First post, by AndrewK2685
Hi all
I haven't seen posts about this particular controller I played with, so thought to make one.
This is about DTC's ISA EIDE & Multi/IO Controller "Ultima Pro".
You can see its features from scanned pics of the box here:
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/dtc-ei … -pro-1866042804
In short, it features two high speed 16550 serials, a IEEE1284 ECP/EPP parallel, a standard Game Port,
a floppy disk controller and an EIDE HDD controller with onboard LBA BIOS for large drives.
This might sounds pretty standard for late ISA EIDE controllers with similar features like
Promise EIDEpro, or SIIG FastEIDE that also features two HDD connectors.
What's so special about this baby is that its onboard LBA Bios has this "Turboboost" thing,
supporting hard drives WITH UP TO 32GB STORAGE!!!
That's right, NOT THE USUAL 8.4GB one.
I guess it might have an early implementation of the Enhanced Disk Drive protocol.
I was able to attach a 40GB EIDE Samsung drive (I think it is an SP0401N) in 32GB compatibility mode
and voola, my old 486PC reported a disk with tons of 32gb space to partition and play with. 😁
I do have some other DTC controllers, like the VLB 2278EB, but it's onboard bios go until 8.4GB,
so I guess this was a later addon to it - the Ultima Pro is a later product anyway.
My goal is to swap BIOSes and see if I can get this extra storage with the performance of the VLB controller.
I'll also try the XT-IDE BIOS, although haven't seen any reports of it breaking the 8.4GB limit.