First post, by Megantonneke
I am currently doing a 286 "hotrod" build, based on an ILON M209 motherboard with Hedaka/Siemens chipset and a Harris 20Mhz 286 CPU. The setup has 4Mb 70 ns RAM in the SIPP sockets. I found the setup very particular for compatibility with 16 Bit I/O disk controllers.
I'm just sharing my experience to get further insights and/or help others browsing this forum with similar issues.
I tested the following I/O disk controllers with default interrupts and I/O addresses. Connected were a CF to IDE adapter as IDE master, a gotek as A: drive and 1,44 Mb 3.5 inch disk drive as drive B:. The graphics card I used is a Trident TVGA8900D-R.
- LCS 6624 U/G UMC UM82C862F Multi I/O Card
- MAGIC AT I/O PLUS
- MAGIC AT 1003A
- Goldstar Prime 2C
- Goldstar Prime 2 IO3KHO-IDEOCKU
Card 1, the LCS 6624 U/G, seemed to work fine in turbo and normal mode. However, this card seems not fully compatible with Goteks and/or FlashFloppy. The switching of a disk image is not registered correctly. When listing a directory again after a disk image change, it shows the content of the previous image. Software installation using multiple disk images is therefore impossible. I have tested different Goteks with different settings in the FF.CFG but the card seems the culprit.
Card 2 and 3, the two MAGIC AT cards, both result in a freeze at startup no memory check count or POST in both turbo and normal mode. Both cards are working fine in a Laser 12 Mhz AT system.
Card 4, the Goldstar Prime 2C, can't cope with turbo mode. It gets past the POST screen but then it is prone to screen junk, random characters over the screen and freezes when you try to run a program. However when you switch turbo off and it is running at 10 Mhz (14+ Mhz according to Landmark Benchmark) it works flawlessly.
Card 5 finally, the Goldstar Prime 2, seems to be fully compatible in both turbo and normal mode and detects the Gotek disk image changes correctly. So I'm sticking to this one for this build.
