Maybe you need to check the "DMA" box in the device manager for the HDD ?

Dont have the option - not sure the controller has DMA.
Comes up as 'standard IDE/ESDI controller'

Deksor wrote on 2020-07-07, 20:28:

Maybe you need to check the "DMA" box in the device manager for the HDD ?

DMA is not supported by generic multi-io VLB cards.

Could you advise which model chip is on your VLB card and maybe someone can advise whether you need a driver to enable the higher speed modes. I believe the lock-ups you're seeing can be solved with IRQ unmasking-where the OS allows another kind of interrupt to happen in the middle of a disk interrupt if necessary. Standard IDE/ESDI is likely bare-bones compatible mode for IDE.

Other than the cirrus logic graphics chip, the only other substantial chip is an acer m5105 a4e. Looks like that is a multi controller chip inc ide?

jakethompson1 wrote on 2020-07-07, 20:51:

Could you advise which model chip is on your VLB card and maybe someone can advise whether you need a driver to enable the higher speed modes. I believe the lock-ups you're seeing can be solved with IRQ unmasking-where the OS allows another kind of interrupt to happen in the middle of a disk interrupt if necessary. Standard IDE/ESDI is likely bare-bones compatible mode for IDE.

Just discovered can find manufacturer by searching on the FCC ID on the card - turns out the card is an Acer America Corporation VESA Local Bus, Multi-I/O Interface Card w/VGA Port Maximum Resolution 1280X1024. LA524 - if that helps!

Trying to find a driver but without much luck so far!

Yeah, I did some digging around on my Win95 machine and I found some ALI drivers but they were only for PCI from what I could tell. And Linux has an ALI driver but it's for M1439/1443/1445/1487/1489. No idea if there is any connection or compatibility between those and your M5105 but it does seem common.

Thanks for the pointer - changed the driver manually to standard ide bus mastered in Windows 98 and performance improved with the annoying freezes gone.

Cheers

When I had a Promise EIDE2300 VLB IDE card I remember its device driver had speed settings. It configured the drive to card interface speed, including DMA modes. But the card to system interface was not DMA capable. Still it is good for performance to have the fastest drive interface mode.

My 486 with VLB controller requires a software driver.
But even so it has a limitation of 410mb hard drive.
Will not work with larger hard drives and will default to slower speed.
I don’t know how it will work with a CF card ?

Your best performance bet will be to use a Socket 3 motherboard with built in IDE controllers this will also give your CPU and RAM and graphics card better performance. About a 20% boost over your VLB motherboard from what I have experienced and read from other posts.

The fun in doing this is trying to live within the limitations of isa, vlb etc 😀 it's why I wanted to build a 486 😀

No problems with large drives etc - i/o card works fine wit h 4gb CF via adapter and 40gb real hard disk using xtide bios extension.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-07-08, 19:10:

My 486 with VLB controller requires a software driver. But even so it has a limitation of 410mb hard drive. Will not work with l […]
Show full quote

My 486 with VLB controller requires a software driver.
But even so it has a limitation of 410mb hard drive.
Will not work with larger hard drives and will default to slower speed.
I don’t know how it will work with a CF card ?

Your best performance bet will be to use a Socket 3 motherboard with built in IDE controllers this will also give your CPU and RAM and graphics card better performance. About a 20% boost over your VLB motherboard from what I have experienced and read from other posts.

I'd really like to find the specific device driver for the controller chip but haven't managed to find it 🙁

Still, changing the generic driver type has certainly improved things!

swaaye wrote on 2020-07-08, 19:01:

When I had a Promise EIDE2300 VLB IDE card I remember its device driver had speed settings. It configured the drive to card interface speed, including DMA modes. But the card to system interface was not DMA capable. Still it is good for performance to have the fastest drive interface mode.

Could you take a picture of the card?

jakethompson1 wrote on 2020-07-08, 20:19:

Could you take a picture of the card?

Sure-
https://www.dropbox.com/s/s72cf5bxoljptsg/VLBCard.jpg?dl=0

The traces are interesting. Can we get a shot of the back of the card too? Trying to identify which components are ISA or VLB.

I too think it might be a VLB VGA card with integrated ISA IO functionality.

So on Google Images there are lots of plain ISA I/O controllers with that chip on them. I even see that apparently a 286 motherboard has it onboard. I'm wondering if what you have is a VLB graphics card + an ISA I/O card, all on one card. i.e., only the VGA portion is actually taking advantage of VLB.

Interestingly enough, one of the only exceptions is that Hornet card that someone posted here recently. But that is a fancy cached card so I wonder if it has a bunch of extra VLB logic built around the core M5105 chip.

That's an interesting point! I'd just kinda assumed it would be VLB for graphics and HDD but, of course, no reason why that should be the case!
Pics here:
Front with the full card connector
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bdnzfgn8oax2mj1/fro … llcard.jpg?dl=0

Rear
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6uvtdgvrhcbdy6c/rea … llcard.jpg?dl=0

Seemed to have found the cause of my problem - seems to be XTIDE bios extension.
If I disable this, the freeze issue goes and my disk benchmarks improve dramatically

Using roadkil's Disk Speed v 2.0 in PhilsComputerLab pack, get with XTIDE access times 4.3ms, cached speed 20.94MB/sec, max read 1.61 MB/sec, overall score 99.2

If I use the board's AMIBIOS, I get access time 2.26ms, cached speed 7.12 MB/sec, max read 3.05MB/sec, overall score 265.3

I have all shadowing turned on in the BIOS so am surprised the performance difference is so high.
I have the XTIDE on a realtek 8019 ISA NIC so I unplugged the network cable in case that made a difference but it didnt.

Odd!!
Maybe I have xtide bios poorly configured (using v2 beta3 AT-L extended 12kb bios)?

I needed xtide to get the system installed and running initally as dont have floppy or CD so was installing dos on virtualbox and then putting card into the 486 CF reader. However, now have installed windows natively, the machine boots fine from the main BIOS. Just cant use my IDE 40Gb 'real' hard disk anymore, but not a huge issue.

what controller type did you have selected in the XTIDE config utility?