VOGONS


First post, by Heatvent

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I have an Acer V433S motherboard with Tyan S1342 hard drive controller. The S1342 has a secondary IDE channel but the AMIBIOS 1993 486DX ISA BIOS on the motherboard only supports 2 hard drives.

I am wondering if it is possible to setup two hard drives (spinning rust and CF card) as well as a CD ROM drive.

The CD ROM seems to work on its own without configuration so I am thinking the two hard drives would be setup in bios on the primary IDE channel as master (spinning rust) and slave (CF card).

With this setup, is there a way to get the CD ROM to work on the secondary channel. I just connected and doesn't seem to work but obviously I am no expert in this era of PC. Not the end of the world if this won't work but would be convenient since getting software onto a 486 is a bit of a PITA.

FYI, I don't really want to load XTIDE on a network card or something like that to get 4 drive support .or to boot from a CF card .. I would like to keep as period correct as possible just want this one convenience.

I am hoping to get some advice from the community.

Thanks in advance!

P.S. One other question... the S1342 has a 4 pin connector for the HDD light (https://theretroweb.com/expansioncard/documen … ation/21081.pdf). The two outer pins seem to be connected and the two inner pins as well. When I connect the HDD light two to of the pins the light stays on (either front 2 or back 2 ... same answer since they are connected). If I reverse the DuPont connector it then stays off and I can't seem to get it to work correctly. If anyone knows what I might be missing and to get the HDD light to work it would be great to have this operational.

Last edited by Heatvent on 2024-09-28, 17:39. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 12, by weedeewee

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you can have the cdrom on the secondary controller.
Just tell the driver to check for the second controller, while some do this automagically others need to be told, as in the line in config.sys

DEVICE=VIDE-CD.SYS /P:170,15 /D:CDROM01

and the line in autoexec.bat

MSCDEX.EXE /D:CDROM01

for a litle more info https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/VIDE-CDD.SYS
and do realize that the lines shown are for reference and will only work if the files VIDE-CD.SYS and MSCDEX.EXE are in the root directory of the boot drive and or PATH directive.

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Reply 2 of 12, by Heatvent

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weedeewee wrote on 2024-09-28, 17:38:
you can have the cdrom on the secondary controller. Just tell the driver to check for the second controller, while some do this […]
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you can have the cdrom on the secondary controller.
Just tell the driver to check for the second controller, while some do this automagically others need to be told, as in the line in config.sys

DEVICE=VIDE-CD.SYS /P:170,15 /D:CDROM01

and the line in autoexec.bat

MSCDEX.EXE /D:CDROM01

for a litle more info https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/VIDE-CDD.SYS
and do realize that the lines shown are for reference and will only work if the files VIDE-CD.SYS and MSCDEX.EXE are in the root directory of the boot drive and or PATH directive.

Great thanks for the info I will give this a try!

Reply 3 of 12, by maxtherabbit

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Also, if VIDE-CDD can't find the drive on the secondary, try OAKCDROM

Reply 4 of 12, by maxtherabbit

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Many ISA IDE cards which purport to offer secondary channels do not properly generate IRQ 15

Reply 5 of 12, by waterbeesje

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Some cards are called add-on ide and not specifically secondary. They may identify as 3th or 4th channel to avoid conflicts with any secondary ide channel that may already be present. Usually the known suspects like vide-cdd and oakcdrom pick them up with No problems but in some cases something refuses. One of my late 386sx boards had this problem and just refused to get the dedicated ide card working with a cdrom. The card works fine in another generic system. Eventually i added a soundcards with ATAPI support and that worked just fine.

Stuck at 10MHz...

Reply 6 of 12, by weedeewee

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Just to add some more information https://theretroweb.com/expansioncard/documen … ation/20327.pdf
The jumper settings for the Tyan S1342 VLB Multi IO controller.

It looks like there needs to be a jumper on J2 & J3 for both controllers to work... Though I don't see any clear indication of an enable/disable jumper.

Right to repair is fundamental. You own it, you're allowed to fix it.
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Do not ask Why !
https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/Serial_port

Reply 7 of 12, by maxtherabbit

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waterbeesje wrote on 2024-09-28, 18:34:

Some cards are called add-on ide and not specifically secondary. They may identify as 3th or 4th channel to avoid conflicts with any secondary ide channel that may already be present. Usually the known suspects like vide-cdd and oakcdrom pick them up with No problems but in some cases something refuses. One of my late 386sx boards had this problem and just refused to get the dedicated ide card working with a cdrom. The card works fine in another generic system. Eventually i added a soundcards with ATAPI support and that worked just fine.

I have found several cards which did properly respond on port 170h when jumpered for secondary, but still did not generate IRQ15.

Reply 8 of 12, by waterbeesje

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I was under the impression that ATAPI cdrom drivers don't need a dedicated irq, just like what happens on quite some sound cards. But i can be wrong here.

Heartvent, can you tell us what happens if you put the cdrom drive onto:
- primary slave, instead of the CF
- secondary master without CF adapter attached
- secondary slave with the CF as secondary master

Stuck at 10MHz...

Reply 9 of 12, by Heatvent

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So I ended up with the hard drive on primary master; cf card on primary slave; and cd rom on secondary master. I had it hooked up this way before and didn't work but I must have had an issue with cables because it works just fine. The cd rom is detected by the driver ... I am using the philscomputerlab dos starter pack which uses the videcdd driver.

Jumpers are all defaults except J18 has pin 1& 2 closed to enable IDE-2. FYI, the jumpers for my version of the Tyan S1342 (1.6) is here..

https://theretroweb.com/expansioncard/documen … ation/21081.pdf

Awesome that this is working ... thanks for the help and guidance!

Reply 10 of 12, by maxtherabbit

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waterbeesje wrote on 2024-09-29, 08:22:
I was under the impression that ATAPI cdrom drivers don't need a dedicated irq, just like what happens on quite some sound cards […]
Show full quote

I was under the impression that ATAPI cdrom drivers don't need a dedicated irq, just like what happens on quite some sound cards. But i can be wrong here.

Heartvent, can you tell us what happens if you put the cdrom drive onto:
- primary slave, instead of the CF
- secondary master without CF adapter attached
- secondary slave with the CF as secondary master

VIDE-CDD requires a working IRQ

OAK I suspect does not

Reply 11 of 12, by waterbeesje

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maxtherabbit wrote on 2024-10-01, 14:00:
waterbeesje wrote on 2024-09-29, 08:22:
I was under the impression that ATAPI cdrom drivers don't need a dedicated irq, just like what happens on quite some sound cards […]
Show full quote

I was under the impression that ATAPI cdrom drivers don't need a dedicated irq, just like what happens on quite some sound cards. But i can be wrong here.

Heartvent, can you tell us what happens if you put the cdrom drive onto:
- primary slave, instead of the CF
- secondary master without CF adapter attached
- secondary slave with the CF as secondary master

VIDE-CDD requires a working IRQ

OAK I suspect does not

That would explain a little about the memory footprint I guess, as oak needs to figure out the alternative access?

Stuck at 10MHz...

Reply 12 of 12, by waterbeesje

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Heatvent wrote on 2024-10-01, 04:32:
So I ended up with the hard drive on primary master; cf card on primary slave; and cd rom on secondary master. I had it hooked u […]
Show full quote

So I ended up with the hard drive on primary master; cf card on primary slave; and cd rom on secondary master. I had it hooked up this way before and didn't work but I must have had an issue with cables because it works just fine. The cd rom is detected by the driver ... I am using the philscomputerlab dos starter pack which uses the videcdd driver.

Jumpers are all defaults except J18 has pin 1& 2 closed to enable IDE-2. FYI, the jumpers for my version of the Tyan S1342 (1.6) is here..

https://theretroweb.com/expansioncard/documen … ation/21081.pdf

Awesome that this is working ... thanks for the help and guidance!

Great to hear all is up and running! That vide-cdd really is an awesome driver because of its pretty small footprint.

Stuck at 10MHz...