If you have an EPROM reader and tools for soldering you could try to solder legs taked from a header or another dead chip and put them on this one, then dump it with the eprom reader to safely save its content and flash it to another chip.

Did you try their old driver archive (upto 1999)?

Directory Tree - https://web.archive.org/web/19990223235345/ht … hk.com/drivers/

List - https://web.archive.org/web/199*/http://www.o … k.com/drivers/*

What chip is underneath the sticker ?

This card has Cirrus Logic CL-GD5426 and I managed to get it working. It was the BIOS.

When I searched for the BIOS images I noticed that some images had even bytes on the first half of the ROM and odd bytes at the second half. I assumed maybe some prommer had backuped it that way for some reason since when I changed BIOS for ICL CL-GD5426 (ISA card) the bytes were all in normal order. I managed to fix the broken EPROM by soldering new legs so it could be read by prommer and it appeared to be splitted like some of the dumps I found. So it seems that some of the Cirrus Logic cards are like that and some are not.

I found another thing as well. The card had 27512 (64k) EPROM but graphics cards normally have 32k ROM. There was factory installed wire to connect Vcc to A15 making the 64k EPROM a 32k one. The A15 otherwise looked like unconnected. Too bad, XTIDE Universal BIOS could have been placed to the second half if the A15 would have been connected (I suppose a simple hardware mod could be made even now).

Well anyway, I took backup of the Octek VL-COMBO BIOS. There are 32k and 64k binaries. The 64k one is the one read from the EPROM that just seems to mirror the first 32k (and is invisible to the system since A15 is not connected). I also read only the first 32k so 27256 EPROM could be used instead. But I managed to install the fixed original EPROM back so there was no need to make a new one.

Then I had problems getting IDE detected. I don't know why. Maybe bad connection since eventually HD was detected and I'm running tests now.

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2021-12-12, 08:56:

Did you try their old driver archive (upto 1999)?

Last night I had the same thought... But there's no BIOS for the VL-COMBO, just for other cards.

-> https://web.archive.org/web/19980614114714/ht … GA/00_index.txt

Fortunately aitotat got it managed!

kind regards
soggi

Nice, currently also working with this card, but older revision 2.1. It took me a long time to find jumper setting and i must combine settings for two similar card from Octek to find at least basic jumper setting (enable/disable ports). Also IDE port is a little weird: after each restart i must set "BIOS Mode Select" to normal, otherwise HDD is not detected. Probably can be selected permanently with some jumpers, but don't know which.

What is that External BIOS? Does your card have HDD support in its BIOS as well? Looks like it.

Probably no, HDD detection and configuration is still through motherboard BIOS. But Promise chip must have it's own "BIOS" stored somewhere, but on card is only one ROM for VGA. Maybe in Promise chip itself, datasheet would be very helpful, but it's unobtainable (or I didn't find it).

Promise rom bios is likely to be in same eprom as vga bios. vga bios gets accessed at C0000 promise bios at C8000.
in eprom that would be first 32k for vga bios and second 32k for promise.

hasat, could you dump the rom and attach it ?

It would be good to see the ROM contents of that 2.1 card - this topic got me intrigued and checking around, it seems like the Octek VL-Combo 5426 version just has the VGA bios?
I've got the same Octek VL Combo 3.2 card as the OP, but mine came without BIOS ROM. I got it working with a 1Mb eeprom wired up to work as a smaller ROM, using the standard 5426 BIOS. Though I've only given it a cursory installation so far, haven't installed the VL-IDE drivers for it and didn't think it could have an LBA extender.

soggi wrote on 2021-12-12, 17:35:

Last night I had the same thought... But there's no BIOS for the VL-COMBO, just for other cards. […]
Show full quote

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2021-12-12, 08:56:

Did you try their old driver archive (upto 1999)?

Last night I had the same thought... But there's no BIOS for the VL-COMBO, just for other cards.

-> https://web.archive.org/web/19980614114714/ht … GA/00_index.txt

Fortunately aitotat got it managed!

kind regards
soggi

Ooh, I was unaware of this. There are actually a good lot of drivers that are in the directory but not the file listing, those seem to 1.32(x) versions of the VL-Combo drivers.

I was going to say that the PDC20230 cards don't have an LBA BIOS, looking at what's here: https://www.computer-retro.de/Multi-IO.html#VLB
But in this thread on vogons: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations The Promise DC4000 does have a ROM, and is a PDC20230, so maybe?

I've got a fully working rev 3.3, I can dump the bios if wanted (i do own a TL866ii Plus)

EDIT: Got the ROM dumped and guess what, is exactly the same as the rev 3.2.

weedeewee wrote on 2021-12-13, 16:01:

Promise rom bios is likely to be in same eprom as vga bios. vga bios gets accessed at C0000 promise bios at C8000.
in eprom that would be first 32k for vga bios and second 32k for promise.

hasat, could you dump the rom and attach it ?

What software should I use? Don't have EPROM programmer.

hasat, you could try this procedure using debug http://mess.redump.net/dumping/dump_bios_using_debug

you just need to change these lines
N MYF000.BIN
N MYF800.BIN
and these lines
M F000:0 8000 0100
M F800:0 8000 0100
to these
N MYC000.BIN
N MYC800.BIN
and
M C000:0 8000 0100
M C8000:0 8000 0100
and then follow all the further steps

that should give you two files of size 32K

and if viti95 could use his tl866 to read out his we'll have something to compare to.

Something I noticed:

The rev 3.3 card looks very similar to 3.2 except the 3.3 has Cirrus CL-GD5428 instead of 26 that is still printed on the PCB.

The rev 2.1 card seems to have older PDC20230-B IDE-controller instead of the PDC20230-C that the later revisions have. The B-controller should be configurable by hardware jumpers only while the PIO mode can be set by software on the PDC20230-C. So the "External BIOS" cannot set PIO mode, only 32-bit trasfers and block mode and possibly LBA translations for drives over 500 MB.

From the driver archive posted earlier on this thread: Go to IDE_Card/VLIDE2/. There is IDE2_31.ZIP. Among drivers it contains VG4.BIN. This is much later version (3.1) of the "External BIOS". That driver package is for PDC20630 but the controller is so similar to PDC20230-C that maybe the External BIOS supports the older controller as well.

Anyway, at least it has some information. The "Turbo" means 32-bit transfers with block mode enabled and "Fast" means 32-bit transfers without block mode (some Quantums have broken implementation of block mode).

Please, let me know if anyone finds datasheet for PDC20230-C or PDC20630. It would be very useful.

PIO mode can be set on the PDC20230-C via jumpers (at least on my IO controller, I guess the JP1 and JP2 set this on the VL-Combo), but on my machine boot only works with PIO 0. Using the DOS driver it succesfully enables turbo mode and PIO 2, much faster compared without the driver (1.7 Mb/s vs 5.5 Mb/s).

Also I think the PDC20230-C doesn't support LBA translations, if I enable it on the BIOS the driver just crashes (tested with a 4Gb CF card).

Some more information on the PDC20230-C: http://www.ryston.cz/petr/vlb/pdc20230c.html

LBA translations are 100% software only and do not need hardware support*. If you enable it from motherboard bios setup and the driver crashes, it likely means that the driver do not understand that the CHS parameters reported by BIOS are translated (driver does not support LBA translations). LBA translation works fine with XTIDE Universal BIOS but the software PIO setup does not. Controller is correctly detected but the PIO mode is not set. For that the datasheet would be very helpful. That link is the source of all information for the PDC20230-C support in XTIDE Universal BIOS and it is incomplete. The PDC20630 documentation is even more incomplete.

Edit: Well, the LBA needs to be supported by the drive but without it, there is nothing to translate.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2021-12-13, 22:18:

Ooh, I was unaware of this. There are actually a good lot of drivers that are in the directory but not the file listing, those seem to 1.32(x) versions of the VL-Combo drivers.

I don't know if I got it right, but it sounds like you didn't get the directory listing!? There is always a redirect, if you just try to change the path in the archive.org UI. You have to choose other archive.org ways and then you'll succeed. Here we go -> https://web.archive.org/web/19990220083823/ht … splay_Card/VGA/.

kind regards
soggi

XTIDE Universal BIOS r622 now contains fixes for PDC20230C. There are some questions so datasheet would be welcome. But performance should now be set at max.
Really nice for a 33 MHz 386, don't you think:

aitotat, which mainboard are you using ?