GigAHerZ wrote:

Why XTIDE bios is still a thing, when EzDrive seems to be so much easier?

XTIDE is still a thing because as the name implies it's intended for... XT PCs. The XT BIOS does not include hard disk support like later systems, so you won't be able to use a hard disk without an external BIOS.

TheMobRules wrote:

GigAHerZ wrote:

Why XTIDE bios is still a thing, when EzDrive seems to be so much easier?

XTIDE is still a thing because as the name implies it's intended for... XT PCs. The XT BIOS does not include hard disk support like later systems, so you won't be able to use a hard disk without an external BIOS.

As long as IDE drives are supported, EzDrive should work, right? I understand the case of XTIDE cards for computers without IDE HDD support physically...

So XTIDE is useless for 386 class machine to get rid of 504MB limit?

Yeah EzDrive should work fine. There are also some cards such as the Promise EIDE MAX controller that have their own BIOS to overcome the 504MB limit. And back then I even remember seeing "LBA cards", which was just a chip on an ISA card with the BIOS extensions for enabling LBA.

Don't know why you are experiencing problems with XTIDE though, maybe related to the network card where you have the BIOS chip?

I used XT-IDE to boot 386/486/sock7 systems from a 40GB HDD.

I'm assuming that EzDrive is something that needs to be installed on the disk? So that would be an extra step compared to just plugging in an ISA card.

However I noticed that XT-IDE would not detect a known-good WD-31600, so I guess it has compatibility issues with some drives. And on the aforementioned 40GB drive there are directories that I can't view even though they show up correctly on an Athlon system with native LBA (not sure if this problem was specific to a certain motherboard).

bakemono, yes, EzDrive resides on bootsector on the disk. Super easy and goes together with the disk. (Perfect for CF cards)

So as far as i understand, the XTIDE isn't worth it, when you already have an IDE HDD capable PC...

When XT-IDE fails to boot sometimes from a CF card, it's usually because of a chinese noname card about to fail.
One reason people repurpose XT-IDE to overcome BIOS limits is that by installing DDO software on your disk it renders it unreadable from other machines, unless you boot from it. So no more plugging the CF into a card reader to transfer files. Another reason is that some versions of DDO software that run on a 286 consume more conventional memory as they don't come with a .sys file (more recent versions don't even work on older PCs)

konc,
EzDrive does not render the CF card unreadable (OnTrack doesn't either, but installing/removing corrupts old data. EzDrive keeps old data in tact). And unless the ez.sys does not load for 286 (i currently don't have any 286 to test right now), it's going to take 0kB conv. memory, otherwise 5kB. (XTIDE takes min 1kB)
Also, with EzDrive (or 504MB limited "pure" cf card) i have no problems with booting.

I prefer XT-IDE over on disk drive overlay.

It means I can drop any drive into any computer running XT-IDE without worrying about pre-installing the overlay.

I recently got a dozen Intel 10mbit ISA cards, all with bootrom chips, so I'm never going to run out of ISA cards that can run XT-IDE.

For pentium and newer boards, you can often also patch the BIOS rom itself to fix bugs with supporting larger drives.

You can only get that 0KB conventional memory when UMBs are available, if you don't want to use EMM386 there's not a whole lot of options and with many 286 and older you often don't get to have UMBs at all. I'm not sure how much memory the overlay will need total.
I continue using XTIDE due to not needing any special preparation of HDDs etc. and so far I have not noticed any issues apart from someone thinking it is a good idea to use F8 as a function key, it conflicts with DOS/Windows boot selection key... (I haven't yet tried to move that key elsewhere, I downloaded the sources but I haven't yet found the place to change). I also always customize XTIDE for a particular machine using the little utility that comes with it.

@tiido, EzDrive removes 5kB from conventional memory of DOS in the form of limiting max conventional memory to 5kB smaller size. (I initially completely missed it, as it doesn't show as any running program)

In my usecases, i mostly have many computers, where i go with the same CF card in a plug-and-play sense. This way it's nice to have EzDrive on it, auto-detecting everything every time and i don't have to fabricate XTIDE for every computer i boot with my "travelling" CF card.
Trying to figure out, are there any real benefits on XTIDE over EzDrive for 386+ computers?

XT-IDE is also supposed to have a feature where it can boot using a serial cable, although I've never tried it because the server program requires WinXP and none of the machines in my retro room run XP, while none of my XP laptops have serial ports...

XT-IDE is much cleaner and better solution to a problem in my opinion. Disk overlay tools like EzDrive do work, but being a software component that resides on the drive which is being overlayed - are problematic. It's much better to have independent piece of software on external ROM. That's the way to do it, and that's the way big players did it in the past and do it upto this day (by big players I mean - SCSI/SAS/RAID interface makers).

Well, i'm trying to figure out, if the XT-IDE is an upgrade or downgrade compared to EzDrive and so far it seems to be a downgrade. Or am i wrong?

GigAHerZ wrote:

Well, i'm trying to figure out, if the XT-IDE is an upgrade or downgrade compared to EzDrive and so far it seems to be a downgrade. Or am i wrong?

You are wrong, unless you are talking about XT-IDE installed on 8-bit 'XT-IDE' controller card (like somebody mentioned before that XT-IDE is mostly for XT... well WRONG!)
But installed on NIC and using 16-bit controller (or even VLB controller) it doesn't have 'crippling' effect on transfer. Plus all the great features! Full list of features is present here:
http://www.xtideuniversalbios.org/
Also notice that EZ-Drive is thing of the past while XT-IDE is actively supported (latest stable release dated March 2019 if I remember correctly). So correct question is why EZ-Drive is still a thing... not the other way around.

PS: Still it would be good to do some performance comparison between both solutions.

HanJammer wrote:

You are wrong, unless you are talking about XT-IDE installed on 8-bit 'XT-IDE' controller card (like somebody mentioned before t […]
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GigAHerZ wrote:

Well, i'm trying to figure out, if the XT-IDE is an upgrade or downgrade compared to EzDrive and so far it seems to be a downgrade. Or am i wrong?

You are wrong, unless you are talking about XT-IDE installed on 8-bit 'XT-IDE' controller card (like somebody mentioned before that XT-IDE is mostly for XT... well WRONG!)
But installed on NIC and using 16-bit controller (or even VLB controller) it doesn't have 'crippling' effect on transfer. Plus all the great features! Full list of features is present here:
http://www.xtideuniversalbios.org/
Also notice that EZ-Drive is thing of the past while XT-IDE is actively supported (latest stable release dated March 2019 if I remember correctly). So correct question is why EZ-Drive is still a thing... not the other way around.

PS: Still it would be good to do some performance comparison between both solutions.

What would i win with XT-IDE bios over EzDrive? So far i'm seeing that i LOSE 1kB of conventional memory...

Latest non-beta from XT-IDE is from 2010.

GigAHerZ wrote:

What would i win with XT-IDE bios over EzDrive? So far i'm seeing that i LOSE 1kB of conventional memory...

Latest non-beta from XT-IDE is from 2010.

And that proves exactly nothing - most such hobby-projects are in never-ending beta state. It's not like anybody is going to use it in production environment anyway and you are comparing it to commercial product... Really?

For me the advantages over EZ Drive are clear:

- Less hassle with installing/removing the software.
- Drive autodetection (also drive doesn't have to be supported by BIOS - although IIRC EZ Drive suggest setting some 'default' CHS parameters in case of such drives).
- Adds support for 2.88MB FDDs
- Adds support for additional HDD controllers.
- Boot from serial (similar to booting from network - but you can just use standard serial port and you boot from floppy or harddrive image made accessible from modern Windows machine using serdrive tool - pretty handy, huh? https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?i … ot-instructions ).
- Booting from any hard drive or floppy drive (a bit like on modern systems) - not only the first one.
- When used with larger, newer drives - you can benefit from disabling the smartdrive (less memory used!) - but I guess it might be also the case with EZ Drive sometimes...

Well worth 1kB you mentioned if you ask me... also correct me if I'm wrong but you can disable the usage of this memory in the configuration menu - this will decrease the amount of supported IDE controllers to two and you won't be able to use IBM ROM Basic (XT thing, most clone XTs don't use it either).

Generally it offers the same functionality as EZ Drive + bonus hardware related things beneficial for all systems up to Pentium era...

HanJammer,

You mentioned "latest stable release dated March 2019 if I remember correctly" and i proved you wrong letting you know that latest non-beta is from 2010. This is what it proves.

For the points you are making:
- There's 0 hassle with EzDrive (and less than with XT-IDE, which requires special hardware)
- Drive is autodetected by EzDrive just the same
- EzDrive boots very well from floppy or other harddrives, which are not the first ones
- What the "support for additional HDD controllers" means? I have EzDrive working well with sound blaster's IDE connector

So as i get, only things i may gain is:
* 2.88MB FDD support, if bios doesn't natively support it
* Boot from serial, which i'm probably never going to use

And for that i need to pay the price of:
* Losing 1kB of conv. memory (This is the minimum it needs to take, can not set to 0)
* Messing around some additional hardware (NIC + ROM chip)

Kinda looks like a weak deal and downgrade. Like a second option, if the EzDrive doesn't work on some specific machine... But EzDrive looks all around better.

It looks like as if you have not really used EzDrive, but only assume properties of it. Is that so?

GigAHerZ wrote:

For the points you are making:
- There's 0 hassle with EzDrive (and less than with XT-IDE, which requires special hardware)

How special regular Ethernet adapter is? Actually almost all my DOS machines have one + MTCP which is super usefull.

GigAHerZ wrote:

- What the "support for additional HDD controllers" means? I have EzDrive working well with sound blaster's IDE connector

Means you can have upto 4 HDD controllers in the system.

GigAHerZ wrote:

And for that i need to pay the price of: * Losing 1kB of conv. memory (This is the minimum it needs to take, can not set to 0) * […]
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And for that i need to pay the price of:
* Losing 1kB of conv. memory (This is the minimum it needs to take, can not set to 0)
* Messing around some additional hardware (NIC + ROM chip)

Kinda looks like a weak deal and downgrade. Like a second option, if the EzDrive doesn't work on some specific machine... But EzDrive looks all around better.

It looks like as if you have not really used EzDrive, but only assume properties of it. Is that so?

Actually I'm suspecting you are just biased. I'm not going to be the one who will try to convince you because there's no point.

GigAHerZ,

So XT-IDE didn't work for your particular configuration and now you are upset and want to run a smear campaign against it? You do seem to be looking for reasons to hate it.

I do understand, XT-IDE doesn't always work in all situations and with all hardware combinations. But it is another tool in the tool-kit for keeping old systems running well. I prefer it over ezdrive, but I'd use ezdrive happily in situations where xtide doesn't work, like on motherboard that do not correctly implement boot BIOSes, or in your case, if it wasn't being reliable.

The 1KB of conventional memory lost isn't usually enough to cause actual problems that you can't work around with loading your other drivers UMA. This also means XTIDE works well on 286 and XT systems where EZDrive would chew up a larger chunk of conventional memory.

Your hate for XT-IDE is like hating a 12mm Socket wrench because the bolts you need to turn on a particular job are 1/2 inch. Just use the correct tool, and leave the other tools in the toolbox for next time 😀