Uncreative Labs

Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 12:21 pm

I just purchased this card on ebay however it appears to only work with 360K FDD's (have not tried 1.2 or 720) and not with 1.44M.

There is BIOS on board which is supposed to provide the necessary extensions for an XT however nothing is displayed on the screen upon bootup, does anyone know if this BIOS does make its presence known at boot up?

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

That's quite interesting. Something similar just happened to me recently. I ordered what the seller advertised as a 1.44meg high density floppy controller, and I received what appears to be just a DTC clone of a standard XT floppy controller. It's not even the same one that was shown in the ebay picture. To make matters even worse I can't find a single reference to the card anywhere, so I am unable to set the jumpers on it.

This is the 3rd time I've been screwed by buying HD floppy controllers. The first one arrived with a dead BIOS. The 2nd one just never came in the mail....and now this one just isn't what I thought I should be getting.

Today I ran the 2M V3.0 program that emulates an AT AMI floppy controller. It takes 4kb of RAM, but it works great. I highly recommend it. Only other downside is you can't boot from HD floppies. 360/720k formatted 3.5" disks can still be booted from however.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

the ios/2 card is very good and several others work
I took back a dtk card as i t formatted floppies the wring zize
I really disklike dtk

I tried and tried to get a FOX card and they totally misunder stood me
i wanted the one with the bios and they sent me the WRONG card and said twas the ONLY one.
I think-it;s been a long tinme a f004 card.
the compaticard works but requires a device driver.
i do not know if the files are still available
some LCS ( longshine) are hd cards but look like std IBM xt floppy cards.
the ios/2 comes in a soft gray and blue box and has a bios also i/o and clock
it works like a 287 or 386 and askes at bootup
almost as if there were a cmos in an xt.
I ran a 1,.2 a 720 and a 1.44 in the xt ( 4 floppies)

I only had problems with the 5.25: teac 720k drive
i could not get the right kind of floppy disks.

Joined: 19 Apr 2006 Posts: 261 Location: WisConSin

If I were you I would install both a 360k and a 1.44mb (drive b) on the card and boot off a 360k, try to format the 1.44 and see what happens, if it doesn't like it. Format a disk on the 1.44 as whatever it ends up being flip the 360 to b and the 1.44 to A: and boot. If you can't get 1.44mb disks to operate try the utility Coward suggests, it might be the type of card that really does need a driver for some reason.

Good Luck

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

without either a) a controller with a bios or b) a compaticard ( brand name) card' a xt will not be able to use a 1.2meg drive. it is useless on an xt.

a 1.44 drive is another matter. or a 720k drive.
with the ordinary xt floppy controller, a xt will see a 3.5" drive and be able to boot from it or, with
device=driver.sys or drivparm ( same systax)
work in an xt. normally with for example dos 2.10 the 3.5" floppy will format to 360k.
with something in the hard drive config.sys, IF that version of dos supports 3.5" drives it will work as a 720k disk and drive,
BUT unless the card has a bios or there is a device driver as used with the COMPATICARD
the didk and drive will NEVER be seen as a 1.44.

the xt does not know.
an old message in pc world mag said that the xt mb bios had provisions of 3.5" 720k drives.
but the first ibm AT ( 286) did NOT

example: put a 3.5" drive in an xt. either 720k or 1.44m. if the floppy is formatted as 720, it will boot the system, you need to do NOTHING ELSE.
but when you type format a: it will format the diskette as 360k ( unless there is a statement in the config.sys) the 3.5" floppies are more dependable and also not 25 years old and flaking pieces all over!
720k drives are rare now, but the xt doesn't know the difference, so use a 1.44 drive.

as I said before, some of the LCS cards were
high density coltrollers but i do not know how to id them . and avoid the DTK card.

OH yes, I assume you would be formattinmg the floppies ( either 720k or 1.44megs, on a windows based computer.
windows can be a BIG PAIN when you are trying to format floppies other than what is expected.
you MIGHT have to boot from a floppu bootdisk.

I keep both a dos bootdisk and an image of a dos bootdisk handy.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

Quote:

without either a) a controller with a bios or b) a compaticard ( brand name) card' a xt will not be able to use a 1.2meg drive. it is useless on an xt.

This is not quite correct. Option C would be to use the 2M utility that I keep bringing up. I have been talking about 2M on various vintage PC groups on the internet for the last six months, and very few people seem to pay attention or just let this one slip by. With 2M you can use 1.2meg and 1.44meg drives in XTs (at those capacities respectively) using standard AT multi I/O controllers. This utility has been widely available on the internet since the early 90s but nobody seems to know about it (at least nobody knows about this TSR that comes with it)!!!!!

2M comes with a special TSR that emulates an AMI AT BIOS so that you don't need a special floppy controller with it's own BIOS or proprietary device driver. Right now I am using a generic Winbond 16-bit ISA multi I/O in my original 8088 IBM PC. When the 2M TSR is loaded I can format disks as 1.2meg and 1.44meg. I had my doubts, but it works and extremely well I might add. This driver is almost the holy grail of XT software.