VOGONS


First post, by Blurredman

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Hey,

Some Time ago I built (via a kit) an 8bit XT compatable IDE interface with use for CF cards or the original ATA hard discs.

I intended to use it in my Amstrad PC1512DD, but upon installing it into one of the slots, the CF card gets detected in the ROM "bios", but most of the time it has characters missing from the Name auto detection, but even when the title is printed correctly, I cannot access the CF card properly.

I have tried the device in a modern day PC with an ISA slot and I can install DOS, access the CF card, no problems what so ever every time! But upon transfering the isa card/& cf card to the 8086, the drive's identification and contents are all garbled symbols/text and if I change a file etc it doesn't regester on reboot.

I am just trying to replace the 10mb MFM drive that is in there ATM that is slow, and as loud as hell, as well as having a fresh start of my own (I don't really want to wipe previous owner's files after 28 years of use).

I have cleaned the ISA contacts to no avail.

BTW, the kit is this http://www.lo-tech.co.uk/wiki/Lo-tech_ISA_Com … pter_revision_2

and I used the flash programme http://www.lo-tech.co.uk/wiki/Lo-tech_XT-CF_flash_utility

I don't think the 'XT Slot 8' thing is a worry, as the motherboard only has three slots, and I've tried the card in all three obviously.

http://blurredmanswebsite.ddns.net/ 😊

Reply 2 of 15, by SquallStrife

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If I had to guess, I'd say noisy power supply or something along those lines.

(EMF noise, not the kind you hear with your ears! 😉 )

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Reply 3 of 15, by Anonymous Coward

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I built the original XT-IDE controller and use it in a real IBM 5150. No problems at all. I think I tested it in my 10MHz V30 as well.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 5 of 15, by konc

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Maybe saying the obvious, but since the xt-ide is working on a newer machine, are you sure that it has the correct BIOS (the one for 8088/8086, not NEC & 286 CPU's) flashed?

Reply 6 of 15, by Blurredman

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Yeah i've loaded the correct bios onto the device. It's odd because it kinda 'half' detects it. I will post some pictures when I get home. If I'm lucky enough to enter a partition after booting from floppy, then i'll post that too. I'm using a 64mb card. When flashing, the auto bios is assigned correctly finding the device. I'll have to say it though, the universal bios flasher doesn't actually do the flashing, I use that in order to make up the stat file, I use the other flasher to then do the work. The univrsal flasher gives errors about not being the correct size for the eprom.

http://blurredmanswebsite.ddns.net/ 😊

Reply 7 of 15, by Blurredman

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Okay. So once home I decided to get the camera out and show yas.

This is a typical scenario on boot up. As you can see, sometimes it detects the device title fully (but still doesn't actually work), other times it is just garbled text as you can see.

DSC_0990.jpg

DSC_0992.jpg

DSC_0993.jpg

Unfortunately I have mislayed the boot discs I made. However, the fact of the matter is, when accessing FDISK (dos 3.2) it does display a partition I have created, however if I enter the partition and do, say, a DIR, the print out is (if i can acces it at all) the usual print out lined format, but it is totally illegible with pipes, numbers, odd characters etc and totally useless. I can't boot off the partition even though it set as such, so it always hangs unless I press A for accessing floppy. Damn annoying really.

http://blurredmanswebsite.ddns.net/ 😊

Reply 8 of 15, by Anonymous Coward

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If I had to guess I'd say it has something to do with the CF card you're using. Can you try a different one?

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 9 of 15, by Harekiet

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Yeah it seems the bios image is running fine which is on a separate circuit on the board and it's just communication with the compact flash card that's noisy/glitchy. Maybe some other device interfering on that same IO address.

Reply 10 of 15, by konc

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Also something coming out of personal experience, begin with a completely blank/no partitions card and do the partitioning on the system you plan to use it with the boot disk you are going to install. Yeah, it should be working in your scenario too, by this is the only case where I've seen this behavior before.

Reply 11 of 15, by Blurredman

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konc wrote:

Also something coming out of personal experience, begin with a completely blank/no partitions card and do the partitioning on the system you plan to use it with the boot disk you are going to install. Yeah, it should be working in your scenario too, by this is the only case where I've seen this behavior before.

Yeah, tried that. Hehehe 😎

The odd thing is how it works every time in another machine.

As for I/O conflicts, the Amstrad PC has C800 reserved for the hard disc, which is unfortunately why I cannot put the original MFM drive and the CF card in too, the Machine only boots from C800 if a HDD is detected, and the rom on the MFM drive is flashed accordingly (but i don't have any want to change it - after all, i did say i wanted reduced sound- a cf card enables the machine to be silent).

I will try another CF card in time, and come back to this topic. Thanks all! 🤣

http://blurredmanswebsite.ddns.net/ 😊

Reply 12 of 15, by JihemB

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Hi Blurredman,

I just create an account to this forum just to answer you.
I have an Amstrad 1512 DD too and it was a pain in the hass to have it work with XT-CF...

Here are some tricks to try that helped me (sorry right now I'm not located where my PC1512 is so I use my memory to give you the options 😀) :

Like you since I received my board and put it into the Amstrad it was very diffult to get it work. Now its better but I'm not 100% satisfied as you'll can see below...

As a foreword, please note that It seems the board behaviour changes depending on you're using MS-DOS 3.2 (provided with Amstrad PC1512) or MS-DOS 6.22.

My goal was (and is still) to get everything working with MS-DOS 3.2 :
OK, so, after a few (hours of) investigations, I managed to have a look at the board bios settings and see if there is something I can modify to get the board working as expected. For this purpose I downloaded the XTIDECFG.COM tool (be carefull, the 2.0.3 alpha bios file is the only one you can use !) and the FLASH.COM utility.

I changed the default "CHS Translation Method" ("Master/Slave drive" submenu) setting from "Auto" to "NORMAL") to get the "FDISK" and "FORMAT" MS-DOS 3.2 commands working correctly (I mean I was able to create a partition, format it and then read/write/execute files from the c: drive).

Unfortunately, until now I never had a chance to succesfully boot on this C: drive (even after FORMAT C: /S or SYS C: MS-DOS command).
To bypass this issue I had to copy "manually" the MS-DOS IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS files to the CF using my modern regular PC and using a Compact-Flash cartridge reader. Once the copy was done, I put back the CF in my Amstrad 1512 and it booted correctly MS-DOS 3.2 !! (remember the FDISK and FORMAT C: /S must be performed on the Amstrad itself before copying the 2 files using modern PC).

I'm still thinking about the problem and testing several options.
I'll leave you a feedback if I fix the problem once for all.

Please test was I did on your side and don't hesitate to share your own test and feedback (about what I wrote) on this forum.

JihemB

Reply 13 of 15, by Blurredman

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Hello there,

Thank you for taking the time to reply to this topic with your results.

Unfortunately, I have already tried the .sys file replacement route, and it did not work.

The odd thing is, the CF card, and the XT interface seem to work perfectly fine in anything other than the XT computer, indeed I remember putting 6.2, 3.2, 3.3 and 5 on the CF card successfully, and booting successfully from an ATX system.

But the moment I pass on the CF card and interface to the AMSTRAD, it refuses to work properly. I have cleaned thoroughly the ISA slots incase they are dusty (It's happened before in one of my other boards) or have material on them promoting the lack of consistent connection, but to no avail.

I am quite lost. I have however in the last few months come accross an old Caviar 380mb hard disc, that I intend to put in the AMSTRAD with the XT interface and see how that works. I beleive it should as it is <ATA2 (??)

Regardless, kinda stuck at the moment. Interesting how you are having similar issues too. Do you also get garbled text??

http://blurredmanswebsite.ddns.net/ 😊

Reply 14 of 15, by pearce_jj

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The boot sector needs to be replaced; it contains code that cannot be run on XT processor. Either wipe the CompactFlash card altogether using Lo-tech WIPEDISK utility, or run FDISK /MBR from a DOS 6.22 boot disk (floppy).

Reply 15 of 15, by Blurredman

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Okay. Sorry it's been so long to get back to this. But just today I decided to tackle the issue after having kept hold of a second CF card for many months.

I had to get the PC out of storage to try.

After a little while of messing around getting the PC into a usable state (leaving FDD drives for long time is bad-lots of poor reads), and trying to remember hard disc addresses and finding my programmes that I had left on floppy for future. I have come to a success.

I used instead my 32mb 'SAMSUNG CF/ATA' CF card and it seems to work perfectly every time.. When I go to the 64mb CF card it doesn't even get detected anymore.

Using my working CF card, with short time I successfully can boot from it. Using a DOS 3.3 FDISK I could create a partition table, and after restarting I could do a format c: /s with my original DOS 3.2 discs and all is well and hard disc boots are successful every time even though I did get a partition table error message at the end of the format.

I get proper results when using CHKDSK and have not encountered random characters in hard disc adoption or file listing.
I have added files and made directories that are intact the next time I turn on the PC.

I guess my 64mb was either dodgy or somewhere down the line hardware does not like the specific card..

Now.. time to transfer all the data from the MFM hard disc to a local backup on my server and to the CF card before it all disapears forever. 🤣

http://blurredmanswebsite.ddns.net/ 😊