Floppy, ide, and SCSI?

gdjacobs wrote on 2020-04-18, 21:08:

Floppy, ide, and SCSI?

Yes. Fixed the OP.

Widen your search.

find the bios file for the Adaptec chip and program that to the card. My instincts tell me the IDE and serial/parallel/floppy don't need bios help. SCSI will 100%. Looking at Adaptec cards on google. the 1532A scsi card has the same scsi/floppy combination and scsi controller chip the AIC-6360Q

I dont have a 1532 handy, but I'd program its bios to a spare flash chip and give it a shot. I say the 1532A, because it is PnP. The card you pictured doesnt have the massive jumper blocks that earlier cards have (i.e. 1522)

luckybob wrote on 2020-04-19, 00:06:

My instincts tell me the IDE and serial/parallel/floppy don't need bios help. SCSI will 100%. Looking at Adaptec cards on google. the 1522A scsi card has the same scsi/floppy combination and scsi controller chip the AIC-6360Q

The BIOS actually gives a menu to configure the entire board, including IDE and resources for COM/LPT/Gameport. Even the non-SCSI SIDE board had a BIOS.

Also, the board doesn't even have any jumpers for IDE or other devices — they are only used to allocate resources for BIOS.

So I don't think a SCSI BIOS will cut it here.

NO.

Those settings you speak of are in the motherboard bios. I have countless ISA IDE/serial/floppy/parallel cards and none of them even have a bios connection.

I'd alos source the bios file for the adaptec AVA-2825 as well. I bet one or the other will work fine.

luckybob wrote on 2020-04-19, 00:24:

Those settings you speak of are in the motherboard bios. I have countless ISA IDE/serial/floppy/parallel cards and none of them even have a bios connection.

Here's a page from the manual to Side Jr (the non-SCSI version)

It specifically states there's a separate BIOS utility. And it really doesn't look like Award/AMIBIOS.

Upd: also tried booting from the card: only the floppy works right now.

Going by a different thread (IWILL SIDE VLB IDE/SCSI/IO controller setup?) , cyclone3d seems to have one , maybe you can PM him .

darry wrote on 2020-04-19, 01:19:

Going by a different thread (IWILL SIDE VLB IDE/SCSI/IO controller setup?) , cyclone3d seems to have one , maybe you can PM him .

well, that's the best solution after all.

The aic-6360 Adaptec chip can work without a BIOS but only if there are jumpers to set the IRQ, Port, etc. I attached the AIC-6360 util to check it's settings from within DOS, you might want to see if it recog's the scsi part.

darry wrote on 2020-04-19, 01:19:

Going by a different thread (IWILL SIDE VLB IDE/SCSI/IO controller setup?) , cyclone3d seems to have one , maybe you can PM him .

Huh. Tried disabling the BIOS via the jumpers, and the controller actually works now. I've been able to detect an IDE HDD and boot from it. The serial mouse gets detected by ctmouse but doesn't work, though.

PM'd cyclone3d, hope he has an EPROM reader 😀

jheronimus wrote on 2020-04-19, 01:58:

darry wrote on 2020-04-19, 01:19:

Going by a different thread (IWILL SIDE VLB IDE/SCSI/IO controller setup?) , cyclone3d seems to have one , maybe you can PM him .

Huh. Tried disabling the BIOS via the jumpers, and the controller actually works now. I've been able to detect an IDE HDD and boot from it. The serial mouse gets detected by ctmouse but doesn't work, though.

PM'd cyclone3d, hope he has an EPROM reader 😀

If he doesn't have a reader, it imagine it should be possible to dump it through software running on a PC . It is an option ROM, after all, isn't it ?

Yep, I have one. Was already looking at this thread before the PM.

I'll have to pull out my reader and hook it up as I've never actually used it. I'll try to get the image pulled later this evening.

I will say that the computer I was initially trying to use the SIDE with didn't play well with it. It made me angry so I pulled it out and installed a regular VLB controller which works great with that setup.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-04-19, 02:08:

Yep, I have one. Was already looking at this thread before the PM.

I'll have to pull out my reader and hook it up as I've never actually used it. I'll try to get the image pulled later this evening.

I will say that the computer I was initially trying to use the SIDE with didn't play well with it. It made me angry so I pulled it out and installed a regular VLB controller which works great with that setup.

Thanks, really looking forward to it. Well the controller works okay now with IDE and floppy, but I can’t set the IRQ for other ports.

You know I could have sworn I have this card, but after looking through some boxes for 20 minutes all I came up with was the Always AL-7000 and a Control Concepts something or other IDE/SCSI/IO VLB cards.

Not 100% sure that this BIOS will work with your card as yours is a 1.31 and mine is a 1.4. The layout is a bit different and the one chip is SMC instead of UMC.

The EPROM is a ST M27C256B

The zip file contains the .BIN file and a text file with the EPROM specs.

.BIN was saved from my apparently counterfeit MiniPRO TL866A - or at least that is what it tells me when I run the updated software from them after I upgraded the firmware on it.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-04-19, 05:27:

Not 100% sure that this BIOS will work with your card as yours is a 1.31 and mine is a 1.4. The layout is a bit different and th […]
Show full quote

Not 100% sure that this BIOS will work with your card as yours is a 1.31 and mine is a 1.4. The layout is a bit different and the one chip is SMC instead of UMC.

The EPROM is a ST M27C256B

The zip file contains the .BIN file and a text file with the EPROM specs.
IWILL-SIDE_JTHQUICKSIDE_1.4B.zip

.BIN was saved from my apparently counterfeit MiniPRO TL866A - or at least that is what it tells me when I run the updated software from them after I upgraded the firmware on it.

Wow, thanks a lot!

Turned out, the chip I wanted to use as a replacement is not rewriteable, so I'll have to source some chips to test the ROM — don't want to kill working hardware for the test.

Hello,

I know this is an almost two years old thread but recently I got such IO card and its BIOS seems to be working so I can dump it if it is still needed.

Cizetta wrote on 2022-03-18, 17:56:

Hello,

I know this is an almost two years old thread but recently I got such IO card and its BIOS seems to be working so I can dump it if it is still needed.

If it is not too much trouble for you, please do dump it as while it may no be needed currently, someone is likely to end up needing it sometime down the road .

EDIT : P.S. Welcome to Vogons !

Yes, please dump it 😀

Like darry said, this will be useful for others.