It doesnt matter if you have a MFM or an IDE controller installed, both will work in the 286.

As said, disable the controller BIOS and boot from Floppy. Then check with any IDE low-level tool if the drive is detected.
If not, XT-IDE will not help you as there is another problem.

Here are some tools to choose from
http://www.dcee.net/Files/Utils/

Predator99 wrote:

It doesnt matter if you have a MFM or an IDE controller installed, both will work in the 286.

Well, yes and no. What I was trying tegrady to tell was that the old 286 BIOSes weren't IDE-aware per se.
They will treat IDE drives the same way as if they were old WD100x series controllers. In some rare circumstances, this may cause
weird compatibility issues, since CF cards, for example, are compliant to the newest PATA standards (but not necessarily 100% to anything pre-PATA2, even though they support 8-Bit mode).
Sorry, I'm not that good at explaining such things, I'm afraid, hah. 😅
What I meant is better described at http://www.os2museum.com/wp/how-to-please-wdctrl/

Predator99 wrote:

It doesnt matter if you have a MFM or an IDE controller installed, both will work in the 286. […]
Show full quote

It doesnt matter if you have a MFM or an IDE controller installed, both will work in the 286.

As said, disable the controller BIOS and boot from Floppy. Then check with any IDE low-level tool if the drive is detected.
If not, XT-IDE will not help you as there is another problem.

Here are some tools to choose from
http://www.dcee.net/Files/Utils/

I tried booting DOS 5.0 (the install disk) from floppy, but it did not give me the option to install DOS to a hard drive, just another floppy. When I was using the old controller, which only allowed a 117mb hard drive size, it did allow me to choose to install to hard disk.

What program should I be booting from floppy?

Also, once I have done that, which IDE low-level tool should I be using?

Thanks.

OK, now I am trying to go back to the non-Promise controller without the onboard bios and try using drive overlay software.

However, all the driver overlay software I have found seems to require a 386 and locks up my 286.

I did see ANYDRIVE, but I can't figure out how to use it....

Thanks.

No time to turn on my 286 at the moment..but the tools are
Anydrive
DrivePro

The 1st two here
http://ibm-pc.org/utilities/hdd/hdd.htm

Anydrive is small and you have to copy it onto you DOS-Bootdisk and start it from Floppy.
Use any hard disk with any BIOS.
Have you ever tried to install a new Harddisk
in your PC and found that the BIOS did not
support it? I was faced with that situation
lately. I got advice to buy a new BIOS or to
buy a special controller.

If you get one og them running you dont need the BIOS at all.

But I recommend them for testing purposes to see if your IDE-Hardware is OK. It should detect your harddrive with Model, capacity etc even if its not initalized by any BIOS.

How's it going, any progress so far ?

akula65 wrote:

I own one of these controllers and have attached the files that I obtained from Promise years ago. You might want to look in the EPRd100.zip archive at the eidepro.txt file for some troubleshooting tips.

Others who are offering suggestions may find the manual PDFs useful.

Good luck!

Thanks for supplying those drivers. I've just found my Promise ISA EIDEPro and will make up a driver disk for it.

It also could be that the ROM on your EIDE PRO was to old.

I have the same cards over here. And my card uses V2.0 of the rom.

Yours is v 1.03.. could make a difference. Thats why manufacturers updating their roms.

One of my cards works flawless. Only have to test the other (new in boxed one)

If its getting stuck, watch if you set your Bios Adress for your EIDE PRO card so that it wouldnt going in conflict with another device like your graphics card.

So if your graphics cards roms resides in C800 as exemple, you have to set the rom adress for you eide pro else where.

My card does the same thing on my Wyse WY-2108 system and the ROM version is 1.03

Is there a way I can upgrade the ROM to v2.0? I haven't looked before to see if there is a dumped version.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2021-05-22, 07:50:

My card does the same thing on my Wyse WY-2108 system and the ROM version is 1.03

Is there a way I can upgrade the ROM to v2.0? I haven't looked before to see if there is a dumped version.

I can make a dump.

Used Mini pro TL866CS to dump it.

Didnt removed the label.

On guess i have taken CY27C256@DIP28 to read it out.

Card should just work fine with this updated bios.

On the label it reads: PTI-608 APR 1998