may want later code.
 

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People have forgotten already. Back in the day of the first version of this thing, I noted that transfers in 8088 code involved a bunch of code grabbing a byte at a time, then storing it.

If the address decoding was altered a bit, the 8088 BIU could be used to fetch a whole word at a time from the IDE interface, and then said word could be stashed using a simple STOSW instruction. Of course the V20 has multibyte I/O (INS/OUTS), but 8088 has only IN and OUT. The simple mod improved the read transfer speed significantly. Search down my early postings on the XTIDE thread.

Said mod doesn't work on the Olivetti M24/AT&T 6300 in that the circuitry on that board gets the byte ordering wrong. But then, it seems that a 16-bit implementation would be a lot simpler for 8086-based systems.
 
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