Wait what?! XTIDE from a simple floppy disk?

[@snap_oversteer]

This is great for vintage laptops with no expansion option! I'll definitely have to try it.

[@bitsundbolts]

It is! And super easy to use! I added the floppy images to my website.

[@gstcomputing65]

I use something a little different on a vintage laptop. It is an adapter that plugs into the 2.5" IDE slot that allows you to plug in a CF card. There is no additional BIOS ROM needed because the laptop sees it as an ordinary IDE drive. And you can still run operating systems like OS/2 or Windows NT that don't have native XT-IDE drivers.

[@snap_oversteer]

@@gstcomputing65 Yeah, that's another way to do it. But even with CF cards you can't break the 1024 cylinder limit that some older BIOSes have.

[@gstcomputing65]

@@snap_oversteer I agree. I've had to use dynamic overlay to address the larger drives. But, dynamic overlay has its own set of challenges.

[@ericwazhung]

This basically seems a lot like treating the XTIDE boot-ROM as "drive overlay" software, which back in the day was loaded onto the IDE drive itself (rather than a ROM or floppy). As I understood, it overwrote the 0-sector with something like XTIDE, to use LBA access instead of CHS, so it didn't matter if the system's CHS settings were wrong, since the zero-sector is always at CHS=0,0,0(1?)=LBA0. It's interesting how multi-purpose XTIDE is, whoda thunk of plugging a tool designed for an XT system (which never was designed for IDE) into two/three-generation-later systems, some of which even have IDE controllers built-in?! (...forgive me if this has already been covered/mentioned; I haven't need for XTIDE currently, but this looks like an awesome series for when/if I do. Thanks for posting it!) Aside: I have an early 486-based tablet whose custom 80MB hard-drive's CHS settings were permanently programmed into its bios. Stupid BIOS setup utility would *show* them, and even made it look like others could be selected, but the option to change them was grayed-out. I think I wound-up installing Ontrak's drive-overlay software on a compact-flash, and didn't have any trouble accessing its full 4GB thereafter. It's kinda exciting to think XTIDE might be able to replace that old commercial software!

[@geremychubbuck3730]

Awesome series on xtide. Keep up the great work 👍

[@bitsundbolts]

Thanks!

[@Pim-f1m]

This is awesome! Great that optromloader is created in the first place but you explained how to use it, which I wouldn’t have figured out without this video. I am waiting on my programmer but this is great to get my t3200sx running with a new idea drive in the mean time. Drive overlay doesn’t work in this case because the bios is locked in to two conner drive models. Once I have the programmer I want to write the rom that I just tested with the floppy method onto a chip and insert it in a network card for permanent use, since floppy drives can also die and proprietary floppy drive cables are a headache. 😅

[@bitsundbolts]

Nice! I assume the floppy image worked for you based on what you wrote? I like reading those success stories! Thanks for sharing and watching!

[@Pim-f1m]

Yeah it did! I used your floppy img and it worked out of the box. It’s great! I also made my own following your video, but using debian. It’s soooo much easier with a packagemanagee. No hassle with the env variables. Just install the dependencies, run the command and boom. Floppy disk images. Or emulator runs your rom. Wonderful. Btw, I use RawWrite on windows with a usb floppy drive, or on any windows machine with a floppy drive, to write those floppy images to or from a disk. 😊 Saves the hassle to get the floppy images on a dos machine if you have a floppy drive in your modern machine.

[@cromulence]

another interesting thing that can boot from CD, floppy, or option Rom is PLoP boot loader. Allows to boot CDs on machines that don’t support it, and even USB booting on hardware that doesn’t usually allow it. Very useful!

[@SeishukuS12]

Yep, I just learned about that not long ago, I wish I found it sooner, it would have saved a TON of headaches when working with my i430TX systems... Besides allowing CD boot, USB is super useful... Even though it's pretty slow on those systems. Also helped on an old P3 laptop that I acquired, has a CD drive but won't boot from it, also has USB, but also can't boot from it.

[@camjohnson2004]

Nice. that's a good quick and dirty way to check to see if you XTIDE bios you make works for the system. Then, if you want to make it more permanent you can look at flashing it to an EEPROM and installing it into a NIC or other device to have it work without a Floppy

[@bitsundbolts]

Exactly! Or use the floppy for temporary systems that you just want to check briefly.

[@camjohnson2004]

@@bitsundbolts 100%.

[@erickvond6825]

In the back of my mind I knew something like this was possible. I would never have imagined that it could happen from a floppy in this manor.

[@r4z4m4t4z]

thats great efforts! wow, mounting a floppy iso, crazy times. my 386sx33 had a mere 60mb drive.

[@Constantin314]

for someone like me, who doesn't have the tools you have, for sure it's the better option. gg for the author and you for showing us

[@bitsundbolts]

The tool was brought to my attention by a viewer - without that hint, I wouldn't know such a simple solution existed to get XTIDE running! 😊

[@drewnewby]

Yet another great project that had slipped me by. For the upper memory load, perhaps Memmaker or alternative that can specify an exact memory address may work if not already tried. LOADHIGH, INSTALLHIGH, and DEVICEHIGH do not always do the trick alone.

[@bitsundbolts]

Memmaker would only rearrange applications and drivers that are loaded while DOS is starting, isn't it? This floppy image is executed before DOS even starts. I don't think Memmaker or and of the LH commands will help here. I think it is a hardware configuration thing.

[@drewnewby]

I likely have incorrectly assumed the bootable floppy contained command . com, etc. to load it into memory. If so though it would be possible to load the OROM to a specific address in the UMB. This method of loading XTIDE is perhaps too clever for me.

[@ppoozl]

The project says that upper memory should be mapped visible in BIOS as RAM.This space in 386 may be mapped as ROM. "If specifying target segment in upper memory, ensure it is visible as memory in BIOS settings." "In DOS memory management, the upper memory area (UMA) is the memory between the addresses of 640 KB and 1024 KB (0xA0000-0xFFFFF) in an IBM PC or compatible. IBM reserved the uppermost 384 KB of the 8088 CPU's 1024 KB address space for BIOS ROM, Video BIOS, Option ROMs, video RAM, RAM on peripherals, memory-mapped I/O, and obsoleted ROM BASIC.[1]"

[@ppoozl]

@@bitsundbolts I have tested on 86BOX(KMX-C-02 which is same chipset as yours). Maybe you need enable shadow on target address so the loader can write to that address.

[@drewnewby]

I would be inclined to attempt to load the bin into an UMB using a memory manager as a test run on that system, without the floppy boot. Then taking that memory address and code it into the project asm, for that specific machine.

[@iamimiPod]

I might try this whilst I am waiting for my xtide card to come.

[@Kirill_Konovalov]

This is very useful! I did not know that! All the series actually is pretty useful. It's not for a beginner retro-enthusiast, for sure. But this hobby making you pretty confident in many things pretty fast! Or you are not staying with this hobby. XD

[@bitsundbolts]

Thanks! It was the first time for me as well! Now it's no longer scary to find your way around those amazing tools that are available for free to this community. Hopefully, those videos will help others to get started! ☺️

[@NaoPb]

Very nice! I will be giving this a try sometime. Thanks.

[@bitsundbolts]

Great!

[@albertstorch5224]

Habe gestern einen Programmer bestellt. 🤣 Ich kann es nicht anders schreiben, aber deine Videos sind einfach super!!! Danke!

[@bitsundbolts]

Vielen Dank! Freut mich zu hoeren! Viel Spass mit deinem neuen Programmer!

[@albertstorch5224]

Gibt es eine Beschränkung wie groß die Festplatte insgesamt sein darf? Also ich kann bei einer 500GB Platte ein paar Partitionen mit 2GB erstellen, der Rest bleibt halt ungenutzt? Wäre um größere Platten einzubinden EZDrive nicht einfacher?

[@bitsundbolts]

Leider weiß ich nicht bis zu welcher Größe Festplatten von XTIDE unterstützt werden. Die Größe der Partitionen kommt auf das Betriebssystem an. MS-DOS 6.22 unterstützt leider nur FAT16 - das limitiert die Größe einer Partition auf 2GB. Andere Betriebssysteme, wie z.b Windows 98 mit FAT32 Unterstützung, sollten Partitionen von bis zu 2TB ansprechen können.

[@perhansson6718]

@@bitsundboltsFrom what I could find XTIDE v2.0.0 supports 48bit LBA mode so it means it can support drives that for all intents and purposes are unlimited in size from the perspective of old XT machines (128 petabytes!)

[@sasha-fe2bl]

can confirm the single quotes inside double quotes works in bash (and sh and fish) in the makefile and i'm not sure why because the single quotes would be literal there too. might be how the linux version of fasm parses the string in its assembly. in any case idk why you would need any quotes because the filename has no spaces.

[@sapperlott]

Looks like there is a binary release as well that can just be concatenated with the option ROM binary (and padded to full floppy image size)

[@harvaldi]

Great little tool! :) I'm curious now if there are some other optrom's that I can use...

[@bitsundbolts]

I was thinking the same! It should be possible to use it with other ROMs.

[@stamasd8500]

On systems without support for high density floppies (like the original PC and XT) one other option ROM you can use is a BIOS from a floppy controller from that era that adds HD FD support. There are several such BIOS images on the site minuszerodegrees. I have done it in the past and it works. You don't need any special hardware, it will work with the floppy controller on any generic multi-IO card.

[@stamasd8500]

Thank you. I wasn't aware of this project, even though I've been using XTIDE for many years. Might be useful one day. Too bad that loading in UMBs doesn't work.

[@bitsundbolts]

I am sure there is a way, I may just have something backwards. I'll definitely bring an update once I figured out how.

[@jr0th]

You have also the possibility to include Option ROMs into the BIOS, as long as there's room for it, I did this decades ago with network boot roms and XTIDE-like roms. I can't remember the tools I used (probably the manufacturer's BIOS editor), but it was quite straightforward: read BIOS, include ROM, flash BIOS, reboot.

[@bitsundbolts]

I think that must have been a later AWARD BIOS. They have those tools that allow you to include additional ROMs. I am not sure if is possible with those 386 BIOSes. And it could be that we have a space issue. I might try including XTIDE on one of the newer BIOSes though. Some Socket 7 boards might definitely benefit from XTIDE if there's no BIOS mod available to extend the addressable hard drive space.

[@dataterminal]

@@bitsundbolts my digital life forums have archived collection of bios tools that date back a long way, it might be what you need to start looking at. although, most of it seems to revolve around adding slic tables for windows activation, and you'd be right that is mostly on newer bios with table/module support.

[@MonochromeWench]

Upper Memory region will likely only work on XT class machines as starting with the IBM AT using the upper memory region in real mode is blocked by the chipset, it is reserved for the ISA bus unless you can tell the chipset to allow access or switch to protected mode (clone chipsets generally copied this behaviour, there are a few clone chipsets that allow full rw access to the upper memory region but you obviously do not have one). However the upper memory region might work if you enable Shadowing in the Bios for the region you want to use. The shadowing option will often enable read write access to the memory region if there is no actual rom there. Checking your bios settings at 17:24 you had shadowing enabled for C000 but not c800. Try enabling shadowing of c800

[@bitsundbolts]

Interesting - thanks for sharing this information. It could be that I won't have access to this region in upper memory. I did enable shadowing at location c800, but it is not in the video. It didn't work unfortunately. I'll keep your comment in mind. Maybe one day, I'll find a BIOS/chipset that allows a bit more magic for upper memory management.

[@RKelleyCook]

Awesome, now try the move to DR-DOS 7 and especially the rabbit hole of patches which eventually added FAT32 and LBA mode to DRDOS.

[@vintagecomputingmiscellany]

Great video. I was thinking along these lines when considering how to add IDE support to a Apricot XI, which you featured in your scrapyard find video. Interestingly the Apricot doesn't have a full ROM BIOS. The ROM is just runs diagnostics and then bootstraps the floppy or hard drive. The full system BIOS is a RAM BIOS which is loaded from disk into RAM. That is a similar concept to thus option ROM loader. I wonder whether this project could be adapted to work on the Apricot or its RAM BIOS disassembled and patched.

[@bitsundbolts]

Interesting. Unfortunately, I don't have any experience with older systems like the Apricot. I didn't know this is how those systems load their ROM/BIOS. It might be possible to somehow incorporate XTIDE to load along the BIOS though. Maybe someone will do it some day.

[@asanjuas]

It can be used as an option rom module for a BIOS, i think.

[@bitsundbolts]

Yes, I think so.

[@asanjuas]

@@bitsundbolts i think even on a 386.

[@asanjuas]

@@bitsundbolts even for a 386 BIOS and adding as an option rom without Boot menú.

[@sebastian19745]

I just dug out a bunch of old HDDs, from 4G to 13G. I connected them to my PC and initialize them all to check the surface and overall performance. I use Hard Disk Sentinel on Win10. By looking quicly at the features, I noticed that all them have no power management. Just to check, I looked at two more modern IDE HDDs (40G and 60G), and saw that they do have power management. Here is my question: If you use the original downloaded ROM of XTIDE, the one with power management module, how will behave an modern-ish HDD that do have PM features? I ask just because often i use an 40, 60 or 80G HDD on old systems and just select in BIOS the max capacity the machine can read and use it as an 540M or 8.4G, regardless its capacity.

[@bitsundbolts]

Interesting. The Fujitsu drive I am using is a 6.4GB drive, I doubt it will have power management features, but I am not sure. I can't promise to look into this, but maybe someone will have the answer or will do the test. Would be nice to know!

[@brotherdg1]

It restarts the drive, but very quickly, quietly, and not scary like the old ones

[@sebastian19745]

@@brotherdg1 Thanks.

[@zarkeh3013]

I can't see a reason why to do this except for testing or developing. Saves on Flashing and Erasing and Head Smashing! lol! ... I have thought about trying out BASIC ROMs that some of the original IBM's used to have... Be a neat Retro Trick to boot into BASIC! like some 8-bits used to.

[@bitsundbolts]

It is a very easy and quick way to access large drives. For my temporary projects, such a floppy disk is great - especially if I don't want to deal with ISA network cards and memory locations.

[@suvetar]

Loving this series BuB! Dankeschön! Wanted to ask, is there a DOS/IBM PC hardware emulator that is known to be particularly good at supporting Option Rom's, from a correctly formatted image on your host drive?

[@bitsundbolts]

I am not sure if I understood your question correctly, but could QEMU be the solution you're looking for? I think this is an amazing emulator (but I haven't done much with it yet - only what you have seen in this video).

[@Ale.K7]

Cool!

[@AmEv7fam]

This is definitely a great stop gap, but I'm now absolutely curious if it would be possible to install it onto a secondary partition on the hard drive itself, so that way, on, say, laptops that don't even have any expansion on them can still benefit from larger hard drives.

[@bitsundbolts]

I haven't done anything related to boot sectors on drives yet, but I can imagine that there are possibilities to get this done. Other overlay software can do it too, so, why not XTIDE.

[@janhofmeier9427]

@@bitsundbolts The overlay software relies on the fact that the first sector will always be the same, no matter the geometry. Once that is loaded it can load the rest of itself through it's own functns using LBA access. The option rom loader probably uses the BIOS functions, which means the enough sectors need to line up in the wrong geometry. So for a 12kb rom that would be 24 sectors (probably 25, for the loader itself). Also you need to make sure that after XTIDE loaded, that it won't just load the option rom loader again in an endless loop. So it is probably better to just use EZ-BIOS. That also just uses 4kb of conventional memory. (but a tiny xtid, would also fit in 4kb)

[@lerkzor]

As to using upper memory, do you have to add a memory manager to the floppy? I remember having to set many commands in the config.sys and autoexec.bat files in order to use non-conventional memory. But can you even edit the floppy at all? Can you configure make to include emm386.exe, ot to use a config.sys type file?

[@Metalliferous]

Nice option with only minimal downsides. I wonder if some of that conventional memory can be (partially) reclaimed later?

[@bitsundbolts]

I'll try to find out how to get the BIOS into the upper memory area.

[@Flashy7]

I have been experimenting with xtide in network cards and I have built a few types of ISA xtide cards (my first experience was asking someone to burn and mail me an EPROM - with an unconfigured binary, can you believe it? :) ), but this will make many things much easier. If it works in the upper RAM, it will have zero downsides, although the 8k loss of a minimal build is still not a big deal really for its advantages.

[@bitsundbolts]

Yes, I absolutely agree. If XTIDE can be loaded into the upper memory, the floppy disk boot method will be super simple to use. I made the same mistake with the unconfigured XTIDE file. Luckily, I could reprogram the EPROM myself.

[@beatadalhagen]

I recall a boot utility that purports to similarly boot USB mass storage, but a cursory search does not turn it up.

[@bitsundbolts]

Ah, yes... The internet does forget those things slowly :(

[@hihi217]

Are you thinking of Plop Boot Manager?

[@luca6819]

What about a motherboard that have a boot ROM socket? Maybe in a part 4? 😁 I have a 386 board that has an empty socket for a boot ROM (not needed for the bios it has), I can't remember if there are any jumpers related to the boot ROM. Would be possible to put an XT IDE in there?

[@bitsundbolts]

Interesting - I have never seen such a board and I don't think I have one of those. It could be that this empty socket can be used for XTIDE. The ISA network card also just works without any jumpers to be set.

[@luca6819]

@bitsundbolts The board is a Digicom DIGIS-386CM if you are curios, it supported different bios and one of those didn't needed a boot ROM chip, so the socket is empty

[@mrgatogrande4284]

​@@bitsundboltsMost XT class motherboards have sockets for option ROMs. My Turbo XT works great with XT ide on those! Each one is for a different address... D800h and so forth.

[@luca6819]

@@mrgatogrande4284 Thanks!

[@TheOldGraff]

Awesome! Can be XTIDE integrate in existing BIOS image?

[@bitsundbolts]

Probably - if you have enough space. I remember from some of my older BIOS modding videos (adding your own logo instead of the Energy Star logo), that newer AWARD BIOSes allow to inject option ROMs. That could work. However, those BIOS versions probably already support larger hard drives.

[@kaulbachskave]

This reminds me of rom-o-matic, pxe boot rom on floppy

[@Aeduo]

Would this be able to be written to a boot block on a large hard drive to allow booting a larger hard drive on an older PC that can detect the drive but not address the whole thing? That could be useful as an alternative to something like ontrack. Hope you figure out a way to get it in to a UMB. Did you still have shadow BIOS enabled?

[@bitsundbolts]

I can imagine that it is possible to get this to work on a hard drive, but it sure needs some modification as well as a utility to write the boot sector. Maybe it can even be done with existing tools, but I haven't tried any of this yet. I tried the floppy with shadow enabled and disabled. It didn't make a difference regarding the use of upper memory.

[@Ntrvr]

Did you try to disable ROM shadowing when you tried loading the ROM into upper memory? Perhaps that can help.

[@bitsundbolts]

Yes, I tried. Unfortunately, that didn't help. I am trying to get some details and maybe the author will even reach out. Let's see and wait :)

[@matthewday7565]

@@bitsundbolts Might need to be a real mode UMB (The Last Byte) instead of an EMM386 UMB

[@nurmr]

I would think that shadow must actually be _enabled_, otherwise there's no memory to back that range.

[@Nexxxeh]

I assume it'll be fine, but does it work on Goteks running FlashFloppy? This might be the push that makes me get one, just to keep in my toolkit.

[@bitsundbolts]

I can try it, but I don't see a reason why it wouldn't work. I'll check and let you know.

[@DaikonRyusa]

Is it working with gotek?

[@bitsundbolts]

I still have to test this. I'll update once I know.

[@patrickbonner3764]

Hi BuB! Can you share the Floppy Image with the community?

[@bitsundbolts]

I just added the floppy images to my website. The link will be in the video description as well.

[@patrickbonner3764]

@@bitsundbolts That's nice! Thanks a lot. Best regards Paddy aka Ulfenknulfen.

[@taragwendolyn]

Back in the 90s, we used a 'dynamic drive overlay' to install a large hard drive in my 386. It installed to the boot sector and ran as a shim to present a large drive to dos than the BIOS supported

[@bitsundbolts]

I did the same. My Western Digital drive came with EZ-Drive. It was a great tool - unfortunately, I didn't understand what it was back then. I just knew that my drive wasn't properly detected without that tool.

[@Pickle136]

western digital ez drive is the one ive been using recently. I was great for a 386 laptop with a 1 gb compact flash

[@revelationnow]

Okay, now do a video on getting a PS2 keyboard working on a PS1 socket. I bought so many of those stupid PS2 KB to PS1 socket plugs, none of them worked. I tested them vs the wiring standard and just about all of them were mirrored and had some missing pin! I ended up buying a very fine PS1 keyboard for about as much money as I paid for the 386DX attached to it. Was my luck on these adapters terrible, or do they simply not work?

[@bitsundbolts]

Hm, maybe you were really unlucky with those adapters. I should get that USB to PS/2|DIN5 adapter done...

[@leandrojosegarciasanjuan6723]

Acabo de probarlo en un amstrad 5286 y no he conseguido arrancarlo, se queda estancado en la parte donde eliges A, C, Bootmenu, etc... He utilizado la imagen de 1.44mb y estoy usando una gotek... ¿Es porque es un 286? He intentado abrir la imagen img y da error de imagen... ¿eso es así? Se queda pillado justo después de aparecer el texto "Released under GNU GPL v2" Por cierto, genial el proyecto, enhorabuena!! Saludos desde Alicante!

[@leandrojosegarciasanjuan6723]

Me deja elegir las opciones, pero cuando elijo f2 se pone en azul pero no pasa nada.

[@bitsundbolts]

I'm not sure why that is. I have heard others that succeeded with the floppy image. I do not have a 286 and can't test it yet, but I'm planning on restoring one of my boards. I'll definitely test it because I need large hard drive support. Maybe it's because of the gotek floppy emulator - but I somehow doubt it. Unfortunately, I have no solution yet.

[@leandrojosegarciasanjuan6723]

@bitsundbolts I have tried to do it from a floppy disk recorded with FDIMAGE from the 286 itself, and the result is the same. I'll send you a video to your personal page so you can check how it works. Thank you very much!

[@DefenderOfBoston-yo2tl]

This is the way! That's all I have to say. 😄

[@thedopplereffect00]

This looks really painful to do in windows. All the path updating is just cringe. Just use Linux, even if it's inside of virtual box.

[@bitsundbolts]

Unfortunately, I'm not a Linux user. I did spend time with Linux, but it isn't an operating system I'm using day to day. The Windows sandbox is a virtualized environment that's available within a few seconds - and nothing needs to be set up. It's just there and works. It could be that Linux users will have an easier time to get this project set up quickly without all those quirks, but you wouldn't then need to watch my video either.

[@UncleKennybobs]

WHY use Windows?