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Promise DC-4030VL Config Issue

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First post, by brassicGamer

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Hello all.

Short question: does anyone know how is this card configured as primary or secondary? Long question follows.

I've got this really nice caching controller but have never been able to get it working, so I was wondering if anyone here has any experience with this card (or similar issues with different cards). It appears I have rev. 2 of the card, which has jumpers for configuring the IRQ. It's a slightly complicated and annoying issue so I'm going to break it down as much as possible, so that any possible misconceptions I've got can be noticed.

- As the card has its own BIOS, the hard drive must be set to 'Not Installed' in the system BIOS. Otherwise you get a 'HDD controller failure' message and the card appears broken.
- When I boot the computer, the card's BIOS displays on screen and the menu can be accessed to configure the card.
- It identifies as 'secondary' with the jumpers in the default configuration (floppy enabled, IRQ12, VL speed normal). Although it auto-detects the drive correctly, it will not allow me to boot the computer from a hard drive because the card is 'secondary'.
- When I change the IRQ to 14, the card suddenly identifies as 'primary', but it does not detect the attached drive and says it's not installed.
- When I change the IRQ to 15, I'm back to the card being secondary and the drive is recognised again.

I have tried the following things without success:
- Installing a normal ISA controller to act as a 'primary' controller but the system hangs (possibly an I/O clash). This isn't a solution anyway because DOS won't see the Promise card natively - a driver is required, so is a workaround at best.
- Different I/O addresses.
- A different VLB slot.
- A non-VLB graphics card.

So my main question is, how is this card configured as primary or secondary? It seems to be doing it automatically based on some kind of configuration (which can't just be the IRQ - that doesn't make any sense) but either way I can't seem to get control over it. The configuration menu provides no options for this. The graphics card is the only other card in this system. It's a 486DX2/66 with EISA.

Sadly I don't have another VLB system I can try it in.

Check out my blog and YouTube channel for thoughts, articles, system profiles, and tips.

Reply 1 of 4, by Babasha

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Usualy IDE CACHE controllers must be set as PRIMARY. Usualy it need to configure BIOS of you computer and manualy set IDE HDD as Type 1 (10Mb) to make system bootable.

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Reply 2 of 4, by .info

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I have this controller in my 486-100 system. Working fine controlling one 2GB hard drive and an IDE ZIP drive. I also have the original manual for it, "Promise DC4030VL-2 VL-Bus IDE Disk Accelerator"). In my system, both drives on the Promise controller are input to the system BIOS setup Type 47 drives with the same parameters as appear in the Promise BIOS screen. Here is a little more about my setup.

It is an AIR 486SH VLB motherboard, 8x30pin SIMM sockers, no onboard I/O. So it as an older 486-VLB. It is a 5V only mobo I am using a 486ODPR100 overdrive CPU. The promise controller is the only IDE in the system, it has a SCSI CD. I remember that the IDE controller did not play nice with the ATAPI drives I tried it with which is why I went with the IDE ZIP and SCSI CD. My Promise controller is on IRQ 14, HDD is Drive 1 C: and ZIP is drive 2 D:. I have 16MB of cache ram installed (4x4MB 30 pin non-parity ie MAC simms). Was a nice way to use some MAC simms I had no other use for. Rest of system is; 16MB RAM (4x4MB 30pin), Spea Mirage VLB video card (S3 805), 2 ISA sound cards, ISA NIC, ISA for serial/parallel. This is actually one of my favorite, most used, and stable retro systems.

Good luck.

Reply 3 of 4, by brassicGamer

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.info wrote on 2023-04-22, 13:40:

In my system, both drives on the Promise controller are input to the system BIOS setup Type 47 drives with the same parameters as appear in the Promise BIOS screen.

Once again I am grateful for asking here, thank you. This could be the key information I'm missing. I also just remembered that the secondary controller on this card is the one that requires the driver, and that the first controller is recognised natively.

I am also intending to use a SCSI CD-ROM so that's encouraging.

Thanks again, wish me luck!

Check out my blog and YouTube channel for thoughts, articles, system profiles, and tips.

Reply 4 of 4, by brassicGamer

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Well, it worked. The default setting of IRQ12 seems to have been the problem as it behaved completely normally with IRQ14 - thank you! I have had this card for nearly 10 years and this is the first time I've really tried to get it working. Just goes to show it's worth hanging onto something and persisting, even if there are years between uses.

Check out my blog and YouTube channel for thoughts, articles, system profiles, and tips.

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