Advice on good PCI IDE controller for socket 7 / slot 1/ socket 370 motherboard \ VOGONS

Advice on good PCI IDE controller for socket 7 / slot 1/ socket 370 motherboard

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First post, by W.x.

Posted on 2023-12-29, 12:02

W.x. Offline

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Hello. What kind of PCI IDE controller has best compatibility to use with DOS on socket 7/ slot 1/ socket 370 platform?

The problem is, I have onboard secondary IDE controller disfunctional, only primary IDE works. I would like to have optical drive, or optional second HDD on other cable, than primary HDD.
I've found SIL0680 RAID controller, but I would have something more time period. It can have only ATA33 (UDMA2 mode).
I've also heard, RAID one is not recommended, and also, that these newer ones takes too much UMB from memory.
Maybe older ones from year 1996-1998 are better?

Anyway, I've tried it, and it didn't work under DOS. The controller saw CD-ROM, but under DOS, it couldn't be inicialized.
I've found out, that it can be tricky, that onboard Primary controller is active and with active HDD on it, while secondary IDE should go through add-in PCI card.
They recommended to completly disable onboard IDE controller.

What are you thoughts? Can be onboard primary IDE controller together with add-in PCI card as secondary together under DOS?

Reply 1 of 3, by dominusprog

Posted on 2023-12-29, 15:20

dominusprog Offline

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Adaptec PCI Ultra ATA

https://www.ebay.com/itm/385805667049?hash=it … ABk9SR-6yyuKWYw

Also VIA VT6410 IDE RAID controller officially supports Win95.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/235348340173?hash=it … ABk9SR9y95uKWYw

A-Trend ATC-1020 V1.1 ❇ Cyrix 6x86 150+ @ 120MHz ❇ 32MiB EDO RAM (8MiBx4) ❇ A-Trend S3 Trio64V2 2MiB
Aztech Pro16 II-3D PnP ❇ 8.4GiB Quantum Fireball ❇ Win95 OSR2 Plus!

Reply 2 of 3, by rasz_pl

Posted on 2023-12-30, 00:38

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> ATA33

period correct Promise Ultra 33 https://www.anandtech.com/show/14 plenty on ebay in $10-20 range
as you noted CDROMs wont like it, so in the end you will have to leave cdrom on motherboard integrated controller and move disks to PCI card.

Open Source AT&T Globalyst/NCR/FIC 486-GAC-2 proprietary Cache Module reproduction

Reply 3 of 3, by Horun

Posted on 2023-12-30, 03:02

Horun Offline

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W.x. wrote on 2023-12-29, 12:02:

What are you thoughts? Can be onboard primary IDE controller together with add-in PCI card as secondary together under DOS?

Yes as long as you can disable the secondary onboard to free up DOS compatible IRQ 15 if you want to use a CDROM.
For DOS CDROM you might need a PCI HD controller with paddle board to grab proper IRQ15 from an ISA slot. Many PCI HD controllers get a virtual assignment of IRQ by BIOS which may not be anything DOS drivers can relate too.
just rambling...

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

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