6941D350.EXE 224097 ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ Û Release Information: LCS-6941 […]
Show full quote

6941D350.EXE 224097
ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ
Û Release Information: LCS-6941 Û
Û Drivers & Utilities for DOS, Û
Û Windows and NetWare .. Version 3.50 Û
Û Device Driver for Unix Version 1.10 Û
Û Device Driver for OS/2 2.X v1.40 Û
Û Device Driver for Windows NT v1.10 Û
Û F/W upgrade for LBA-support Û
ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ
6941D353.EXE 255315 *** current release with NT 3.51& NT 4.0 ***
6941OS2.EXE 31619 *** OS/2 driver ***
6941S102.EXE 55931 *** UNIX-driver ***
6941V101.EXE 106319 *** Netware, DOS, Windows ***

http://manual.longshine.de/5_Old_Product_Drivers/CONTROL/

Looks like there is an LBA upgrade.

vetz wrote on 2021-04-23, 10:17:

[...]
Looks like there is an LBA upgrade.

I have seen that and this thread here: LCS-6941 - BIOS upgrade
people successfully upgraded the version with the 286/20 cpu, do you think this will also work for my version? I am skeptical tbh

edit:
hmmm

Seems your card is a rebranded Tekram DC-680T and not from Promise. Strange that LCS had two different cards with the same modelname!

Drivers: ftp://ftp.mpoli.fi/pub/hardware/HDD/TEKMAR/DC6X0U.ZIP
BIOS (v2.02): http://ftp.mpoli.fi/pub/hardware/HDD/TEKMAR/DC680TR.ZIP
Manual: http://retronn.de/ftp/driver/tekram/manuals/dc6x0cd.pdf

aha!
indeed I can make out CD-680T under the LCS-6941 sticker
thanks for the links vetz!!!!
I hope this works with large hdds and it's not limited 540mb or something.....

there is this info in the driver package:

1  A Special Note on Wondows NT:
2               Previous F/W versions, such as v2.00, 2.01 & 2.02, have
3               problems working with "Trk-Remap" under Windows NT. This
4               ">528MB" problem was resolved by F/W v2.03 or later.

so there is a newer 2.03 fw at least out there... need to find it now 🤣

According to the manual it supports up to 4GB, but that might only be with the latest BIOS.

EDIT:
Since the drivers and manual is for the whole 600 series, I believe the comment about the Windows NT bug is for other models (which got newer firmwares). Tekram's old website list 2.02 as the latest for DC680T. Another possibility is that they never fixed it for the 680T.
https://web.archive.org/web/19970606091120/ht … AL/DC6X0DB.html

ah thanks for the extra info vetz!
I have never bothered with controllers like this until now so I never researched them...
4Gb -> not great not bad either 🤣 it would be nice to use a 8~10GB HDD with such a controller :\

Could be 8GB (which is normally the limit on other LBA supported devices), but they only listed 4GB as that was the largest drive they had at the time of writing of the documentation.

Remember that using a newer drive on a cache controller makes little to no sense as the onboard CPU will bottleneck the transfer and you'll get better rates with a regular VLB IDE controller. You'll only see a performance gain on older contemporary drives.

You should upgrade the rebranded DC-680 clone to the latest 2.x firmware. Don't worry that you only get two EPROM images. The "-1" socket can be left empty, if you install the 2.x chips in the "-2" and "-3" sockets. The 2.x firmware is better both in IDE compatibility and RAID-like features.

mkarcher wrote on 2021-04-24, 00:03:

You should upgrade the rebranded DC-680 clone to the latest 2.x firmware. Don't worry that you only get two EPROM images. The "-1" socket can be left empty, if you install the 2.x chips in the "-2" and "-3" sockets. The 2.x firmware is better both in IDE compatibility and RAID-like features.

really? I just assumed that the -1 eprom is the same and all you upgrade are the -2 and -3
what is in -1 that is no longer needed? any idea?

keropi wrote on 2021-04-24, 07:04:

really? I just assumed that the -1 eprom is the same and all you upgrade are the -2 and -3
what is in -1 that is no longer needed? any idea?

The -1 chip contains the code that is executed by your host processor (usually a 80486 for the VL edition). This ROM is accessed 8 bit at a time. The -2 and -3 chips are combined to provide 16 bit at a time and contain the code that is executed by the on-board 80186 processor (the controller firmware).

A lot of the Tekram controllers show what happens if you rush to market:

The first generation of the Tekram DC-600 controller had an 8-bit architecture (with an 188 cpu), and just a single 32K ROM chip for the controller firmware. It also contains a single 32K RAM chip for cache management data. The firmware for the DC-600 controller has been developed to these specs. The second-generation controllers have a 16 bit processor (the 80186) and an custom integrated controller chip (the ST-100AII for ISA, the ST-200AEI vor EISA or the ST-300ALI for local bus). To make up for the 16-bit bus of the the 80186, they added a second ROM and RAM chip, for 64K cache management RAM and 64K controller firmware. The hardware development team also added a small 512 byte "bootstrap" ROM for the host processor into the integrated controller chip. The controller firmware can set a control bit in the controller chip to toggle between the integrated bootstrap ROM and the dedicated host ROM (the -1 chip). The 1.x firmware for the second-generation controllers does not use the enhanced hardware capabilities of the second generation controllers: This firmware is still limited to 32K of ROM and RAM, and it does not support the bootstrap ROM, so the bootstrap ROM is disabled if you run the 1.x firmware.

The 2.x firmware for the Tekram controllers has better overall performance, provides better compatibility to IDE drivers in the host OS (most notably, the 2.x firmware implements the ATA identify command), and uses the full 64K of RAM and ROM. The complete host code (both the enhanced IDE driver and the setup program) is stored in the controller firmware ROM. The bootstrap ROM asks the firmware to deliver the 40K host code and data during the POST, and permanently installs the IDE support part into the conventional RAM (if configured that way).

interesting stuff, thanks for the explanation mkarcher!