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Tandy 1000 RLX and XT-IDE V3

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acadiel

Experienced Member
Joined
Dec 19, 2009
Messages
287
Just got a brand spanking new XT IDE V3 in the mail today (wow, that's a nicely done card!) and am trying to get it working with my Tandy 1000 RLX. The RLX has the XT-IDE 40MB drive currently installed.

To get the card to show up in the BIOS screen, I had to set it to CE000 (per http://minuszerodegrees.net/xtide/rev_3/XT-IDE%20Rev%203%20-%20jumper%20configuration%20-%20optional%20boot%20rom.jpg). It shows up, and I see four choices; floppy, 80h, 81h (which I'm assuming are the Tandy's hard disk and ROM drive), the CompactFlash 4GB card I put in, and the ROM BIOS boot option.

I was able to boot from the Tandy's normal drive (running Tandy MSDOS 5) and fdisk the CompactFlash into two 2GB partitions (E:\ and F:\), and then XCopy the C:\ drive over to E:\ just fine.

Now, here's the fun part. When I disconnect the built in Tandy 40MB drive, the XT IDE BIOS screen no longer shows up, and so it doesn't even scan the BIOS for the option ROM for the card. I've tried running SetupRLX and making sure boot is set to disk, that's fine. However, this stinking RLX still boots to an A> prompt with the XT IDE connected and the Tandy HDD disconnected.

I reconnect the Tandy 40MB disk and it shows the XT IDE BIOS again. Obviously, it's not gonna let me boot off the CF with another active disk in the system.

How do I get around this?
 
There's an interesting thing. We had problems getting the XUB initialising with the Tandy 1400 laptop, perhaps the two issues are related.

You could try the special 'very late initialisation' code from here, though it will need to be configured for the particular card that you're using as you write it to the ROM.
 
acadiel said:
How do I get around this?
Click to expand...

Don't know if this helps, but I have one of James' ISA CompactFlash boards working fine in a TL/2. It's set up at CC00h and I don't have anything connected to the built-in IDE adapter.
 
As bjt mentioned, you might try a lower ROM address with nothing connected to the Tandy's disk controller.
 
IMG_2101.jpg
glitch said:
As bjt mentioned, you might try a lower ROM address with nothing connected to the Tandy's disk controller.
Click to expand...

Without anything hooked to the internal connector (the 40MB drive):

C8000 0100 - get ROM A>, no XTIDE BIOS popup
CA000 0101 - get ROM A>, same
CC000 0110 - get ROM A>, same
CE000 0111 - get ROM A>, same
D0000 1000 - get ROM A>, same
D2000 1001 - get ROM A>, same
D4000 1010 - get ROM A>, same
D6000 1011 - get ROM A>, same
D8000 1100 - get ROM A>, same
DA000 1101 - get ROM A>, same
DC000 1110 - get ROM A>, same
DE000 1111 - get ROM A>, same

With the 40MB HDD enabled:

C8000 0100 - no BIOS hook
CA000 0101 - no BIOS hook
CC000 0110 - get the XTIDE BIOS hook
CE000 0111 - get the XTIDE BIOS hook
D0000 1000 - get the XTIDE BIOS Hook
D2000 1001 - get the XTIDE BIOS Hook
D4000 1010 - get the XTIDE BIOS Hook
D6000 1011 - get the XTIDE BIOS Hook
D8000 1100 - get the XTIDE BIOS Hook
DA000 1101 - get the XTIDE BIOS Hook
DC000 1110 - get the XTIDE BIOS Hook
DE000 1111 - get the XTIDE BIOS Hook
 
bjt said:
Don't know if this helps, but I have one of James' ISA CompactFlash boards working fine in a TL/2. It's set up at CC00h and I don't have anything connected to the built-in IDE adapter.
Click to expand...

The RL series have weird issues with the xt-ide devices. I had a similar problem with my non-X RL Hard Drive box.

The bios James listed with "very late initialisation code" was necessary to get the xt-ide working on my RL.
 
I'll flash the BIOS that was earlier mentioned in the thread that does late initialization.

Any caveats or quick 'how to' on how to do it? The read me in the file isn't very forthcoming.
 
Run XTIDECFG, load the .bin, select controller type and IO base address, then write to flash.
 
Just some updates.

Got the late start BIOS installed.

Glitch's XT IDE card is set to 300h (default) for address. Right now, set to CC00h for the base address of the ROM. Booted Tandy from internal 40MB hard drive (or from floppy) and it puts up the A>>FDD [A], C>>HDD [C], F6 ComDtct, and F8 RomBoot prompt up.

Scan shows my Sandisk 4GB drive. Drive shows up as two partitions, D and E. Files are there.

So far so good. Ran the XTIDECXFG program, loaded the BIOS from the EEPROM to make sure everything is up to snuff. Autoconfigure finds one controller, so I know we're good there.

Problems worked around after the flash:

1) FDISK under MS DOS 5 does not show the partitions on the Sandisk device, which I previously created, even though the drives showed up in DOS. Solution, repartitioned disk and copied everything over again with XCopy. I now have a 2GB D:\ and a ~2GB E:\.

Problems can't work around:

1) ROM Disk is missing. Can't run Deskmate. Tried F:\ and beyond. No dice. When the XT IDE is in the picture as active, no ROM drive. (Tested by turning the enable ROM jumper off and rebooting.)
2) When I remove the Tandy 40MB drive from the picture, the XT IDE BIOS does not show up and does not boot the system still. Tried a whole bunch of different base ROM addresses.
 
If drive letters D: and E: points to your Sandisk device, what device is C:?

I'd like to take a look at the system BIOS in this machine. Can you please post a dump of it?
 
Krille said:
If drive letters D: and E: points to your Sandisk device, what device is C:?

I'd like to take a look at the system BIOS in this machine. Can you please post a dump of it?
Click to expand...

c:\ is the 40MB XT IDE drive that came with the system. If you remove it, the XTIDE doesn't initialize. Very strange.

How can I properly dump the BIOS? Any utils you recommend?

Thanks!
 
Hello everyone,

I'm writing to revive this thread. I am also trying to install an XT-IDE adapter (rev. 4) in my Tandy 1000 RLX. There is no hard drive installed in the on-board controller. I do not see the BIOS initialization at start-up, but I can flash the firmware to the EEPROM from xtidecfg at various addresses I set from the DIP switches. I flashed the "very late initialization" and I now get a "Non System Disk or Disk Error" at start-up, but I still don't see the BIOS screen for the card. The floppy drive seems not to work under this condition as well.

If anyone has been successfully getting the XT-IDE card to work in an RLX, I would greatly appreciate any help you can provide!

Thanks!
 
Bump for 2020!

Restating the prior question, has anyone managed to get an XT-IDE card with the XUB to work in a Tandy 1000 RLX *without* needing to have an XT IDE drive installed on the motherboard connection in tandem? This necessity is somehow XUB-specific, where the use of other disk controller cards in the same system hasn't resulted in similar behavior.
 
Hi. I'm here from that other thread.

I don't have an RLX, but IIRC whenever I install a hard drive of any sort on my HX (via a PLUS-to-ISA adapter), be it 8-bit SCSI or XT-IDE, it completely disables the ROM disk. I don't think the two can be used together. I opine that the RLX BIOS is doing some kind of funny-business with the option roms, depending on what devices it sees installed, similar to how the HX does with the ROM disk. It's maybe mistaking your XT-IDE BIOS for the internal device boot rom, and turning it off so that the machine will try to boot from "something else" when there is no hard drive connected. Or something?

Unfortunately, I don't have any suggestions as to how to get around it. :(

What happens if you plug some other 8-bit IDE device (CF card?) into the built-in interface?
 
Last edited:
bladamson said:
I don't have an RLX, but IIRC whenever I install a hard drive of any sort on my HX (via a PLUS-to-ISA adapter), be it 8-bit SCSI or XT-IDE, it completely disables the ROM disk. I don't think the two can be used together. I opine that the RLX BIOS is doing some kind of funny-business with the option roms, depending on what devices it sees installed, similar to how the HX does with the ROM disk.
Click to expand...

Technically, the ROM disk is still there; I'm not going to say this absolutely definitively, but it seems like that on the BIOS level there's something about how its INT13 routines are implemented that prevent it from working with "generic" versions of MS-DOS without a device driver. (There's a device driver on the tvdog archive that will make it show up.) But recently when I was messing around with doing multi-boot on my HX's XT-CF interface I discovered that if I booted from a Tandy version of DOS 3.3 the ROM drive shows up as drive D... which is kind of interesting because that means it shows up before an extended partition on the same drive.
 
The RLX does seem a little off in the behavior of the ROM drive, and I agree that it may be the cause of the XUB problems. Compared to other ROM-bearing Tandy systems, it's ever-present in the RLX, appearing as the last drive in the INT13h list. I'm not sure if this is by design, or if the logic that should disable it in the presence of a hard-disk drive or adapter is broken somehow.

In my RLX-B with the ADP-50, the drive list is as follows:

80h - ADP-50 Master
81h - ADP-50 Slave
82h - ROM drive


In my RLX-B with an XT-IDE card, and with the currently-requisite XT IDE drive installed:

80h - ST351A/X
81h - Appears to be some phantom placeholder for a secondary XT drive
82h - XT-IDE Master
83h - ROM drive

Presently, I'm using an AT version of the XUB, and have the card booting from 82h, and the other drives masked/removed. This is fine as a workaround, but for the annoying noise-level of the idling ST351A/X.
 
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