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First post, by TheMAN

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There seems to be talks off and on about Triones drivers here but no one seems to have posted it.

In fact, the latest version is no where to be found on the internet.
So I will post them as I actually got the latest ones direct from Kifer Industrial (Triones maker) back in 1999.

The Triones drivers is for the Intel PIIX, PIIX3, and PIIX4 southbridge controllers. The Triones drivers were the first in the market back in 1995 before Intel got off their butts to release their own limited distribution of their "BMIDE" drivers. However, whereas Intel taken a hands off approach, Kifer kept updating the Triones drivers till the hardware themselves became obsolete in 1999.

Supported chipsets:
Intel 82430 series (430FX, 430HX, 430TX)
Intel 82440LX

Unofficially supported chipsets:
Intel 82430VX
Intel 82440 series (440FX, 440BX, 440GX, 440ZX); PIIX4E controller

Supported operating systems:
DOS
Windows 3.1
Windows 95/98
Windows NT 3.5x
Windows NT 4.0
OS/2 2.x and Warp 3.0
SCO UNIX 3.2.x and 5.0
SCO Open Desktop 3.x
Novell 3.x and 4.x

No other driver package supports as many operating systems as Triones. So if you are using "alternative" operating systems such as what's listed in your retro setup, have a motherboard that uses these very popular mid-90s Intel chipsets, and want the better performing DMA mode with your IDE devices, these drivers are for you.

Will it give you the best performance? Not necessarily. It is up to you to make that determination. Depending on hardware setup, you may get better performance using the standard IDE drivers with DMA mode enabled that comes with some of these OS's come with. If there's no choice, then it is the best choice. 😉

Included in the RAR are the latest and last versions of the Triones drivers. Version 3.70B is the latest version for most OS's. Only does the Windows 95/98 drivers were updated to version 3.70D. For information purposes, I included a locked version of 3.70D. It will only work with Gigabyte motherboards. The unlocked version has also been included. All files inside the RAR are original ZIP files as sent to me from Kifer back in 1999. They are not altered in any way.

Original email:
[quote=""Kifer Industrial, Co., Ltd." <kifer@bigfoot.com>"]
As title.

Please read the update.txt file, the current verison is 3.70b.

Also attach another new verison 3.70d driver for you, if your mainboard
is Giga-byte brand, you can use it.

Triones Bus Master Driver 3.70D version is a lock version, current just
can use for Giga-Byte Mainboard, we will release for support Gemlight,
DFI, JetWay, A-Trend, EPoX mainboard soon.

Because other mainboard maker had long time not bundle Triones Bus
Master driver, so we cannot release the Triones Bus Master Driver for
support it, also we need to protect our current customer.

If you really need Triones Bus Master Driver, you should push/ask your
mainboard vendor or maker bundle Triones Bus Master Driver.

3.70D solve many DVD-ROM compatibility issue, like Toshiba 2x DVD-ROM,
Pioneer 2.6x DVD-ROM, now the Hitachi, Toshiba, Panasonic/Creative and
Pioneer DVD-ROM are no problem for play DVD title with 3.70D version of
Triones Bus Master Driver.

P.S. again, this 3.70dlock.exe just can use for Giga-byte mainboard.

--
李超仁[Super Lee]
Kifer Industrial Co., Ltd. [恆邁實業股份有限公司]
Marketing and Engineer Dept. Manager [市場工程部經理]
Triones Bus Master Software Device Driver Agent
HighPoint CD Xpress Software Agent
E-mail:"superlee@bigfoot.com"
Company:"kifer@bigfoot.com"
HomePage:"http://www.bigfoot.com/~kifer"
Mobile Phone:0932269987
Pager:070061921#666YourPhoneNumber#
郵政劃撥:19080469
ICQ#:2362674
[/quote]
The 3.70D archives do not have a change log in it. I managed to google a 3.70C one (showing only difference from 3.70B log):

33. Fixed the problem of detecting the SD-M1102 Toshiba DVD-ROM drive
in Windows 95.
(version 3.70C)

It seems 3.70D further resolves optical drive issues as stated in the email above.

I have used the DOS drivers and it seemed to improve performance somewhat, at a cost of some memory... but no big deal as they could be loaded into high memory. There is a noticeable performance increase with Win3.11 if I remember correctly. Same with Win95a, but no real difference in 95b or 98. Obviously, it also made a difference in OS/2 and NT4. NT4 support is weird. If you use these drivers, it will attempt to enable DMA mode across the entire channel, not per device. If one device on a channel (such as a Zip drive) does not support DMA mode, but your CD-ROM drive on the same channel does, DMA mode is not enabled. Due to the better refinement and newer build of the NT4 SP6 standard atapi.sys driver, I recommend using that instead which has better compatibility. Use dmacheck.exe to check DMA mode status, and you can use it to enable DMA mode if using the standard MS driver.

The DOS drivers are a 2 piece meal. One is for the hard drive, and the other one is a CD/DVD driver replacement. Both obviously enable DMA mode. I am using these DOS drivers under VMWare (which emulates the 440BX chipset, and therefore PIIX4E controller) and it works. There's no doubt that it would work on real P3 motherboards. Note if DOS Idle 2.1 is used, system will lockup. Use DOS Idle 2.0 instead. DOS Idle is needed when VMWare, etc is used to prevent the virtual machine from hogging system resources.

Download link:
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/files/triones370d.zip

Last edited by TheMAN on 2012-08-31, 09:48. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 4 of 5, by swaaye

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I didn't step into the busmaster IDE world until Pentium II so I totally missed the Triones/BMIDE era. Once Win95 OSR2 and 98 included busmaster drivers, those 3rd party offerings faded away for the most part.

Reply 5 of 5, by HunterZ

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Sorry for the necro, but I wanted to say thanks. These are the only DOS CD-ROM drivers so far that got my Ricoh 32x8x8 CD-RW working with multi-word DMA 2 instead of PIO Mode 4 on my Gigabyte GA-6BXC rev 1.7 Intel 440BX motherboard.

XCDROM.SYS/UDVD2.SYS/whatever only did PIO mode 4 even though they detect the 440BX's Ultra DMA 33 chipset.