Uncreative Labs

Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 1:11 am

I'm sure the T130 would work with some perseverance, however I like the fdsa utility etc that comes with the TMC-850. I may get back to the T130 once I have my system up and running, however for now the TMC-850 is doing what I want (I should finally have a new BIOS ROM this week which will allow me to boot from the CF card).

Once my IBM Portable is up and running to my satisfaction, I will be placing unused items on ebaY and will post a message here to that effect.

Joined: 21 Dec 2005 Posts: 66

I'm not in the market for a T130 from 'down under' - the shipping is prohibitive. However ...

Consider making it available to people here first before eBay. I firmly believe that like-minded people should get first crack before opening the door to the commercial temple that is eBay.

Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 12:52 pm

Okay, when I get to that point I'll post a list of items that I wish to sell here before ebaY.

Postage from Australia to the US will be about US$10 - US$15 per card via air mail (7-14 days).

In the meantime, I installed my new TMC-850 BIOS (Version 8.2), switched on my IBM Portable and it booted from DOS 6.21 on the CF card!!!!!!

FINALLY, after about 5 months since starting this project!!!!!!!

I'm yet to time it, however it is certainly a lot faster than the old ST-225 HDD that used to be installed and of course I have 2GB to play with!

Now I need a 51/4 inch 360K FDD which is shorter than the standard 8" depth so that I can install my 6MHz 80286 accelerator card!

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

How important is the 360k drive to you? Removing it altogether might be the way to go.

Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2008 3:53 am

The floppy drive is no longer an issue as I'm not using the short 80286 8Mhz card now that I have an Intel Inboard/PC 16MHz 80386SX card which is a full length card anyway. I've had to shuffle a few cards around however it all fits (just!).

I've been meaning to read up on exactly what connections are missing from ISA slot 8 on an XT? I think I knew 20 years ago, but have since forgotten.

Any thoughts?

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

The only connection I am aware of that is missing on the PC bus is the "zero wait-state" one. I think in the PC or XT, that pin is instead used for the 5161 expansion chassis.

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

Okay. I'm currently testing out all of my stuff.

I used the two utilities provided by IBMPortablePC and turned on the DMA and fixed disk mode on my Sandisk Ultra II card. It seems to be working better than before, but I haven't been able to boot off of it. It's a real problem. I tried it on a modern P4 based PC as well and also experienced the same problem. I think I might just have to buy a different card.

I also used the 2M30 high density floppy utility with my XT. It works great. It emulates part of a 1993 AMI BIOS and takes about 4kb of memory. I highly recommend it to anyone with an AT floppy controller and an XT.

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

I made some interesting progress. By doing a proper installation of DOS I was able to get the CF to boot. Before I was just configuring the drive as D:, using the SYS command an manually copying all the files. This normally works on an IDE drive, but I guess the format command doesn't work properly with CF cards.

Joined: 19 Apr 2006 Posts: 261 Location: WisConSin

Slot 8 is a high speed slot and has an extra timer line and runs at 14.XXXmhz same as the clock crystal. It works well for cards that need to sync up with the system timer exactly and cards that should have higher throughput, the async card and the expansion chassis used it for this reason. A few video cards also made use of the slot as you could gain a "little" throughput though I am not sure how much diff it makes if the card is spinning over faster than your cpu.

Good Luck

IBM Portable PC wrote:

The floppy drive is no longer an issue as I'm not using the short 80286 8Mhz card now that I have an Intel Inboard/PC 16MHz 80386SX card which is a full length card anyway. I've had to shuffle a few cards around however it all fits (just!).

I've been meaning to read up on exactly what connections are missing from ISA slot 8 on an XT? I think I knew 20 years ago, but have since forgotten.

Any thoughts?

Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 12:44 am

Anonymous Coward wrote:

I made some interesting progress. By doing a proper installation of DOS I was able to get the CF to boot. Before I was just configuring the drive as D:, using the SYS command an manually copying all the files. This normally works on an IDE drive, but I guess the format command doesn't work properly with CF cards.

So are we up and running as yet?

I've just bought an Acculogic SIDE 1/16 8bit ISA 8/16 bit IDE controller and hope to receive it next week. The SCSI to IDE adaptor works well, however I want to benchtest the two and I like the KISS principal i.e. Acculogic -> CF with not adaptor etc.

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

Yes, everything is working well. The Sandisk software did the trick! I'm getting around 650k/sec throughput with the CF card. The only problem I've noticed is that when the CF card is not plugged into my card reader it will hang the SCSI bus. I guess it 's not such a big deal.

These days I've moved onto getting my 32mb EMS card working to my satisfaction:

http://picasaweb.google.com/misterzeropage/MyVintageComputerStuff/photo#5232075219436096914

Supposedly it's possible to free up a lot of UMBs with LIM4.0 memory if you use some special software. I haven't had much luck though, and as of present I've only been able to free up 11kb in UMBs.

I also gave up on high density floppy controllers and instead went with a TSR that emulates an AT BIOS and allows me to read and write (but not boot) 1.44mb floppies as long as I use an AT floppy controller. It's a little more economical than a compaticard Very Happy

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Quote:

I've just bought an Acculogic SIDE 1/16 8bit ISA 8/16 bit IDE controller and hope to receive it next week.

While those are very versatile (I had one running two 127MB 2.5" notebook drives in a previous revision of my XT---see owner #11 here), don't expect much speed out of them. You'll think the machine has died if you try much of anything bigger than 40MB...

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

I attempted to do a proper mounting job of the compact flash adapter in my XT today with mixed results. I am trying to make my CF card accessible via an ISA card slot on the back of the case, but the Acard SCSIDE bridge is too tall and does not fit in this way. Therefore I needed to place a ribbon cable between the Acard and the IDE-CF reader. However, the Acard was not designed for this, and attempting to use a standard IDE ribbon cable ends up flipping the pinout, so re-wiring is needed. I purchased jumper connectors and a crimper especially for this job.

What I did not anticipate though is that the Acard is timing sensitive, so using a cable that is too long can cause problems. My first attempt was with a 10" cable, which caused my CF card to not be recognised. My second attempt was a 2" cable which works fine, but isn't long enough to allow me to do a clean mounting job. I am thinking I might instead have to build a custom mount for a 5.25" drive bay instead.

UPDATE:

I somehow managed to squeeze everything in with the 2 inch cable. It doesn't look pretty, but it works. Though, for the first time I am now able to operate my CF card in the XT with the case closed.

Joined: 01 Oct 2006 Posts: 36 Location: USA

Nice project, I'm planning on replacing the hard drive in my Powerbook 1400 with a CF card sometime in the future but I never really thought of doing it with an old PC. I'll have to save this thread and maybe give it a try someday.

Just curious but what about the IBM Microdrives that fit in a CF slot? Seems they would be more reliable, compatible and last longer perhaps then a CF card. I've been debating about which one I'd rather use.

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

I figure CF card technology can only improve with time. I don't know much about the reliability of the microdrives...hopefully they don't use the same glass platters that IBM put in the DeathStars.