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Drive Issues with a C&T BIOS

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First post, by LChackr

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I'm building a new 386 and this is my first experience with a Chips & Technologies BIOS. It's a CHIPS PEAK/DM BIOS 2.1.1 (1991).

The problem I'm having is that I have tried several solid state drives (CF as well as SD/IDE adapters) and I can't get it to read any of them reliably. Here are a few details:

1. I can boot the system using an MS-DOS 6.22 utility floppy and from there can access a CD-ROM drive. I can run software from CD like Phil's DOS benchmark stuff just fine. The ISA I/O card has been tested and works fine in another PC and I know that since it can read CD-ROMs just fine there is no issue there. I also swapped the IDE cable, just in case. It made no difference.

2. I used the IDEINFO tool to identify the CHS details for each drive, however in some cases the values they give are bigger than BIOS supports. I kindof have to guess, and that might be the problem.

3. I can use FDISK and format the solid state drives, as well as write data to them, but reading that data is a problem. It's not clear whether it's getting corrupted reading or writing. After formatting each drive I can make directories in DOS, copy files to the drives, but reading those files back causes the system to freeze.

Has anyone experienced this? I am wondering if I need to look at a solution like XT-IDE Option BIOS.

Reply 1 of 4, by Deunan

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Since you are using CF adapters make sure it's not the kind that shorts some signals to GND. This works on newer mobos (PCI+) with dedicated IDE controllers but your typical ISA IDE card just connects directly the control lines from the slot to the cable header. So the adapter could be causing problems although if FDISK works I would assume it's not the issue - FDISK also reads the media after all. So too does FORMAT. But these reads usually only cover the first track since this is where the MBR and partition table / OS loader will be stored.

XT-IDE certainly seems like a solution to try, you'll need an ISA Ethernet card with empty ROM socket. And also some EPROM programmer, or alternatively some dedicated XT-IDE card that can be programmed in-system.

Reply 2 of 4, by LChackr

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Deunan wrote on 2023-07-18, 12:55:

But these reads usually only cover the first track since this is where the MBR and partition table / OS loader will be stored.

OMG. AH! You are right. As soon as I read that it made sense. It explains why I can "write" files to the drive but not read them. DOS is updating the FAT but the data is going ... somewhere, and it doesn't know where. I also realized that SCANDISK kept finding unlinked files and now I realize that essentially everything getting written was an unlinked file.

Deunan wrote on 2023-07-18, 12:55:

XT-IDE certainly seems like a solution to try, you'll need an ISA Ethernet card with empty ROM socket. And also some EPROM programmer, or alternatively some dedicated XT-IDE card that can be programmed in-system.

That's the plan. After a lot of trial-and-error I think that I am going to be better off using XT-IDE than trying to trick this BIOS into accepting a more modern drive.

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