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Reply 20 of 30, by dr.zeissler

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orcish75 wrote:
1. XT-IDE BIOS has no issues with the Janus software, I have it running on my A2000 and A2286 bridgeboard. 2. By using the IDE […]
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1. XT-IDE BIOS has no issues with the Janus software, I have it running on my A2000 and A2286 bridgeboard.
2. By using the IDE port on the soundcard, you are already saving a slot, no multi I/O card needed.
3. I have an ET4000 in the first slot, CT2910 with a 4GB CF card connected on the secondary IDE port in the second slot and a 3Com 3C-509B NIC in the third slot.
4. The 3C-509B card serves 2 purposes, it houses the XT-IDE BIOS and it allows the Amiga side of the A2000 to use the network card through the bridgeboard.
5. Admittedly it is slow, about 60KB/sec, but still more than fast enough to transfer ADFs and WHDload files.
6. Have you soldered in the 16 bit extensions on the 8 bit ISA slots in the A2000?
7. Just wandering why you have the Etherlink III at IRQ 5 rather than 10 or 11 so that it doesn't conflict with the SB part of the soundcard.
8. Also set the address of the Etherlink III to 280h rather than 300h or 330h to prevent conflicts with the MPU-401.

1. Good to know that XT-IDE does work in an A2000
2. Do you boot from scondary IDE of the 2910? how fast is that (bench) and do you need/use a hardfile too? (CF card with Ontrack957 I think?)
3. The ET4000 is a great card, but has issues in old apogeem ega titles that does not allow or have a svga-fix like (ddave3/4) (jumping causes wiered display charcters)
4. I have to look what 3com-card I use. There are ones with 10mbit and ones with 100mbit. But 10mbit is fast enough for my purpose.
5. Every bit must find it's way through the DP-Ram (128kbit). I am not sure how fast a-wirte and a-read are. I am pulling the data from the pc-side to the amiga.
6. Yes every ISA-Slot is 16Bit.
7. It was preconfigured at I5/300H, I can change that. If I choose an address that is used by another device I get the info. But I can thange it to what I want and still get a negative FIFO test (before even the Irq is tested)
8. see above.

- Where do I get an XT-IDE Bios (chip) from, so I could boot from a secondary IDE-Port?
- You could also generate a mini Hardfile and put io.sys/msdos.sys/command.com into it and boot from, there? and use the CF-card for drive D? (need a smaller card because no Ontrack957 is bootet AND you get a beep from every acess of the hardfile when using/activating pc-speaker e.g. connected to soundcard.

Would you like to have some cool scene-stuff that works on 286/8/et4k ? I can put my tested stuff here.

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 21 of 30, by orcish75

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1. Good to know that XT-IDE does work in an A2000 2. Do you boot from scondary IDE of the 2910? how fast is that (bench) and do […]
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1. Good to know that XT-IDE does work in an A2000
2. Do you boot from scondary IDE of the 2910? how fast is that (bench) and do you need/use a hardfile too? (CF card with Ontrack957 I think?)
3. The ET4000 is a great card, but has issues in old apogeem ega titles that does not allow or have a svga-fix like (ddave3/4) (jumping causes wiered display charcters)
4. I have to look what 3com-card I use. There are ones with 10mbit and ones with 100mbit. But 10mbit is fast enough for my purpose.
5. Every bit must find it's way through the DP-Ram (128kbit). I am not sure how fast a-wirte and a-read are. I am pulling the data from the pc-side to the amiga.
6. Yes every ISA-Slot is 16Bit.
7. It was preconfigured at I5/300H, I can change that. If I choose an address that is used by another device I get the info. But I can thange it to what I want and still get a negative FIFO test (before even the Irq is tested)
8. see above.

1. Yup, it definitely worked out to be the best option, the A2286 bios doesn't have an autodetect option for hard drives, so you can only select the preconfigured drive types. The XT-IDE autodetects all drives up to 128GB. It also uses LBA addressing, so it's possible to correctly align the partitions on the CF card and still boot off it. Aligning the partitions gives you a slight speed increase and also extends the life of the card.
2. Yup, DOS 6.22 boots directly off the CF card connected to the secondary IDE port on the CT2910.

Benching:

Transcend 4GB 133x CF card: 900KB/sec read and write (sequential and random), 1.5ms access time. Not great performance, was expecting it to be able to saturate the controller, at least 2MB/sec or better.

Seagate 4GB HDD: Got around 2MB/sec sequential read and write, about 1.5MB/sec random read and write, 12ms access time.

No need for a hardfile on the A2000 side as it boots directly off the CF card connected to the IDE port on the soundcard. If you do want to configure a hardfile for any reason, it must be on an FFS partition on the A2000, not a PFS3 or SFS partition.

3. I haven't tried any Apogee games on the ET4000, I know the Matrox cards have scrolling issues with some EGA games such as Commander Keen. I'll try DDave 2 and 3 on my card and see if my card does the same.
4. I think the Etherlink III is the 3C-509B, same as mine, so it'll make easy to help you get the XT-IDE working on your system. 10Mbps is more than enough for these systems, they're not nearly fast enough to make use of 100Mbps. I have a 3C-515 which is a 10/100Mbps ISA card. On my P3 system, it maxes out at about 1.3 MB/sec, using 100% CPU time, nowhere near the 10MB/sec a 10/100Mbps card can transmit.
5. Yup, the 128K "window" to transfer data from the PC side to the Amiga side is very small. I know that a 386 bridgeboard does transfer the data a lot quicker than the 286 bridgeboard.
6. Cool! At least then you'll be able to use IRQ10, 11, 12 or 15 on the Etherlink III card.
7. Set the Etherlink III card to IRQ10 or 11 and the address to 280H. This way it won't conflict with anything on the soundcard and hopefully won't have the FIFO error.

- Where do I get an XT-IDE Bios (chip) from, so I could boot from a secondary IDE-Port?
- You could also generate a mini Hardfile and put io.sys/msdos.sys/command.com into it and boot from, there? and use the CF-card for drive D? (need a smaller card because no Ontrack957 is bootet AND you get a beep from every acess of the hardfile when using/activating pc-speaker e.g. connected to soundcard.

Do you have access to an EPROM burner at all? I'll attach some XT-IDE files to boot from Primary, Secondary and both. If you don't have access to an EPROM burner, I'll send you some chips, it'll take a couple of weeks though, because our post office is so useless.

Yup, you can setup a small hardfile as well, it'll only work on an FFS partition, not a PFS3 or SFS partition. It will be catastrophically slow though, as the data will have to pass through the 128K window between the A2000 and PC side. The disadvantage of Ontrack95 is that it'll only work with the CF/HDD that it's installed on. If you want to use another drive, you'll have to install it on that drive too. With XT-IDE, you can use any drive at any time without having to do any changes to it (as long as it's smaller than 128GB).

I'll setup my A2000 tonight with a similar setup to yours. I have an ESS1688 card lying around somewhere, it's IDE port is secondary, not primary like yours, but it won't make a difference with XT-IDE. I'll check all the addresses and IRQs and take note of what works. I'll check the MPU-401 issues as well and test it with my MT-100.

Cheers

Reply 22 of 30, by dr.zeissler

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Hi and thx for these Infos.

- No I do not have any chance to get my hands on an eprom-burner.
- The card does not work on 280H/I11 or on any other settings. Perhaps the card or the slot is defective. I have to investigate this further 🙁
- Here is my Scene-Collection for A2286/ET4000/SB(pro). Nearly all progs do work 100%, some have light issues due to the lowend cpu 286/8.

Greetings
Doc

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    Archiv.zip
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    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 23 of 30, by orcish75

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PM me your address and I'll send you an EPROM with the XT-IDE on it.

Have you tried to change the settings of the Etherlink III in the P2 system you have in your signature? Do you have any other ISA network card with a bootrom socket? Just about every network card I've tried has worked.

Excellent! Thanks for the Scene-Collection, I'll definitely give it a go on the A2286 tomorrow.

Cheers

Reply 24 of 30, by dr.zeissler

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I think there is a problem with the soldered 16Bit-Slots, but I am not sure. Pc-Config 8.20 says my et4000 is 8Bit!
I will have to open the case to investigate this further.

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 25 of 30, by dr.zeissler

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No it's not. Everything works now! 😀 The soldering is 100% top.
I took out the 3com and put another one in it, configured it to 280/I11 and now I get a stable connection to my NAS yeah!

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 26 of 30, by dr.zeissler

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orcish75 wrote:
PM me your address and I'll send you an EPROM with the XT-IDE on it. Have you tried to change the settings of the Etherlink III […]
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PM me your address and I'll send you an EPROM with the XT-IDE on it.
Have you tried to change the settings of the Etherlink III in the P2 system you have in your signature?
Do you have any other ISA network card with a bootrom socket? Just about every network card I've tried has worked.
Excellent! Thanks for the Scene-Collection, I'll definitely give it a go on the A2286 tomorrow. Cheers

Thank you for the EPROM. Sorry I did not get it to work. I think in that circumstances the Rom cannot be found. I simply do not see it anywhere.

Sorry that I did not get it to work 🙁

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 27 of 30, by Jo22

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Some network cards ship with an utility program to configure/enable the socket.
It's not that hard, though. Went through this a few times..

"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

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Reply 28 of 30, by Painy

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If you’re setting up the ct2910 to use a ide-cf card adapter, what drivers do you use? CDROM drivers? Mind sharing your autoexec.bat and config.sys maybe? I managed to use an 8x CDROM drive on my ct2910 (with ide) but the ide-cf won’t get detected as a secondary master. It works fine on the motherboard ide controller though.

Reply 29 of 30, by dr.zeissler

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Jo22 wrote:

Some network cards ship with an utility program to configure/enable the socket.
It's not that hard, though. Went through this a few times..

I did that, does not help.

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 30 of 30, by appiah4

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Many ES688 cards can do this, my Edison Gold-16 can for example:

Edison-Gold-16-B.jpg

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