Swiego wrote on 2020-03-28, 03:43:

Any other options I'm missing?

Hello, well, there is also XTIDE Universal BIOS, which can be stored on an EPROM chip. Or a Flash chip.
If plugged onto an ISA network card, it can be used as a replacement for the IDE support that's programmed into the PC's BIOS.
If you like, you can have a look at some of my older videos. Though you also find similar videos of other youtube users. 😀
Alternatively, there also were some IDE Enhancer cards. Essentially the same, but from the 1990s.
They were sometimes combined with these Year 2000 (Y2K) BIOS Enhancers.

Jo22 wrote on 2020-03-28, 04:12:

Hello, well, there is also XTIDE Universal BIOS, which can be stored on an EPROM chip. Or a Flash chip. If plugged onto an ISA […]
Show full quote

Swiego wrote on 2020-03-28, 03:43:

Any other options I'm missing?

Hello, well, there is also XTIDE Universal BIOS, which can be stored on an EPROM chip. Or a Flash chip.
If plugged onto an ISA network card, it can be used as a replacement for the IDE support that's programmed into the PC's BIOS.
If you like, you can have a look at some of my older videos. Though you also find similar videos of other youtube users. 😀
Alternatively, there also were some IDE Enhancer cards. Essentially the same, but from the 1990s.
They were sometimes combined with these Year 2000 (Y2K) BIOS Enhancers.

I have an XT IDE card! It's been used for a 8086 PC I've been resuscitating. I thought, being an 8-bit card, it would create a performance bottleneck but are you saying that it only serves to replace the BIOS but otherwise does not direct disk I/O through that ISA expansion slot?

Swiego wrote on 2020-03-28, 04:17:

Jo22 wrote on 2020-03-28, 04:12:

Hello, well, there is also XTIDE Universal BIOS, which can be stored on an EPROM chip. Or a Flash chip. If plugged onto an ISA […]
Show full quote

Swiego wrote on 2020-03-28, 03:43:

Any other options I'm missing?

Hello, well, there is also XTIDE Universal BIOS, which can be stored on an EPROM chip. Or a Flash chip.
If plugged onto an ISA network card, it can be used as a replacement for the IDE support that's programmed into the PC's BIOS.
If you like, you can have a look at some of my older videos. Though you also find similar videos of other youtube users. 😀
Alternatively, there also were some IDE Enhancer cards. Essentially the same, but from the 1990s.
They were sometimes combined with these Year 2000 (Y2K) BIOS Enhancers.

I have an XT IDE card! It's been used for a 8086 PC I've been resuscitating. I thought, being an 8-bit card, it would create a performance bottleneck but are you saying that it only serves to replace the BIOS but otherwise does not direct disk I/O through that ISA expansion slot?

Yes, the card is 8-Bit. But the XTIDE software can use any Standard IDE "controller", even the on-board types. In fact, there are several versions of XTIDE Universal BIOS.
Some are meant to work in ATs (286 CPU) or later AT compatibles (386 CPU and higher). The 386+ version also is compatible with Win95, I believe.
A working copy of the AT version (with screenshot) is attached in one of my earlier postings.

Simplest method would be to get a cheap EPROM programmer (TL866 etc) and a few cheap OTP 27xxx EPROMs (one time programmable chips that can't be erased).
A PCI network card *could* also be used for programming a certain group of chips, but I'm not sure. For booting an ISA card is required, though,
because the content of EPROM must show up in ISA adress space, more precisely in the range between 640KB-1MB, were the PC BIOS looks for Option-ROMS.

Another solution would be to update you BIOS, if there's a newer option. Or use a patched BIOS.
Without the ability to save the original BIOS it's a risk, though. An EPROM programmer could help here (making a backup).

You can get patched (unlocked, higher LBA etc) BIOSes at http://wims.rainbow-software.org/ and https://www.wimsbios.com/large-hdd-patched-bios.jsp

What model is it? I had a Compaq Deskpro 5/60 Pentium 60 back in the day and it had EISA slots - The hard disk was SCSI drive connected connected to an EISA SCSI card. Someone currently has new old stock adaptec AHA-2740W on Amazon for $30 - This will out perform any ISA IDE. They have an 8GB BIOS limitation, but you can use larger drives once the OS has loaded drivers for the card. I used to boot from a 4GB drive which was all I could see in DOS, but once Windows 98 had loaded my 9GB and 18GB drives were available.

Jo22 wrote on 2020-03-28, 09:31:

For booting an ISA card is required, though, because the content of EPROM must show up in ISA adress space, more precisely in the range between 640KB-1MB, were the PC BIOS looks for Option-ROMS.

That's not correct. Option-ROMs can be on PCI cards as well, otherwise PCI SCSI controllers wouldn't work, nor could you boot over a network using a PCI NIC. Besides, option ROM address space is not related to the type of bus.

The problem with option ROMs on PCI is that they need to have a signature matching the device ID. So you can not just put some ROM onto it - unlike with ISA.

dr.ido wrote on 2020-03-28, 13:12:

What model is it? I had a Compaq Deskpro 5/60 Pentium 60 back in the day and it had EISA slots - The hard disk was SCSI drive connected connected to an EISA SCSI card. Someone currently has new old stock adaptec AHA-2740W on Amazon for $30 - This will out perform any ISA IDE. They have an 8GB BIOS limitation, but you can use larger drives once the OS has loaded drivers for the card. I used to boot from a 4GB drive which was all I could see in DOS, but once Windows 98 had loaded my 9GB and 18GB drives were available.

The computer is a Deskpro XE 560. I’m not sure where this falls in the pantheon of Compaq’s early Pentiums, but I suspect early and it’s not a common model at all. I have a Deskpro XL as well, effectively the successor to your M, and indeed that computer has EISA and PCI and provides lots of options. The XE was cost reduced with only ISA. It’s very small and quiet though - I love these early pizza box Compaqs that packed a lot of power and capability into a slim chassis.

I tried my XT IDE board (setup for 8086 and connects to ISA). It does show its boot menu, however it does not prevent the Disk0 POST error when connecting larger drives. Still, Ontrack was able to see the full drive and even test it so I have the Win98 install running to see what happens. Perhaps the Disk0 boot error can be ignored. BIOS (compaq f10 setup) still sees it as a Type 65 8GB drive. If there is an XT IDE ROM available on an ISA card, I have a slot to spare. I may also have a 10mbit NIC with an empty option ROM socket I can try... will start investigating

SCSI is an interesting option... I’ll consider. I’m hesitant because I have a modern X58 Windows 10 decked out desktop fully integrated into my home network, and it has IDE channels and makes it easy to bulk transfer apps, installers, drivers from my home server by connecting any vintage drive to the dangling PATA connector I have hanging out the back. I’d lose this ease of use with SCSI. But, I’ll consider it.

when using the XUB (XTIDE Universal BIOS) to control "modern" 16/32-bit IDE controllers, you must change the parameters in the ROM to support that

if you are using a card which was designed to be a drop-in XTIDE solution for XT machines, it is almost certainly configured incorrectly for your use case

additionally, when you use XUB to manage your HDDs instead of the motherboard BIOS, you must disable the HDDs in the motherboard BIOS (set them to not installed and/or disable auto detect)

all that being said, the concept of using the XUB ROM to bypass your BIOS limitations and still use the integrated hardware (which is probably local bus and thus much faster than and ISA adapter will be) is solid, but it will require some advanced configuration and the ability to burn your own EEPROM

this is basically the same concept as what you suggested in your OP with:

- Buy an IDE HBA. I have a Promise EIDE HBA in another 486 PC that I understand plays this function (Promise EIDE Max) - no drives are connected to it but it does allow me to use more modern drives that remain connected to the on-board IDE connector. Could this give me better performance in the event the on-board controller is on some sort of local bus?

but it would not require purchasing additional hardware and only requires an EEPROM and card with the ability to host the ROM (NIC, etc.)

maxtherabbit wrote on 2020-03-28, 14:43:

when using the XUB (XTIDE Universal BIOS) to control "modern" 16/32-bit IDE controllers, you must change the parameters in the ROM to support that

I second that. In the link I mentioned, the ROM dump had been previously configured for that purpose, for example.

derSammler wrote on 2020-03-28, 13:25:

Jo22 wrote on 2020-03-28, 09:31:

For booting an ISA card is required, though, because the content of EPROM must show up in ISA adress space, more precisely in the range between 640KB-1MB, were the PC BIOS looks for Option-ROMS.

That's not correct. Option-ROMs can be on PCI cards as well, otherwise PCI SCSI controllers wouldn't work, nor could you boot over a network using a PCI NIC. Besides, option ROM address space is not related to the type of bus.

The problem with option ROMs on PCI is that they need to have a signature matching the device ID. So you can not just put some ROM onto it - unlike with ISA.

Ah, I see - thank you for pointing that out. I was under the false impression that the PCI cards were more tied to the network boot feature
and didn't allow full (entire) mapping of a ROM's content (into the UMA). That being said, I think that I have little experience with PCI NICs so far.

Swiego wrote on 2020-03-28, 03:43:

I have a Pentium 60 machine (of some personal sentimental value) that I am trying to upgrade to a better version of itself. Som […]
Show full quote

I have a Pentium 60 machine (of some personal sentimental value) that I am trying to upgrade to a better version of itself. Some potentially unique considerations:
- I believe this is one of the earlier Pentium machines (original BIOS was dated 1994 I believe) and it only has ISA slots
- The machine, a Compaq, does have a proprietary local bus (called Triflex; unsure how it compares to VLB) that connects the onboard video controller. It's fast--equal or better in DOS than my ET4000AX/W32i ISA card (which is the fastest ISA card I own) suggesting to me that this proprietary local bus is nothing to scoff at (vs ISA expansion cards)
- There is a built in IDE/PATA controller on the motherboard but I have no idea what bus it's on or how fast it is. I currently have a 540MB PATA drive (Quantum) connected and working fine but it is far too slow and not enough space for what I want to install. The 'next largest' hard drive I have is a 12GB and I get disk controller errors trying to connect it, lending me to think that the controller, whatever it is, is just too old to handle this size. Other drives I've tried (WD 40GB, 60GB...) also throw errors and all of these drives get recognized as a Type 65 '8GB' drive and behave flaky when running diagnostics.

Triflex is the CPU bus of the chipset with the same name. It basically allowed the use of multiple CPUs that normally didn't support SMP. Great for SMP servers, awful in terms of latency for single-CPU workstations. What Triflex didn't do was interface directly with peripherals- that went over EISA or (Triflex/PCI) PCI. This doesn't look like a PCI version, so I'd say onboard VGA and I/O would be EISA. That would make both far faster than anything you could hook up via ISA.

At a guess, the VGA would be an onboard version of Compaq's Qvision1024. Pretty primitive in terms of acceleration features, but good raw throughput, which is what DOS likes.

As for the HDD, between 504MB and 12GB you hit a whole range of possible BIOS limits, with the Int13h 8GB limit probably being the one that you're hitting.

That's what XTIDE can help with.

What I'd like is to swap in a larger hard drive and get the best performance I can get in the process. I'd like it to be a 3.5" HDD of some kind - I like the sound! I have a wide variety of PATA drives in the 12+ GB range and even a variety of smaller SATA drives including 36GB Raptors etc. sitting around collecting dust!

Options I'm thinking about and could use help weighing:
- Buy an ISA controller that is more modern and supports more modern drive types. Similar to the Promise Ultra PCI controllers I use on other PCs. Might this be slower than the integrated controller? Any suggestions on what to look for?
- Buy an IDE HBA. I have a Promise EIDE HBA in another 486 PC that I understand plays this function (Promise EIDE Max) - no drives are connected to it but it does allow me to use more modern drives that remain connected to the on-board IDE connector. Could this give me better performance in the event the on-board controller is on some sort of local bus?
- Stick with the current controller and look for the fastest, largest drive that will work with the on-board controller. At the time the computer came out, the 540MB was its max configuration. Perhaps a 2GB PATA drive would be borderline?
- Stick with current controller, use the 12GB or 40GB drive and a disk manager to try avoiding errors etc.

Any other options I'm missing?
[/quote]

Thanks dionb!

The on board video is a QVision 1280/I. It seems fast in DOS and Windows for this era, and has a clear output signal. My fastest ISA cards do not match it in either DOS nor Windows so I am comfortable leaving it be as the “best” this machine will ever see.

As to storage, the 540MB drive is small and slow, there must be room for improvement. So it sounds like my actions are:
- look for a faster larger <8GB drive and see what the behavior is. I have a 4gb on the way and will give it a try.
- find a 386+ XT-IDE BIOS and see if that lets me utilize a much more modern and faster disk
- look for fast DOM or CF IDE solution <8GB and benchmark to see if I can get anything approaching or exceeding the ISA bus limit with the on board controller. If so then I’ve confirmed that’s the “best” for this machine and can rest easy once I find an XT-IDE solution.

Sound about right?

An update on this: I was able to source a Maxtor 4gb drive (DiamondMax 4320 I believe) and eventually was able to get it working fully with this computer. Beforehand I connected it to a modern system that had some legacy IDE and could reliably pull ~ 15MB/s off it. Moved it to my Pentium and am stuck at 1.5MB/s —> almost certainly PIO. I do not see any evidence that this computer supports DMA with the onboard controller, which I would not expect anyway.

So... earlier feedback on this thread, and my own instinct, was that it’s better to use the onboard controller since If on a local bus (EISA/triflex) will be faster than ISA. however if I don’t have DMA support anyway, might I be better off with a 16-bit ISA controller that gives me DMA transfers?

Does XT-IDE enable DMA for a controller that otherwise doesn’t support it?

ISA DMA is slower than PIO for the HDDs and no regular ISA IO card connects HDD DMA lines to the ISA ones anyway (and there's no software support on BIOS level anyway even if they were connected).
I'm not aware of any IDE controller that can do bus mastering except maybe some of the caching controllers. It is something I plan to make myself in future but there's a good amount of time left until then.