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XT-IDE Universal Bios - What gives?!

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First post, by Sev80

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I'm building a 386 machine and need to get the xt-ide universal bios going and my plan was to use a Linksys Ether16 LAN card configured to use the boot room. I also own a Xt-IDE v4 card with a firmware from 2013 on it.

My goal is to use a SST 27SF512 eeprom on the Linksys card to boot this 386 and its just beyond a nightmare. I got the linksys ether16 card configured to use a boot rom and confirmed it's working.

No matter how I burn the pre-built xtide_386L.bin or Xt-ide386.bin files onto the 27sf512, it will NOT work, so I took the eeprom from the v4 XTIDE which is a Atmel 28c64, dumped it, used the copy command to copy it 8 times and burned it onto the 27sf512 and put it in the linksys card and it works perfectly.

I want to use a newer version of the xt-ide firmware though.

Through a process of elimination, i kept burning the 8k bios dump that works from my 28c64 and putting it at 8k offsets on the 27sf512 chip. It turns out that it works when its burned to the bottom 8k offset on the card at 00E000. If I burn the copy I dumped (from 2013) and I burn it at that location, the linksys card works and the machine boots. Looking through the dump that works, it has the checksum written to the last byte on the bin file.

So I tried burning the newer copies in that same offset and it will NOT work! I tried both the xt_ide386.bin and xt_ide386L.bin and no matter what I try it won't work. I even tried calculating the checksum using HXD and appending it at the last byte of the bin file and that doesnt work either.

The instructions say that the xtidecfg.com program can calculate the checksum for you and pad the larger file to 16k but no matter what option I try and I go to save it, the file is still 10k. WTF?

What am I doing wrong here? I've been at this for hours and it's driving me crazy. I know the linksys card works with the older eeprom I dumped from my xt-ide v4 card but no matter what I try with the newer firmwares, even if i copy it 4x (10k) or 8x (k) on the 27sf512, it wont work.

This is driving me insane.

Reply 1 of 4, by Jo22

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Hi, my backups can be found here. There's no 386 version, though.
Re: IDE disk-on-module + 386

Edit: Did you use copy /b command? /b for binary.
Edit: Are you sure the network card can use such modern flash ROMs?
AFAIK, contemporary NICs supported the 2764 especially ("2764" was written in the socket).
27128 often was supported, too, since pinout was similar.

Typos fixed.

Edit: Just checked. The manuals of some of my ISA bus NICs mention 16KB and 8KB ROMs.
So that's 2764 (8KB) and 27128 (16KB), I think.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 2 of 4, by Sev80

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Jo22 wrote on 2025-03-18, 19:36:
Hi, my backups can be found here. There's no 386 version, though. Re: IDE disk-on-module + 386 […]
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Hi, my backups can be found here. There's no 386 version, though.
Re: IDE disk-on-module + 386

Edit: Did you use copy /b command? /b for binary.
Edit: Are you sure the network card can use such modern flash ROMs?
AFAIK, contemporary NICs supported the 2764 especially ("2764" was written in the socket).
27128 often was supported, too, since pinout was similar.

Typos fixed.

Edit: Just checked. The manuals of some of my ISA bus NICs mention 16KB and 8KB ROMs.
So that's 2764 (8KB) and 27128 (16KB), I think.

Yes, as mentioned, I can use that 27sf512 with the older 8k rom burned at 00e000 offset in the Linksys and it works great. It just wont work with the newer version that I am downloading.

And yes, I did use copy /b. Though once I discovered the correct offset that works on the linksys card and the 27sf512 eeprom, it wasnt necessary to copy the bin file over and over.

Reply 3 of 4, by Jo22

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It just wont work with the newer version that I am downloading.

Ah, I see. I vaguely remember that there's sort of a version confusion.
There are many versions of XUB floating around, which may differ despite having same version number. Or so I heard.
I haven't really downloaded a new XUB for years, also, I must admit.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 4 of 4, by Sev80

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okay. i figured out the problem. it was the checksum...

only took many hours of my life, but.......

the XTIDECFG utility wont write anything to the file UNLESS you change a setting, any setting. so you can't just load a pre built bin file and hit save and have it calculate the checksum. you have to change a setting.

I also found the offsets on a 64k chip (27sf512) so you don't have to copy the image over and over and hope it sits on the right offset.

for a 8k file, burn the bin file at 00f000

for a 16k file, burn the bin file at 00c000.

How do you know if your checksum is correct? load up the .bin file in Hxd and do a checksum-8. The result should be 00. If it's anything else, the checksum is not correct.

I got it all working with the latest versions of xtide.

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