I understand that you have a SiiG Super E-IDE IO controller card. I am fairly certain it's the same model that I have. It worked great with my DVD-ROM reader device. I believe this IO controller is ATAPI compliant. Are you plugging your IDE optical drive in to "IDE port 2", on the card? It should work fine.

retro games 100 wrote:

I understand that you have a SiiG Super E-IDE IO controller card. I am fairly certain it's the same model that I have. It worked great with my DVD-ROM reader device. I believe this IO controller is ATAPI compliant. Are you plugging your IDE optical drive in to "IDE port 2", on the card? It should work fine.

No it doesnt.. I know ide 1 works fine with the harddisk. I will test if the harddisk will also work on ide 2.. Maybe have to set some jumpers on the card.

The drive i was using was a NEC DVD RW drive.
Now iam testing other drives that are laying here.

Bios version of my controller card is Version 1.05.

You could try SCSI?

I havent an scsi cdrom as controller laying here..

Now the test results..

Connecting the quantum fireball EX3.2GB on port IDE 1 works.. he sees the drive
Connecting the quantum fireball EX3.2GB on port IDE 2 works.. he sees the drive also (so its not disabled on the card jumpers)

Connecting an NEC DVD DL RW (to new for this system, was for testing purpose only) Didn`t detecting it on both IDE ports..
Same as an LG CRD- 8522B 52x drive
Same as an Pioneer DR-914 Super 40x drive thats older..

The controller is scanning for devices, he doesnt detect any of the cd / dvd drives. He gives 3 dots and boot further..

The Creative Labs CT1870 cdrom interface card is this the same way as connecting an drive on an soundcard?

Did you try to load the device drivers needed in config.sys and autoexec.bat and see if it works?

Yes, as Markk is saying above, what is in your auto and config files? In other words, what optical drive device driver are you using, and how are you using it?

No that not. But i think it wouldnt work either, because it didn`t detect any cd-rom / dvd devices..

What are the benefits of using an scsi drive? I never used scsi before, but maybe its better indeed for older systems.. How much pins interface do i need?
Some use 50 pins i see, some other devices having an other type of connection..

Could it connect by an 8-bit scsi card? If its possible i want to connect an burner also.. because having space over for an 8-bit card.

Do i not need load device drivers with scsi? If so i think to go for scsi.

I don't have any similar controller to try in my 386. But as far as I remember, late 486 and pentiums, used to show that a CD-ROM is connected and on what exact ide channel on the specs table. On the contrary, the older pcs showed only the hard disks. So I was wondering if maybe it works after you boot dos.

Robin4 wrote:

No that not. But i think it wouldnt work either, because it didn`t detect any cd-rom / dvd devices.. […]
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No that not. But i think it wouldnt work either, because it didn`t detect any cd-rom / dvd devices..

What are the benefits of using an scsi drive? I never used scsi before, but maybe its better indeed for older systems.. How much pins interface do i need?
Some use 50 pins i see, some other devices having an other type of connection..

Could it connect by an 8-bit scsi card? If its possible i want to connect an burner also.. because having space over for an 8-bit card.

Do i not need load device drivers with scsi? If so i think to go for scsi.

SCSI relieves the CPU of the burden of having to manage IDE drives and SCSI drives are also faster than early IDE drives. Relieving the CPU of that burden results in more processor power available for running programs so you essentially get a free CPU boost in addition to a drive speed boost.

Transferring data from the disk to system memory and vice versa is faster when the SCSI adapter uses DMA. Nothing more.

Is it possible to use a 8-bit scsi controller for it? Or do i need an 16-bit controller?

The first BIOSes showing the name of attached ATAPI devices are very late 486 to early pentiums.
So if the name is not showing up in BIOS, it means nothing.
It is like you attach on Port2 a HDD, but set BIOS to 'None'.
If you boot some NT OS from a HDD on Port1 it detects HDDs new and the HDD on Port2 is useable - without previous BIOS entry.

Before I would start with additional SCSI hardware I would check with a CD-ROM driver if it detects a ATAPI compliant device attached.

It seems i only can use one device on 1 seperate IDE controller with that enhanced SIIG thing.. I tried to use one harddisk with dual partitions and an CF card IDE converter.. If i use the harddisk with that dual partitions then the first one will be C:\ and the second one would be D:\
If i also connect the cf converter to it, it wouldnt be detected.. then i need to erase the second partition of the harddisk, and then the CF convertor would be detected as D:\
Has anyone an solution for this.. I want the use two partitions on the harddisk (because of the limitation of 2GB in dos OS) And using the CF convertor to transfer games / data to this pc.

Iam thinking of using one harddisk with 2 partions and then connecting one CD- writer / CD-reader and CF card to one 50 pin SCSI card. Do i have enough bandwith for it? (its an 8-bit scsi card)

I had the same problem with my 386. I ended up using just a CF flash as a HD...

I would to know. Does an SCSI 50 pin 8-bit card have enough speed / bandwith to use 2 cd-roms (reader and writer) and connecting an CF Adapter? Because that SCSI can attach 7 different devices on one controller i red.. But i think it will using 10mb/sec, so it seems to like a little bit slow to me..

The only problem is to use an CF card as harddisk.. that is limited by use of the cells.. write / read i red.. so for the long tirm i dont think its an good idea to use an CF card as harddisk.. It will be handy for using it as backup, but not for 24/7 use..

why would there be an issue? you're not multitasking anyway, so it will be okay
besides, in the olden days, people with 2 HDDs run off a crappy ISA IDE card who have to choke through the ISA bus on a single IDE channel anyway.... so it's a non-issue 😀

all narrow SCSI devices are 8-bit anyway, doesn't matter if the controller was an ISA or PCI... that is just how the signalling interface is designed
narrow = 50 pin in all shapes and forms
wide is 16-bit and is 68 pin or more

don't let the 8-bit/16-bit thing mislead you... the signalling has nothing to do with the system bus... narrow SCSI is still very fast on a pentium class system, especially when Ultra SCSI is used... the advantages of SCSI isn't just because of bus mastering, but command queuing, synchronous access, etc.... the low I/O overhead is what allows a mere "20MB/s" Ultra SCSI to leave Ultra ATA 33 in the dust, and in some cases Ultra ATA 66

what's important is whether your controller has a BIOS or not.. without a controller, all you are limited to are running CD-ROM drives, scanners, printers, and auxiliary HDDs... you will NOT be able to boot any SCSI devices without a BIOS on the controller card

Now i know why i can use an 8-bits scsi card for my purposes..

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/scsi2.htm

I only need an 16-bit SCSI card when i need to connect more then 8 devices on that same bus.. Iam only going to use 3 of those.. So i will have enough on the 8-bit scsi card.

I have bought this future domain controller with boot rom.
http://computer-software.marktplaats.nl/overi … fj%2B4VB4M&df=1

for a 386, you would've been better off with an AHA-1542 which is a 16-bit ISA card but is a narrow channel 8-bit SCSI card
an 8-bit ISA interface card will just be an I/O bottleneck

it seems to me you're still confusing bus interface with controller interface... they are NOT the same thing

h-a-l-9000 wrote:

Transferring data from the disk to system memory and vice versa is faster when the SCSI adapter uses DMA. Nothing more.

SCSI drives are intelligent. IDE drives are not. IDE drives require the use of the CPU, SCSI drives do not. When you remove the additional load of having to tell the drives how to behave by going SCSI you WILL get a speed increase from the CPU. The clock speed of the CPU will not change, but not having the overhead of talking to the drives all the time will free up clock cycles and programs WILL execute faster.