So the system has vlb and ISA?

No pci?

There is xtide. You can put hard drives up to 128gb? I think it is. On 8 bit isa.

But. Sllllooooowwwwww.

I’m not very familiar with vlb, there may be some controllers for it.

Please recommend me some high-end VLB IDE controller

Excuse me for stating the obvious, but you won't need to boot from CD-ROM to install Windows 95. Is that even possible with the 95 disk? I remember needing a boot floppy in any case.

I usually made a bootable (DOS 16) partition on the hard disk, with another machine. Then all the win95 installation files on the second partition, install from there, and leave it there. Windows will never ask for a CD again for installing drivers, etc.
(I assume there are more elegant ways to achieve that, like registry hacks.)

AFAIK, if the machine won't boot from a certain device, it won't, given the same CMOS - but I remember that from later and stuff like booting from USB stick, etc.

ok, let's leave the boot from cd-rom aside for a moment. would the vlb ide controller allow me to use large disks as if they were connected to the card controller? Does the bios of the ibm 330 pc have any special characteristics? I did not understand how to integrate a vlb controller with Bios in a computer with the Buos that does not accept disks more than 2Gb

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-03-06, 08:34:

There is xtide. You can put hard drives up to 128gb? I think it is. On 8 bit isa.
But. Sllllooooowwwwww.

You can use a variant of the XTIDE-Bios on the empty bootrom socket of a regular network card and use it as enhanced IDE bios.
That way it won't be any slower than the regular routines from the stock bios!
i'm doing this everytime on older machines, works great.

LeFlash wrote on 2022-03-06, 14:24:

You can use a variant of the XTIDE-Bios on the empty bootrom socket of a regular network card and use it as enhanced IDE bios. T […]
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Sphere478 wrote on 2022-03-06, 08:34:

There is xtide. You can put hard drives up to 128gb? I think it is. On 8 bit isa.
But. Sllllooooowwwwww.

You can use a variant of the XTIDE-Bios on the empty bootrom socket of a regular network card and use it as enhanced IDE bios.
That way it won't be any slower than the regular routines from the stock bios!
i'm doing this everytime on older machines, works great.

Sorry but... WHAATTT??? Can you explain that? I have a 3COM 3c509 with empty socket, can i use that?

when you say "IBM 486" is it an IBM IBM (PS/2), or IBM compatible? Because the former is VASTLY different to the latter.

AlessandroB wrote on 2022-03-06, 15:30:

Sorry but... WHAATTT??? Can you explain that? I have a 3COM 3c509 with empty socket, can i use that?

Probably, yes.
You just need a proper ROM module and a config program for the 3COM to setup the option rom (size and base address).

LeFlash wrote on 2022-03-06, 14:24:

That way it won't be any slower than the regular routines from the stock bios!

Actually it can still be a bit slower if you don't turn on shadow memory on the area where XT-IDE sits.
I measured a significant speed improvement even on a 16MHz 286 just by enabling shadow memory, so remember to turn it on (if you can).
Now if you can't, it definitely won't be as slow as 8-bit ISA at least 😀

And yes, XT-IDE on 3com card does work !

It’s interesting whenever I have my XTIDE installed on my pentium system I can’t boot from my normal hard drive so on my system it actually made it worse not sure what’s up with that but, yes apparently there are ways to use the network hard to fix problems with your IDE by using a boot rom

^Pentium systems do work differently, their on-board IDE ports are not just IDE host adapters,
but true ATA controllers that support PCI bus-mastering.
As such, they need proper BIOS support.

The early "IDE controllers" of the 286/386/486 era are nothing more than address decoders that interface IDE ports to ISA bus via an given i/o address.

That's why early add-on devices, like EPROM programmers, could be easily connected via IDE port.

Anyway, it's often possible to configure modern ATA ports to appear as legacy IDE ports via CMOS Setup.

Edit: Edited.

Edit: Link to an IDE prommer (example, not mine) : http://www.loet.de/flasher_en.html

luckybob wrote on 2022-03-06, 20:04:

when you say "IBM 486" is it an IBM IBM (PS/2), or IBM compatible? Because the former is VASTLY different to the latter.

IBM PC330 DX4

mmmhhh.. i'm thinking is too complicated for me... i stay with the 2Gb Limit for now...

AlessandroB wrote on 2022-03-06, 08:25:

My IBM 486 does not allow booting from CD-ROM or even using hatd disks larger than 2Gb. Using an IDE or SCSI controller on VLB CARD allows you to boot from CD-ROM to install win95 for example? If so, during installation, how would the controller driver in question be handled? And with such controllers, would it be possible to use 20Gb or larger drives normally? tnks

To answer your original questions.
IDE/VLB/SCSI cards will have their own limitations with the first 2 possibly been around the 512MB limit so a downgrade. You would have to research any potential cards to find out what it's limits are.
Some cards, especially the SCSI ones could require drivers on the dos level, much like how a CD-ROM works in dos, other cards can boot without drivers, one reason adaptec cards are so popular.
A few may support booting from CD-ROM, but on a 486 I'm not that worried as boot disks are easy enough to make.

However I agree this isn't the best method for a 486.
Personally I went down the Disk overlay method, Phil has done a few videos
Ontrack is bit more lightweight
https://youtu.be/sI7U9LYbt28

However Seagate also gives you the ability to boot from CD
https://youtu.be/3Z15jdZEJiY

another purely hardware solution is to use multiple 2GB CF or SD cards that you can easily remove. Then you can have a cartridge style setup, say a card for 3D games another for RTS, or a card for dos and another for Win95.

chinny22 wrote on 2022-03-07, 10:36:

To answer your original questions. IDE/VLB/SCSI cards will have their own limitations with the first 2 possibly been around the […]
Show full quote

AlessandroB wrote on 2022-03-06, 08:25:

My IBM 486 does not allow booting from CD-ROM or even using hatd disks larger than 2Gb. Using an IDE or SCSI controller on VLB CARD allows you to boot from CD-ROM to install win95 for example? If so, during installation, how would the controller driver in question be handled? And with such controllers, would it be possible to use 20Gb or larger drives normally? tnks

To answer your original questions.
IDE/VLB/SCSI cards will have their own limitations with the first 2 possibly been around the 512MB limit so a downgrade. You would have to research any potential cards to find out what it's limits are.
Some cards, especially the SCSI ones could require drivers on the dos level, much like how a CD-ROM works in dos, other cards can boot without drivers, one reason adaptec cards are so popular.
A few may support booting from CD-ROM, but on a 486 I'm not that worried as boot disks are easy enough to make.

However I agree this isn't the best method for a 486.
Personally I went down the Disk overlay method, Phil has done a few videos
Ontrack is bit more lightweight
https://youtu.be/sI7U9LYbt28

However Seagate also gives you the ability to boot from CD
https://youtu.be/3Z15jdZEJiY

another purely hardware solution is to use multiple 2GB CF or SD cards that you can easily remove. Then you can have a cartridge style setup, say a card for 3D games another for RTS, or a card for dos and another for Win95.

tnks for the suggestion, i prefer hardware way instead software way. Actually i swap cf but i like the seeking sound of the real hard disk drive.

For the SCSI controllers from Adaptec, namely the EISA 274x and the VL 284x there is a workaround to support disks > 8 GB: Showing some love for Adaptec's ugly ducklings: Adding big drive support to EISA and VL controllers
The ISA Adaptec 1542CF should have build-in support.

AlessandroB wrote on 2022-03-07, 20:21:

Actually i swap cf but i like the seeking sound of the real hard disk drive.

So do I 😀
I have spinning rust as c:\ with OS and App's installed and CF card's as D:\ with games and whatever else.
That way I get the authentic sounds when PC is booting or windows is doing it's thing.
but also the speed benefit when loading games from the CF where the game would drown out the sound of the HDD anyway.