Re: [N8VEM-S100:1528] Looking for help testing an IDE board

[John Coffman <john...@gmail.com>]

Bob,

I am assuming you are referring to the DiskI/O v1 or v2.  If not, then
ignore the remainder of this reply.

The DiskI/O v3 board was re-designed to use an 8255, making the
interface PPIDE.  This interface is pretty much trouble-free.  The old
DiskI/O boards have an 8272 controller for the floppy interface.

I have the DiskI/O, but I don't know if it is v1 or v2.  It is marked
"E232472", "SL94V-0", and "3909."  I think these are markings from the
board manufacturer, not anything related to N8VEM.  Circuit updates are
needed to make this board work properly.  I don't know if the historical
information to fix the board survived one of the wipeouts that we had on
the Wiki some time back.

One thing I discovered about this board was that it does not work with
all disk drives.  Only hard disks of newer manufacture, with a cache
memory chip, will work.  I have an old hard drive that does not.  A
newer drive does.

CF cards, generally, are of newer manufacture, and should be working
smoothly.  You may need some of the circuit updates to the board.  I do
know that this board can be made to work okay.

--John





On 03/19/2013 05:35 PM, Bob Applegate wrote:
> I've been slowly debugging my system for weeks now and am thinking that my hardware is the problem.  I've got one of the early single-port IDE boards and multiple CF cards, including some that others have said they've used.  Overall things work, but little problems here and there make me unsure whether this is still a BIOS problem or something peculiar to my board and/or CF cards.
>
> Would someone be willing to have me mail my board and CF card, put it in a known working system, and see if it behaves as expected?  I'm not looking for someone to debug for me; if the board fails, then any bit of explanation would be appreciated, but just knowing if it's the board or not would be a huge help.  Once done testing, I'll pay for return postage.
>
> No rush, so if you can help me out but it'll take a few weeks to get around to it, that's fine.  I've spent more than a few weeks debugging this and a few more won't matter at all.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Bob
>
>