treeman wrote:

So like the topic says I am trying to connect 2 ide hard drive controllers on my 486

....So logically thinking if I have 2 ide controllers how does the bios know which one is primary?

You need to adjust the IRQ and I/O adresses of your IDE controllers accordingly. The two cards' IRQs should be different (14 and 15 preferably) and I/O adresses of their IDE channels should reflect primary master/slave and secondary master/slave adresses.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/mbsys/res/ioSummary-c.html

Please note that, not all cards allow you to adjust these parameters. As far as I can see, your card (PINE PT607G) does not have any feature that allows you to adjust the IRQ for example:

http://arvutimuuseum.ee/th99/c/P-R/20880.htm

Besides, I think you should also have a system BIOS supporting 4 drives, or a controller with its own BIOS. Actually I suggest you try to find an ISA EIDE controller with two channels and it's own BIOS.

You can also use XTIDE (most likely on an old ethernet controller boot rom socket), alternatively there are drivers for config.sys that will do the job. Windows9X and later will detect the drives without the help of the BIOS.

In your case, you just want to use the CDROM, no BIOS support is required.
Just make sure your controller can be set to the secondary address.

This thing served me back in those days:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/7022074593

By the way, maybe we can fix your problem at its root.

Acording to my experience, some CF adapters occupy both master and slave positions in any given IDE channel they are connected since the little PCB of them is designed to accomadate two CF cards. This is true even if ther is no second CF connector on it, but the solder pads for it. So, you can try to find a CF adapter which is really for a single CF card.

In my experience, the independent adapters generally have this problem, but bracket adapters do not.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/40-Pin-IDE-to-Compac … XgAAOSwE~xa--9A

As another option, you can use a sound card with an IDE port, which can be used for our CD-ROM drive with ease.

the adapter I have is a pci version so it has a master/slave pin but I made a floppy drive bay for it so can insert the cf from the front of the pc. There is no way the ide cable can reach from floppy bay to cdrom drive, especially when the adapter is near the front of the bracket.

But the sound card is a very good idea!
I have a vibra 16isa which I plugged in a connected the cables but I have never connected a cdrom this way.

What I have done so far is set the cdrom to master and connected a separate ide cable cdrom - > vibra 16

Booting off my cfcard with standard cdrom bootup mscdex doesn't detect the cdrom.

There is jumpers on the vibra 16 regarding ide but not very clear, or do I need to set it up different in autoexec and config.sys?

the cdrom is a creative cd220e

Thanx for your help this solution will definitely work for me if I can get the cd drive to detect

You need a cdrom driver like oakcdrom.sysor similar in your config.sys _before_ MSCDEX!

yes I do have that, think its some Samsung.sys or similar, it is a working cdrom setup that detects the cdrom when I have it connected direct to ide controller

treeman wrote:

yes I do have that, think its some Samsung.sys or similar, it is a working cdrom setup that detects the cdrom when I have it connected direct to ide controller

You need to do two things:

- Some SB cards have jumpers to enable/disable the CD-ROM port and also to adjust its resources (IRQ, I/O). Some are PNP cards, so these will be adjusted by a utility like CTCM. You need to be sure that the port is enabled and resources assigned correctly

- Sometimes your CD-ROM driver (OAKCD.SYS, etc.) requires you to define where your CD-ROM controller address is with command line parameters.

I will check from my setup when I return back to home and inform you.

I solved similar problem by buying a longer ide cable from ebay.

I solved the problem, thank you for pointing me to the right way.

So for anybody interested I found a old sb16/vibra install txt file. I had to download ctload.com and sbide.sys (already have mscdex)
Simply add these lines to a batch file or autoexec.bat
C:\<win95dir>\CTPNP
C:\<dir>\CTLOAD C:\<dir>\DRV\SBIDE.SYS /D:MSCD001 /V /P:1E8,11,3EE
C:\<win95dir>\COMMAND\MSCDEX /D:MSCD001 /V /M:8

Now I have cfcard as primary hard drive (I may add another mechanical drive as a slave later) and cdrom on separate ide cable through the sound card

thanx tayyare for getting me in the right direction

treeman wrote:

I solved the problem, thank you for pointing me to the right way. […]
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I solved the problem, thank you for pointing me to the right way.

So for anybody interested I found a old sb16/vibra install txt file. I had to download ctload.com and sbide.sys (already have mscdex)
Simply add these lines to a batch file or autoexec.bat
C:\<win95dir>\CTPNP
C:\<dir>\CTLOAD C:\<dir>\DRV\SBIDE.SYS /D:MSCD001 /V /P:1E8,11,3EE
C:\<win95dir>\COMMAND\MSCDEX /D:MSCD001 /V /M:8

Now I have cfcard as primary hard drive (I may add another mechanical drive as a slave later) and cdrom on separate ide cable through the sound card

thanx tayyare for getting me in the right direction

No problem at all, I'm happy to hear that you nailed it 🤣

treeman wrote:

... There is no way the ide cable can reach from floppy bay to cdrom drive, especially when the adapter is near the front of the bracket.

Ah, actually, there is: 🤣:

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/OPEN-SMART-Fle … 51-b567ab6fa22c

:

I used one of those extension cables when replacing my original Xbox's hard drive. They're pretty handy to have.

I never knew such extensions existed but very handy thing to have.
in my case it's a very long and tricky distance, have look at my case

The ide->cfcard reader is at the very bottom in a home made floppy disc bracket, and the actual power and ide plug is right at the front of the case where the cf card goes in. The cdrom is at the very top, there is alot of cables hidden in the empty space under the cdrom so very little space, but the solution with the soundcard works excellent for me. Also leaves room to have a physical hard disk and. cfcard reader plugged on the same cable because they are close together.

Another benefit I found is I have a .bat file that can load the cdrom driver from dos prompt, so there is no need to have it enabled in config.sys and autoexec.bat which gives me very clean conventional memory, and if I want to use the cdrom I go to dos prompt and type cdrom.bat and no need to reboot