Does anybody have experience installing an XTIDE SD card adapter alongside a TexElec Quad-Flop? My issue is when I assign a third floppy drive to the system XTIDE assigns that third floppy drive the letter C. During the boot process XTIDE tries to boot from the third floppy instead of the SD card. If I delete the third floppy drive all is back to normal. I have tried different drive letters when the boot menu appears for XTIDE but I have no luck getting XTIDE to boot from the SD card. Any ideas out there as to what I may be doing wrong? I am sure it is operator error on my part.
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XTIDE and TexElec Quad-Flop Boot Problems
- Thread starter grcevic
- Start date
modem7
10k Member
Welcome to these forums.
The BIOS in your XTIDE SD card will be the XTIDE Universal BIOS, typically abbreviated to XUB.
The BIOS in the TexElec Quad-Flop is the Multi-Floppy BIOS.
Getting the XUB and the Multi-Floppy BIOS to 'play nice' together can be problematic, depending on the configuration.
Note that the XUB and the Multi-Floppy BIOS do not assign drive letters. The assignment of drive letters (logical drives) to physical drives is done by DOS.
And therefore, DOS can sometimes impact on things. For example, early versions of DOS assign C: to the third floppy drive. In later DOS versions, the drive letter assigned comes after the hard drive (partition) ones.
When the XUB (and things like CMOS SETUP programs) use "C:", they are being user friendly, but in doing so, are making assumptions about how DOS will behave.
There are other things that have an impact. For example, on the IBM PC (IBM 5150) and IBM XT (IBM 5160) are two motherboard switches which the user sets to indicate the floppy drive count. There are times when, even though there are three floppy drives, that those switches should be set to the 'two' setting.
Is it an IBM 5150 or 5160 that you have ?
Is 'normal', the XUB boots to the SD card ?
( Verifying that the SD card is in fact in a bootable state. )
I remember that about six or so months ago, someone posted a similar post to yours. I will see if I can find that thread.
Presumably, that includes you trying the D and E keys.
Thank you for the reply. I am glad that perhaps someone has had a similar issue. I have a 386SX33. When things are normal the system boots to the SD card. I had the thought it may be a DOS issue but it seems as if XUB begins the boot process before DOS even touches the system. I may be mistaken on this fact. I did try the D and E keys to boot to the SD card but I had no luck.
modem7
10k Member
Good to hear.
I have found the thread that I referred to in post #2. It took me a while to find it, mainly because my memory failed me. It was to do with having an XT-IDE type card present in the computer, and the desire to boot from the third floppy drive. Like what you did, the solution involved changing the 'Number of diskette Drives' setting in the XUB from 'Auto' to '3'.