I agree with douglar. If you're not seeing any improvement then it's probably missing some kind of storage driver.

douglar wrote on 2022-03-06, 01:41:

Do those fast adapters come with option roms that replace your motherboard int 13 bios call?

Of course, like the DC4030VL.

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-03-06, 01:49:

I agree with douglar. If you're not seeing any improvement then it's probably missing some kind of storage driver.

I checked - the driver (DOSDRV.SYS v3.33) does not affect the speed, but a secondary channel appears.

"You will need this driver in the following situations:
1. You have more than two IDE drives attached to the EIDE4030PLUS
VESA-IDE channel
2. You have the EIDE4030PLUS VESA-IDE channel acting as a secondary
disk controller"

led178 wrote on 2022-03-06, 09:49:

douglar wrote on 2022-03-06, 01:41:

Do those fast adapters come with option roms that replace your motherboard int 13 bios call?

Of course, like the DC4030VL.

OK, great. Glad we can agree on that. And when speedsys is accessing the disks under DOS, it is using those real mode, 16 bit int13 calls from the option ROMs, yes?

I think you will find that there are controllers that there is a rare group of BIOS that spent time optimizing the real mode DOS calls but most focused on compatibility in the BIOS and worried about performance in their Windows & OS/2 drivers.

When you complain that a controller is stuck at 9.5MB/s, it really sounds like the BIOS calls don't enable UDMA.

I find that the easiest way is to enable UDMA for Speedsys is to run it under windows 98 with bus mastering enabled.

But if you can find a UDMA.SYS or XHDD.SYS that works with your board, that can do it too.

Also, do you have the shadow ram turned on for the option rom memory range?

Judging by the inscriptions on the microcircuits, this is a 1992-1993 controller, windows 3.1-3.11 was also released in 92-93. windows nt appeared in 93. Can we say that this controller was optimized for windows? 😀
Ultra DMA first appeared in 1997.

Shadow ram enabled.

led178 wrote on 2022-03-07, 23:44:

Judging by the inscriptions on the microcircuits, this is a 1992-1993 controller, windows 3.1-3.11 was also released in 92-93. windows nt appeared in 93. Can we say that this controller was optimized for windows? 😀
Ultra DMA first appeared in 1997.

Shadow ram enabled.

Good point. I wasn’t careful with my terms.

Can you check to see if you are doing single word dma or multi word dma?

What for?

ps: I upgraded my Win98 system to C2D E7500/775i65g (865G/AGP) :E

I've got some Roms posted:

Buslogic BT-410a BIOS v2.05 JAN-17-1995: https://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=2154
Promise DC-420 BIOS - https://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=2155
Promise EIDE4030 BIOS - https://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=1817

douglar wrote on 2024-02-07, 02:59:

I've got some Roms posted: […]
Show full quote

I've got some Roms posted:

Buslogic BT-410a BIOS v2.05 JAN-17-1995: https://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=2154
Promise DC-420 BIOS - https://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=2155
Promise EIDE4030 BIOS - https://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=1817

Looks like the Buslogic BT-410a is the same as a Tekram DC-680C. Do we know which came first? The Buslogic 2.05 rom contains the string "(C) Copyright 1993 Tekram Technology Co., Ltd. All rights reserved"

Does anyone have any benchmarks comparing the DIP based Promise DC-400 or DC-420 and the SIM based Promise DC-4030 or Promise EIDE4030Plus ?

Looks like the 4030's can do LBA if you get the latest BIOS. I'm not sure that the DC-4x0 series even has an int13 handler on board.