Multi-Floppy BIOS - Testers Wanted

[sergey]

Hi,

After a month of development (or even more) I feel that the Multi-Floppy BIOS extension is ready for testing.

The binary image, the source, as well as the documentation are available from this page (scroll all the way down).

The BIOS extension is mainly intended for XT FDC and my ISA Floppy Disk and Serial Controller card, but it should work with other AT-compatible controllers (e.g. like ones found on Multi I/O cards). It can support up to 8 floppy drives of various types (from 160 KB single side to 2.88 MB extended density).

The Multi-Floppy BIOS extension has a built-in configuration utility that works best if the BIOS extension is using an EEPROM. Regular UV erasable EPROMs can be used too. In this case (when trying to save the configuration) the configuration utility will print a hex dump of the configuration data, that later can be programmed into the EPROM. (Or you can edit the configuration area manually before programming your EPROM - the configuration format is documented in the README).

Thanks,
Sergey

P.S. Special thanks to Chuck G for his consultations about floppy related BIOS and DOS topics.

 

[archeocomp]

Hi Sergey. I just finished two FDC boards. They worked absolutely without problems in my Turbo XT clone. I tested the latest BIOS 2.0. I am using standard configuration A:1.44, B:1.2, so I did not change the setup. Together with XT-IDE BIOS it enables me to boot from both drives. I have also tested the BIOS with two different 16bit MultiIO cards in an 8-bit slot and it worked well too. 360kB diskettes work as well. So far no bugs discovered. Thanks for perfect job.

I have one question though. I have Commodore PC10-III machine, with on board FDC9268 that can not be disabled. I plan to build XT-FDC and configure it using alternative i/o port. Then with your BIOS it will hopefully be possible to bypass the onboard FDC-BIOS and FDC and have the XT-FDC bootable from attached drives. Am I right ?

 

[sergey]

I tested the latest BIOS 2.0

Thank you!

I have one question though. I have Commodore PC10-III machine, with on board FDC9268 that can not be disabled. I plan to build XT-FDC and configure it using alternative i/o port. Then with your BIOS it will hopefully be possible to bypass the onboard FDC-BIOS and FDC and have the XT-FDC bootable from attached drives. Am I right ?

Yes, you can configure the Multi-Floppy BIOS extension so that all drives will be on the secondary (XT-FDC) controller. So that the drives attached to the XT-FDC will have logical numbers 0 (A and 1 (B.

 

[archeocomp]

So I tested the BIOS further. I have a bunch of multi io 16bit cards. One with chipset Winbond, the other GoldStar Prime 2. I configured them to port 370. Then enabled secondary controller in BIOS, DMA2, IRQ5. Configured drives A:, B: solely on secondary controller. And it WORKED. I could even boot .. very good job Sergey.

 

[ibmapc]

I'm currently building an XT-FDC and plan to use sergey's bios. Is there a flash utillity to program the EEPROM for the first time or should I use my PROGRAMMER? I have a TOP853 programmer that will program a 28c64 eeprom but it would be easier (I Think) to flash it in place on the XT-FDC if possible.

 

[modem7]

I'm currently building an XT-FDC and plan to use sergey's bios. Is there a flash utillity to program the EEPROM for the first time or should I use my PROGRAMMER? I have a TOP853 programmer that will program a 28c64 eeprom but it would be easier (I Think) to flash it in place on the XT-FDC if possible.

The implementation of the 28C64 in the XT-FDC is the same as it is in the XT-IDE. I'm very sure that for my first-version prototype XT-FDC, I used the same flash utility that was supplied for the XT-IDE.