Uncreative Labs

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

This is very excellent news. I think if it were not for you I probably would have given up. I really had no idea that the companies making the CF cards locked them in such a way that they can't be used as fixed disks. Now I really can't wait to get home to fix everything up on the XT. Unfortunately it's a good 3.5 months away.

I'm sorry to hear about the 1.44meg drive conflicting with the SCSI controller though. That is really quite strange. My SCSI and HD floppy controller both have jumpers that allow you to change the ROM address to a different location. Have you tried doing this to make sure that they are not conflicting. Anyway, having the flash going on the XT is WAY more useful than having a 1.44meg drive on an XT. Just hook up the CF card to your laptop and dump all the installation files on there.

Great Job!

Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2008 7:43 am

Yes, I'm quite happy with the results so far. The latest news is:

1. I have formatted the CF drive with DOS 6.21
2. My second CF card, which I bought cheaply off EBay and subsequently suspected was a copy is in fact a SanDisk and is also now working.
3. The CF drive is fairly fast, formatting takes about 5 minutes for 2GB
4. I double checked the I/O addresses last night and found a conflict that I missed earlier and so my FDC BIOS and HDC BIOS now both load and work correctly.

Now I just need to be able to boot from the CF drive. At present I can only boot from the FDD. I have obviously used format c: /s. I am going to repartition and format the CF card and try once more. It must be something fairly simple in comparison to other issues which have reared their ugly heads.

Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2008 2:22 am

I cannot appear to make my XT to boot from the SCSI hard drive Sad

1. I used format c: /s of course
2. I have the HDD set to SCSI ID 0 LUN 0
3. Everything else tests okay.

I have just read that on an Amstrad XT clone, that TMC-850 BIOS version 8.2 allows booting whilst 8.3 and 8.4 do not.

I have the IBM branded version of the 850 which has IBM BIOS 1.1 1992, I may may be in the market for another 850 or a copy of the 8.2 ROM.

See http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/archive/index.php/t-2178.html

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

Yes, it is true. You need version 8.2 to boot. I also have the TMC-850IBM, and I had to replace the BIOS with the older version. TMC-850IBM version 1.1 should be identical to the V8.5 BIOS.

Just ask the people at www.vintage-computer.com for a copy of the BIOS. I am pretty positive a member there has made it available for download.

Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2008 6:49 am

No joy on the download front, I have emailed "Plasma" however his post was 3 years old. Could you email me the image that he sent you?

Thanks

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

A few weeks ago another user in this forum named "Hargle" asked me for the ver 8.0 and 8.2 images, and I told him to look at www.vintage-computer.com as I had lost them. A few days latter he told me he that the user "mbbrutman" sent them to him. Contacting that user would be a good start. I would dump my ROM for you, but I don't have access to it until May.

Joined: 21 Dec 2005 Posts: 66

Somebody contacted me about these ROMs over at vintage-computer.com. I never got a proper email address to mail them to.

Here they are, for a limited time only ..

www dot brutman dot com / TMC850V800.bin
www dot brutman dot com / TMC850v820.bin

Note that the second one has a lower case v. I'm too lazy to change it.

Once again, limited time only ... And remember to share with other people - I shouldn't be the only source for this.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

I have either one or two of those tmc cards
now all I need do is find out whick eprom it takes

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

Thankyou for posting those ROM images again. I downloaded some copies, and I'll try not to lose them this time.

Posted: Fri Feb 22, 2008 11:40 am

Thanks for the TMC ROM images, now I just need to find someone to burn the EPROM for me.

In the meantime, I now have a Trantor T130 card with a boot ROM and the built in BIOS boots at startup however it cannot see the CF card. I have tracked down the T130 SCSI utilities on the Adaptec web site and run SCSITEST.EXE however it cannot see the T130.

The test program appears to search at addresses 00H, 01H, 02H, 03H, however this makes not sense to me as the i/o address and BIOS address are much higher than 00H.

Is anyone using a T130?

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

I don't have a T130, but I do have a T128. I am not really sure what the differences are between the two cards, but as far as I can tell they are nearly identical. I haven't spent much time with my T128, but it is currently installed in a 5150 system.

I didn't have any problems getting this card going at all, but one thing I noticed is that mine doesn't like harddisks bigger than about 200MB. I remember trying my 1GB drive on it at some point but I forget if it just formatted it to 200mb or didn't see it at all. That was the main reason I switched to the Future Domain card. I also found the drivers for the Trantor cards to be really confusing to setup. However, the device support seemed to be pretty good. I was able to get it the Trantor going with my SCSI floppy drive, but couldn't get it going on the TMC850.

I haven't tried the CF on the Trantor at all because of the drive size limitations, but I might give it another shot when I go home in a few months. I'm hoping that there is a better version of the trantor ROM that will help me out with my drive size dilemma.

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2008 1:03 am

I have given up on the Trantor T130 as the TMC-850 software is simply much more usable and capable.

I'm also having 850 BIOS (Versions 8.0 and 8.2) ROMS burnt from the images on this forum by http://www.hobbyroms.com/ in Canada.

For about US$20 Steph will program both ROMS and send them via air mail to Australia, which is excellent value for money.

I'm only about 10 days away from finally booting my IBM Portable from DOS 6.21 on a CF card...... Finally!

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

Hmmm...if you're really into vintage stuff I recommend getting an EPROM burner of your own. I guess $20 is decent if you're only going to do the job once, but for $100 you can probably get the hardware to do it yourself, and 2764 and 27256 EPROMs are practically free since you can pick them off of just about anything.

I'm just curious about what other stuff you currently have in your system. Do you have any specifications and pictures? I figure it must be pretty nice, because it seems like you've put a lot of money into it.

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2008 5:44 am

1. I had considered buying a programmer, however I would rarely use it. Also my main computer is a MAC and I am yet to find any OSX software for programmers like the Willem ( http://www.willem.org/ ) devices.

2. I have spent more time than money on my IBM Portable. At this stage the machine cost me US$70 about 15 years ago whilst I have recently invested around US$400 into it. Without the refurbishment it was a very large paperweight.

3. I am going to use the machine to convert some disks from other machines than I have used since 1979, especially TRS-80's. To do so I have recently purchased a Copy Option board ( http://retro.icequake.net/dob/ ) and a CatWeasel card ( http://www.jschoenfeld.com/products/catweasel_e.htm ). With these 2 floppy controllers, there is barely a 5.25 disk format that I cannot read.

I'm currently waiting on ebaY OAK EGA and AST multi I/O cards to arrive and will post a few pictures once I have installed them. I also have a 80286 accelerator card which I will try in a week or two.

Clem

Joined: 21 Dec 2005 Posts: 66

I should check in more often.

I'm surprised about the T130 showing up on those goofy addresses. Did you boot pure DOS (no drivers of any time) before you ran scsitest.exe? Those I/O ports are too low for that card, and you might have a stuck switch on the card or a conflict with something else in the system.

I like T130s, so don't throw it away. Smile