First post, by GigAHerZ
- Rank
- Oldbie
I've got myself a EEPROM programmer now and i'm trying out things that i wasn't able to before. This time i played around with the XTIDE bios on my 386 computer.
I got it successfully working on 3C509B-COMBO card, but...
First of all, it will take min. 1kB of conventional memory away. Additionally about 1/3 of the times it's unable to boot from my CF card and in the end some hdd benchmarking software is just going to hang, while using XTIDE bios. And by default, it's not able to detect my CDROM attached to a Sound Blaster 16 with proper IRQ and ADDR for secondary controller...
At the same time, EzDrive has a sys file that will free all the conventional memory, it's successful in booting every time and i haven't found any software yet (on dos) that has any compatibility issues with it. And of course, CDROM is detected as well.
So there comes my question: Why XTIDE bios is still a thing, when EzDrive seems to be so much easier? (software solution with better compatibility) Or am i doing something wrong with the XTIDE? (I used 27c512 EEPROM with at_ide.bin copied 8 times to get 64kB size and fully fill the EEPROM)
EDIT: Tried xt_atl.bin, the 12kB version, padded to 16kB and then multiplied to 64kB - it's faster and CDROM gets detected, but i still have stability issues with it... and let's not forget, i've also lost 1kB of conv. memory.
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - And i intend to get every last bit out of it even after loading every damn driver!