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First post, by Socket3

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Hi guys and gals. I was wondering if anyone has setup disks, the configuration floppy or any way to enter a BIOS on the Hyundai Super 16 XT computer. My machine will detect the HDD but will only sometimes boot from it (20MB MFM disk). The drive is fine, I tested it in my Schneider and it works perfectly, so I'm thinking it's a setup/bios issue. Can anyone help me with this? Perhaps there's a setup disk I'm not aware of?

Many thanks.

Reply 1 of 5, by konc

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No there's nothing like setup disks or BIOS utility, unlike the Schneider which has one.

Reply 2 of 5, by Socket3

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konc wrote on 2021-06-29, 08:29:

No there's nothing like setup disks or BIOS utility, unlike the Schneider which has one.

so then how do you configure floppy drives and disk drives? Or does the device have a BIOS configuration utility like a 286 or later? If so, how do you access it?

Reply 3 of 5, by Jo22

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I'm speaking under correction, but I believe floppy drives are configured by jumpers on XTs.
Because, if no Real-Time Clock (RTC) is installed, there's no place were BIOS settings could be stored.

On PC/AT computers, a small part of the RTC's internal memory is used to hold the configuration data.
But since most XTs do lack an internal RTC (they sometimes had ISA cards with clock modules installed), ..

The HDD settings might be installed on the HDD itself.
That's, at least, how things were done on systems with early MFM/RLL HDDs.

You would invoke the HDD controller's low-level formatting routine ("debug g=E800:0" etc), do the HDD setup
and the routine then would perform the formatting and store a few parameters on some cylinders etc.

During POST, the PC/XT BIOS would find the HDD controller's option-ROM and hand over control to it.
The initial boot-process would have then been done by the boot code stored in the MFM/RLL controller's ROM chip.
It would load DOS and make the drive geometry available via the usual interrupt calls, just like a modern PC's main BIOS would.

Sorry for my poor English, hope the text can be read still. 🙁

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Reply 4 of 5, by konc

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Socket3 wrote on 2021-06-30, 13:35:
konc wrote on 2021-06-29, 08:29:

No there's nothing like setup disks or BIOS utility, unlike the Schneider which has one.

so then how do you configure floppy drives and disk drives? Or does the device have a BIOS configuration utility like a 286 or later? If so, how do you access it?

Well the majority of XT's didn't have such a utility, the Schneider is the exception.
Floppy drives (that is A: or B: since they are DD only) are configured using the cable and/or jumpers on the drives themselves. As for the HDD, the controllers had their own ROM.
Of course there are exceptions to all of the above but that's the common thing on XT clones like this Hyundai.

Reply 5 of 5, by Socket3

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Jo22 wrote on 2021-06-30, 14:10:

You would invoke the HDD controller's low-level formatting routine ("debug g=E800:0" etc), do the HDD setup
and the routine then would perform the formatting and store a few parameters on some cylinders etc.

Would initializing and re-formatting the drive fix the issue? My XT hangs when attempting to boot off the HDD, I have to boot off a floppy...

Jo22 wrote on 2021-06-30, 14:10:

Sorry for my poor English, hope the text can be read still. 🙁

Your english is excellent in my opinion, but I'm not a native speaker either.

konc wrote on 2021-06-29, 08:29:

Well the majority of XT's didn't have such a utility, the Schneider is the exception.
Floppy drives (that is A: or B: since they are DD only) are configured using the cable and/or jumpers on the drives themselves. As for the HDD, the controllers had their own ROM.
Of course there are exceptions to all of the above but that's the common thing on XT clones like this Hyundai.

So the Super-16 is similar to the 5150 in that regard... but the hyundai does have a battery - that and the fact that it's a late XT clone made me think it might have a setup utility...