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Future Domain 850MER on an 8088

H

hargle

Veteran Member
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minneapolis, MN
Hello all,

Inspired by modem7's adventures in setting up a Seagate ST-506

I decided that I'd write up my own experiences with my zenith 8088 and an 8-bit Future Domain 850MER ISA SCSI card that I was given.

The 850M series come up somewhat regularly on ebay; prices range from just a few dollars to well over $100, depending on planetary alignment or other unknown factors.

My particular 850 was one of the "apple signal port" varieties, and is an 850MER.
I thought that'd I'd read somewhere that the difference between the M's and the MER's is that the MER is missing a BIOS. I can't be sure that's the only difference, but that is the way mine arrived, so perhaps there is something to that. If you ever see an MER w/o a BIOS going for less money than the 850M, grab it and follow my steps.

So, in order to make my SCSI card bootable, I was hoping that all it would take is to locate a chip for it. The EPROM socket was there, just empty.

I'd also read that rev 8.2 of the Future Domain BIOS is the one to get for 8088 based machines. Some hunting later, and I discovered it among our friends here! Next up was getting the BIOS image onto an EPROM.

I figured I could just pull an EPROM off an old video card, erase it, load in the new ROM and I'd be set. Turned out it wasn't that easy. I work for a fairly tech-savy employer, and I have access to an eeprom programmer, we are a little bit too cutting edge-we had long since gotten rid of our UV eraser! I had the EPROMs in hand and a programmer to program them, but I had nothing to erase them with.

Enter Andrew Lynch's PROM burning service! for all my EPROM needs. Andrew was able to not only figure out what size EPROM I needed, but programmed and sent off two variations for me to try out. :bigups:
The very first ROM I put in worked like a charm! (at least it showed up during POST anyway)

After a few false starts and playing the jumper game a little, I did manage to get both a 1Gig Seagate ST31230N working as well as a 2 gig Western Digital drive that I had. (sorry, now that the WD is in my machine and I've closed the lid, I don't have the exact model number on it)

I was able to fdisk, format and boot to both of these drives as expected. I did not, and probably will not, hook up a secondary drive or CD-ROM or anything else to this card. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I do really believe that 2Gig of storage on an 8088 is PLENTY. :grin:

Just to be sure everything was running correctly, I ran spinrite on the drive overnight and it came back with zero errors over the surface scan.

Here's the details:

Future Domain TMC-850MER
Apple Signal Port sticker on it.
1992
Jumpers:
W6-W7 on W6
W1 on
W2 off
W3 vertical (that puts it at C800h)
W5 off

The EPROM Andrew sent me was an Intel D27128-4 circa 1982.
BIOS version 8.2, 16k in size (PM me if you need it)

Seagate ST31230N. All jumpers on the front of the drive OFF, which should have put it at drive ID 0, AFAIK.

-jeff!
 
Any Future Domain card is a good one. Of the 8xx series here are the major variants to look for:

  • Some versions have standard external SCSI ports. Others are proprietary. Go for the ones that say 'Apple'
  • Some have a BIOS on them. Others are socketed with no BIOS chip, or perhaps no socket. Cards without a BIOS were sold as part of CD-ROM/other non-bootable device kits.

All of the 8xx series uses the same chipset, and all will work with the Future Domain software drivers. The software drivers include hard disk, removable disk, and CD-ROM support. The hard disk support is generic and will work even if the card does not have a BIOS, or the BIOS does not work on your system. Using the software drivers is slower than native ROM BIOS support.

The Future Domain drivers also include an ASPI converter, so that if you have a device that speaks only ASPI that is not directly supported by the FD drivers, you can still use it.
 
hargle said:
Hello all,

Inspired by modem7's adventures in setting up a Seagate ST-506

I decided that I'd write up my own experiences with my zenith 8088 and an 8-bit Future Domain 850MER ISA SCSI card that I was given.

The 850M series come up somewhat regularly on ebay; prices range from just a few dollars to well over $100, depending on planetary alignment or other unknown factors.
Click to expand...

No, actually, it's what planet the seller is on ;)

T
 
i was wandering if you had the futere domain drivers or know where i could get them as im having trouble getting my Future Domain TMC-840 going and its described in tandy part of the forums labled FUTURE DOMAIN TMC-840 SCSI HELP.thanks
 
Is it also possible to use an normal Intel D27128 eprom, instead of that mentioned Intel D27128-4 one?? Could i use a NEC one instead if i couldn`t find that Intel D27128-4 one?
 
As long as your programmer supports the EPROM you intend to use, there's no issue. The -4 Intel part is rather slow, so faster parts should be just fine. In particular, don't be squeamish about using CMOS parts, such as the 27C128.
 
Whats are the faster EPROMS? What number do they have? Or just 27C128 is good enough?

But -4 stands for 400ms?? And without they are faster?
 
Unrelated to EPROMs, but related to this initial posting, since this has been dredged up...

The card above worked flawlessly in my zenith 8088, but refused to ID the drive in my true blue IBM 5150. I've seen the card work in a Tandy 1000SX machine as well, but for reasons that I have never figured out, the original IBM had some oddball conflict with the device and I never got it to work.

I also want to augment my original statement that "2Gb on an 8088 is plenty!" This is no longer true. I've successfully filled up at least two, 2Gb partitions on an IDE drive with DOS games from 1981-1990 from my collection. It's actually kind of fun to try. ;)
 
hargle said:
I also want to augment my original statement that "2Gb on an 8088 is plenty!" This is no longer true. I've successfully filled up at least two, 2Gb partitions on an IDE drive with DOS games from 1981-1990 from my collection. It's actually kind of fun to try. ;)
Click to expand...

Yeah, but I get a little annoyed when doing a DIR on a large partition and seeing the file list, then a long pause and then finally the "xxxx bytes in yyy files..." message. I've wondered if a networked drive might be more convenient.
 
Robin4 said:
Whats are the faster EPROMS? What number do they have? Or just 27C128 is good enough?
But -4 stands for 400ms?? And without they are faster?
Click to expand...
Robin4 said:
Ok, but i want to know which EPROM i need to buy..
Click to expand...
The dash numbers mean different things on different chips. To find out what the dash number means on a particular chip, one needs to refer to the manufacturer's datasheet for the chip.
So for example, on one brand/type of EPROM, the "-1" might mean 100 nS, but on another brand/type of EPROM, the "-1" might mean 150 nS.
There is no international standard. Manufacturers are free to use whatever they want as part numbers.

If there is no dash number, the manufacturer's datasheet (for the dashless part number) will reveal what speed the part is.

27128 class

According to the Internet, the Intel D27128-4 is indeed rated at 400 nS.

A look at the Intel datasheet indicates that, as expected in this case, the D27128-1, D27128-2, and D27128-3 varients are faster, and are thus suitable replacements for the D27128-4.

If you want to go the non-Intel replacement route, there is no 100% guarantee that the non-Intel part will work, but I'm sure that most here would agree that in the world of EPROMS, you'd be very unlucky for the non-Intel replacement not to work. As Chuck(g) indicated, ensure that your EPROM programmer supports the non-Intel replacement that you are considering.

And as Chuck(G) suggested, the CMOS equivalents are good, ie. 27C128.
 
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