Irq5 wrote on 2025-04-03, 12:33:

I'm in the Chicagoland area and could get up there Saturday if it's still not working.

I sent you a PM

I got the PM but have not met the threshold required to be able to reply to the PM.

I think I can get the system bootable by some means, however "working" is the trick and that will depend on pulling whatever utilities are in the original DOM used by the embedded computer, transferring them to a working OS install, and properly configuring them.

If you haven't yet, make a full backup of the original DOM. If you have an OSX machine or some sort of Linux box hanging around, use dd to pull that information from the disk device your ide->USB dongle. Repeat as necessary for all DOMs that have anything installed on them that you care about.

Your XTIDE controller should be able to boot from whatever IDE device you connect to your system, but getting a bootable OS image onto a CF card / DOM might be a bit roundabout. I have done this sort of thing in the past by creating a raw disk image the size of my targeted device and starting up Qemu with that image attached as well as some other bootable image.

Irq5, I found a friend with a working 486 tower.

Going to pick it up sometime this week.

I have saved both DOM's to USB and to a folder on my Win10.

I'll send you another PM with my phone number. Shoot me a text, let's see how far you are from me.

Can I plug my 3.5" floppy into my XTIDE?

Then can I download a DOS boot disk from my Windows 10 computer?

I have no way of formatting the floppy disk. Is there a download of DOS 6.xx that would be plug and play to my 486 from W10?

I have a floppy working!

I am able to have a command prompt now.

I'm re reading the previous messages now.

One thing I'm stuck on. I have my original DOM in IDE ISA expansion slot. There is no IDE directly on MB.

I also have EXTIDE plugged into a ISA expansion slot.

I'm trying to list all available drives in DOS so I can see what is what.

A: is definitely my floppy drive.

B: seems to be std IDE port.

C: seems to be XTIDE IDE port.

I question this because I turned off computer, removed CF card from XTIDE and booted up computer again. If I type C: it says invalid drive specification.

But when I type B: dir /a it doesn't appear to be the original DOM. Meaning I know what files should be on there... but they don't match what I backed up in W10. I'm attaching a pic of what comes up vs what it looks like in W10

I just noticed, dir /a in A: or B: list 41 files each, which appear to be the same?

I think I see what's happening.

A: is floppy
B: is XTIDE the ISA card itself? Don't know how to describe it?
C: is the actual CF card plugged into XTIDE.

Now I don't know how to try and view original DOM when XTIDE is plugged in?

Welp, I understand now why A: and B: look the same. You can access A: by typing B:. A or B go to the same directory.

I took off XTIDE. It won't read C:. Still says invalid drive specification, even though BIOS knows it's there.

I see that I can format it in BIOS. I'm scared I'll mess things up. I'll do some reading on that subject.

JonnyQuest wrote on 2025-04-19, 20:54:

Welp, I understand now why A: and B: look the same. You can access A: by typing B:. A or B go to the same directory.

I took off XTIDE. It won't read C:. Still says invalid drive specification, even though BIOS knows it's there.

I see that I can format it in BIOS. I'm scared I'll mess things up. I'll do some reading on that subject.

if theres an option in the bios for the ide drive(s) you should leave it set to an unused setting, if you try to configure the drive it will conflict with xtide bios.
you also might look to see if you have 2 floppy types selected, most bios let you pick what drive a and b types are, maybe you have both selected and should only pick drive A.

JonnyQuest wrote on 2025-04-19, 20:54:

Welp, I understand now why A: and B: look the same. You can access A: by typing B:. A or B go to the same directory.

I took off XTIDE. It won't read C:. Still says invalid drive specification, even though BIOS knows it's there.

I see that I can format it in BIOS. I'm scared I'll mess things up. I'll do some reading on that subject.

Yep, that's kinda normal in dos when you only have one floppy drive, normally identified as A:, switching to the 'second' floppy drive B:, just shows the first floppy drive.

Any chance you can share the original DOM disk image file ?

Ok. Got a SD card formatted and it reads.

I did it with fdisk and watched this video
https://youtu.be/1j10dHv18DM?si=muR5GdkddZMrlHwS

Getting closer!

My BIOS doesn't have nearly the options I've seen on the videos I've watched. Mine is AMERIBIOS.

I can gladly share the DOM. I don't know how to share as an image file.

Now, I need to get these DOM files onto this SD card.

I bought a W98 working computer. It has USB ports. I was hoping to plug my IDE reader and SD card reader into the W98 and clone one to the other. Is it that easy? Can I just drag and drop? My CNC computer formatted the SD card as fat16 if that matters?

JonnyQuest wrote on 2025-04-19, 21:39:

just drag and drop? My CNC computer formatted the SD card as fat16 if that matters?

thats highly likely not going to work, the system files have to be in the right locations. The command

1format c: /s

will do this special copy taking the system files from the floppy drive. This should be enough to make the C: bootable. At this point you could copy the DOM (minus the system files) over the CF card.
if it doesnt though boot the floppy again and run

1fdisk /mbr

if you imaged the DOM you could also reimage back on onto the DOM, but this would undo the fdisk.

JonnyQuest wrote on 2025-04-19, 21:39:

My BIOS doesn't have nearly the options I've seen on the videos I've watched. Mine is AMERIBIOS. […]
Show full quote

My BIOS doesn't have nearly the options I've seen on the videos I've watched. Mine is AMERIBIOS.

I can gladly share the DOM. I don't know how to share as an image file.

Now, I need to get these DOM files onto this SD card.

I bought a W98 working computer. It has USB ports. I was hoping to plug my IDE reader and SD card reader into the W98 and clone one to the other. Is it that easy? Can I just drag and drop? My CNC computer formatted the SD card as fat16 if that matters?

I guess you could share on google drive or similar.

And after loading DOS 6.22 on a SD card via floppy's, it won't boot from it.

I just have SD card plugged into adapter, and directly into IDE spot.

I have to restart machine, switch BIOS to boot A:, C: ... put DOS boot floppy back in to get a prompt. Type C: dir... it's all on SD card, but not booting.

I don't have EXTIDE plugged in currently, should I use EXTIDE with the SD card and adapter?

I formatted SD card like the video I posted a link too.

Sys a: c:?

JonnyQuest wrote on 2025-04-22, 03:20:

it's all on SD card, but not booting.

did you run the

1fdisk /mbr

?

Edit: another thing to confirm is that running fdisk and display partition information shows your partition as active (look for the ‘A’)

And is the partition marked 'active'?

Partition is marked active.

I didn't run fdisk /mbr. I'll try that tomorrow. It is a 32GB card fyi.

What are the

. <DIR>
.. <DIR>

Are those actual directorys?

I'm just getting a game plan together when I can start adding my machines files to the SD card.

The original DOM had a DOS directory, and a TEXT FILES directory (text files are the G code programs.

The machine files seemed to not have been placed in a directory.

I am also assuming I'll have to write to AUTOEXEC file to boot my machines program at startup. I have to figure out which EXE is the startup

FYI this pic is just a screenshot of a YT video. Not mine.