486 & XTIDE making me crazy \ VOGONS

486 & XTIDE making me crazy

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First post, by mikem

Posted on 2020-09-15, 00:19

mikem Offline

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I'm hoping someone can give me a hand, or point me in the right direction on this problem...

I'm building my 486 "dream system" and keep running into storage problems. I'm using an MS-4138 motherboard and trying to get it working with a VLB I/O card and XTIDE card.

When I install my first VLB card, a QA6500A, and use a CF card reader with a 4GB card, it works but only lets me use 2GB. This is expected behavior. I was able to install Windows 98 SE on it, and everything looks great. When I throw in my XTIDE card, it freezes right after the XTIDE splash screen where it detects the controllers and drives. Not expected... no idea why it's freezing. I've reflashed the ROM chip multiple times, tried different ROM addresses, always the same problem.

When I install my other VLB card, a BOCA IDE500, it also works fine without the XTIDE card. As soon as I install the XTIDE, it appears to work and lets me access the full 4GB of the card, but acts really wonky. I can get it partitioned & formatted, but Windows 98 always crashes with either write errors or missing file errors during the install. I tried booting a clean Windows 98SE install after installing it without the XTIDE, and it starts booting but gives me blue screen disk write errors.

Anyone have any idea what I might be doing wrong? I'm using the IDE_ATL.BIN version of XTIDE, and my card is from Blue Lava Systems.

Thanks!

Last edited by mikem on 2020-09-15, 05:38. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 7, by Byrd

Posted on 2020-09-15, 04:18

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Hi mikem,

Are you running the CF card off the VLB controller?

Apart from potentially giving you access to larger partitions, what's the purpose of the XTIDE in your system? 2GB is a decent amount of space for a 486 + Windows + many games, you could do away with the XT-IDE card.

Reply 2 of 7, by Cyberdyne

Posted on 2020-09-15, 05:09

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In reality NO, all my retro computers have "oversized" HDD and CF and SC cards. Reason... large collection of old games, may of them "talkie" "CD" versions right on my fingertips.

For that I have amassed a nice collection of 10-128GB IDE HDDs. Well many of my 486 have DVD-RW drives... for reading my "strictly ISO" formated burned DVD collections of games and operating systems, they read just fine with MSCDEX and classic DOS.

I am aroused about any X86 motherboard that has full functional ISA slot. I think i have problem. Not really into that original (Turbo) XT,286,386 and CGA/EGA stuff. So just a DOS nut.
PS. If I upload RAR, it is a 16-bit DOS RAR Version 2.50.

Reply 3 of 7, by mikem

Posted on 2020-09-15, 05:37

mikem Offline

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Byrd wrote on 2020-09-15, 04:18:
Hi mikem, […]
Show full quote

Hi mikem,

Are you running the CF card off the VLB controller?

Apart from potentially giving you access to larger partitions, what's the purpose of the XTIDE in your system? 2GB is a decent amount of space for a 486 + Windows + many games, you could do away with the XT-IDE card.

JB

Yeah I am running it off the VLB controller. I’m almost at the point of giving up & living with 2GB, but I had big plans for installing multiple operating systems. Plus I really just want to make this work just for the kick of having a large drive. I’d really like to do something bigger than 4GB, but I had this one handy and want to make it work before trying something larger.

Reply 4 of 7, by Byrd

Posted on 2020-09-15, 09:23

Byrd Offline

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Try a large mechanical HD next; I've had issues of late getting "new" "extreme" "super fast" 8/16/32GB CF cards running on older systems that conform to an early IDE implementation. Later model CF cards often conform to a later IDE standard that's incompatible. You could also try booting the newer CF card off the XT-IDE itself. Performance of course will suffer, however you might not care nor notice on a 486.

Last edited by Byrd on 2020-09-15, 12:25. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 5 of 7, by Cyberdyne

Posted on 2020-09-15, 10:28

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Older 486 boards and newer CF cards sometimes will require you to disable IDE block mode and 32bit transfers in bios, some do not even like LBA translations, some SD card solutions allso have that problem. One motherboard and SD combo even had problem with spread spectrum.

Reply 6 of 7, by jesolo

Posted on 2020-09-15, 10:33

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Byrd wrote on 2020-09-15, 09:23:

Try a large mechanical HD next; I've had issues of late getting "new" "extreme" "super fast" 8/16/32GB CF cards running on older systems that confirm to an early IDE implementation. Later model CF cards often conform to a later IDE standard that's incompatible. You could also try booting the newer CF card off the XT-IDE itself. Performance of course will suffer, however you might not care nor notice on a 486.

Agreed - there are later XT-IDE BIOS revisions available that allow for faster access

Reply 7 of 7, by squelch41

Posted on 2020-09-16, 08:39

squelch41 Offline

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mikem wrote on 2020-09-15, 05:37:

Byrd wrote on 2020-09-15, 04:18:
Hi mikem, […]
Show full quote

Hi mikem,

Are you running the CF card off the VLB controller?

Apart from potentially giving you access to larger partitions, what's the purpose of the XTIDE in your system? 2GB is a decent amount of space for a 486 + Windows + many games, you could do away with the XT-IDE card.

JB

Yeah I am running it off the VLB controller. I’m almost at the point of giving up & living with 2GB, but I had big plans for installing multiple operating systems. Plus I really just want to make this work just for the kick of having a large drive. I’d really like to do something bigger than 4GB, but I had this one handy and want to make it work before trying something larger.

Apologies if obvious, but

- Check you're using a recent version of xtide bios - I thought I was but then found the r602 much more recent updates - solved issues I was having with xtide in win 98.
http://www.xtideuniversalbios.org/binaries/r602/

- might be worth trying the XTIDE 386 bios rather than the AT version

- have your motherboard bios set to no hard drive attached so it doesn't conflict with xtide

After a lot of fiddling, I got xtide working really nicely on my 486 with VLB ide controller and CF 4gb. Works well with a 40gb 'real' hard disk too

V4P895P3 VLB Motherboard AMD 486 133MHz
64mb RAM, CF 4Gb HDD,
Realtek 8019 ethernet + XT-IDE bios ROM, ES1869 soundcard, VLB Cirrus Logic GD5428 1mb VGA

440bx MSI 6119, modified slocket , Tualitin Celeron 1.2Ghz 256mb SD-RAM, CF 4GB HDD, FX5200 gfx

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