TMC 850M (no bios) on IBM PC 5150 - slow boot

[bendix]

I recently bought a TMC 850 M (Apple Signal Port) SCSI card at ebay with bios socket but no eprom chip. With the help of previous postings I managed to connect a 3,5 " 1 GByte Micropolis HD to the PC and boot from a flopppy. I jumpered the card with I/0 C00h and IRQ 3

In config.sys I load

device=dcam950.exe /ca00 3
device=fdbios.sys

Loading the drivers and searching for connected devices takes 2-3 minutes. When I add

device=fdcd.sys /D:MSCD000

another 1,5 min will pass. I know, that the CPU has only 4,77 MHz.

My questions are:

Is it normal that "Searching for SCSI controllers and devices" takes that long? Could I perhaps speed it up a little with some special command line options? The documentation of the drivers is rather poor.

Do cards with eprom bios boot quicker?

And finally:
The first "dir c:" always hangs for a couple of secs although there is not much data on the drive (maybe 25 MByte). Do cards with bios show this behaviour too?

Regards

Matthias Wenthe

[kb2syd]

device=fdcd.sys /D:MSCD000


Are you using the cd-rom? If not, remove that line.

And finally:
The first "dir c:" always hangs for a couple of secs although there is not much data on the drive (maybe 25 MByte). Do cards with bios show this behaviour too?


The pause is probably DIR determining free disk space. This is slow the first time.

Some fdcd command line options can be found at:
http://www.cacgroup.cz/podpora/ftp/Komponenty%20PC/SOUND/SONSOUND/FDCD.TXT

or download the installer at: http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/speed/obsolete/future_domain-trantor/pwrscsi4_exe.htm
This includes the docs for fdcd.


SUMMARY OF COMMAND LINE PARAMETERS
----------------------------------
DEVICE = FDCD.SYS /D:NAME [/F/R/T/Z/M/L/P]
where:
NAME is a 1 to 8 character device name
/F is to scan the drives in ascending SCSI ID
numbers
/R is to force a SCSI Bus Reset to occur before
driver initialization
/T is to force the use of the proprietary OEM
Tool Kit even if Future/CAM is available
/Z is to display the device driver size
/M is to mute the display on the screen
/L is to reserve one CD-ROM drive for
PCMCIA hot-plug support
/P is to reserve multiple CD-ROM drives for
PCMCIA hot-plug support

Note: /L and /P are mutually excluded.

[mbbrutman]

On my older machines at similar clock speeds it does not take much longer for the machine to boot. You may have a SCSI termination problem that is causing errors during the hardware polling. Do the devices work correctly once booted?

What version of DOS are you using? With DOS 5 there is a very noticable delay in calculating the amount of free space on the partition. The larger the partition the more the delay is. I have often waited 20 or 30 seconds for a 'dir' to come back with a 60MB partition.

Lastly, software drivers are always going to be slower than the built in ROM support. I have measured performance of reads and writes to be at least 30% slower when using software drivers. The delay you describe seems to be much more than what can be explained by software.

[bendix]

Thank you, kb2syd, for the info regarding the cdrom driver. Does anyone know about the command line options for the two other drivers? I loaded the cdrom driver only out of curiosity, I will disable it by default and only reenable it when needed.

My 5150 has a "hard card" with a WD TM 362 MFM drive but unfortunately this frequently fails to spin up. When the heads seem to be glooed to the disk surface I have to remove the card, shake it heavily in spin direction and put it back into slot. Since I thought that this is no long term solution I tried experimenting with external SCSI devices. I attached a Yamaha CD burner and the Micropolis drive in an external case and put an active terminator on one of its centronics interfaces. This configuration has always worked my Sun sparcstation 2. The card itsself is internally terminated with the usual 3 resistors. And yes, once the painfully long boot process is overcome the devices work correctly. Is the position of the isa slot relevant? I use slot 3.

The DOS Version is indeed MS-DOS 5. The initial "dir c:" pause seemed equally long with a 100 MB Fujitsu drive.

mbbrutman, does your statement regarding the quick boot speed on your old machines also count for bios less TMC cards?

Maybe I should try to get one of this magic Bios V. 8.2 eproms? There was a thread a while ago, where somebody "advertised" that he has an eprom burner old enough to flash these chips.

[kb2syd]

Does anyone know about the command line options for the two other drivers?
The documentation is part of:
http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/speed/obsolete/future_domain-trantor/pwrscsi4_exe.htm

To manually configure this driver in the CONFIG.SYS file, use the following
syntax:

DEVICE=[drive:][path]FDBIOS.SYS [/L] [/P:<HBA>,<ID>:<DriveCount>[,P]] [/M]

Where:

/L Indicates support for one hot-plug drive
(for SCSI2GO PCMCIA card only)
/P Indicates support for hot-plug drive(s)
(for SCSI2GO PCMCIA card only)
<HBA> Identifies the path (controller) number (0 thru 3)
<ID> Identifies the Target ID (0 thru 6)
<DriveCount> Number of drive letters to allocate
[,P] Indicates whether a primary partition is present
/M Disables the display of parameter option messages

Note: The /L parameter and the /P parameter are mutually exclusive

Example:
(Configuration for SCSI2GO PCMCIA card)
DEVICE=C:\PWRSCSI!\FDBIOS.SYS /P:0,5:1,P

(Configuration for regular desktop system)
DEVICE=C:\PWRSCSI!\FDBIOS.SYS


You might want to try the MCAM950.SYS version of the driver.

Multitasking 8-Bit Future/CAM Driver

The multitasking version (DCAM950.EXE) provides full CAM support which
includes the SCSI device disconnect/reconnect feature and the queuing of
CAM commands. This driver provides the best performance for most
configurations.

To manually configure this driver in the CONFIG.SYS file, use the following
syntax:

DEVICE=[drive:][path]DCAM950.EXE /<Memory_Address> <IRQ> [/<Memory_Address>
<IRQ>]

Where:

For each 8-bit controller supported, command line parameters are required
which specify Memory Address and IRQ. Each 8-bit controller installed must
have a unique Memory Address/IRQ.

<Memory_Address> (C800, CA00, CE00, DE00, E800,
or EC00).
<IRQ> IRQ (3, 4, 5, 10, 11, 12, 14, or 15)

Example:

DEVICE=C:\PWRSCSI!\DCAM950.EXE /CA00 5

Note: The TMC-850M/MER/MEX only support IRQ 3 and 5. The other IRQ
selections are for older 950 based controllers (TMC-860M and TMC-885M).


Singletasking 8-Bit Future/CAM Driver

The singletasking version (MCAM950.SYS) provides all the CAM functionality
except it does not support SCSI device disconnect/reconnect and all CAM
commands are processed serially.

To manually configure this driver in the CONFIG.SYS file, use the following
syntax:

DEVICE=[drive:][path]MCAM950.SYS

Parameters: None

Example:

DEVICE=C:\PWRSCSI!\MCAM950.SYS

[bendix]

Thanks again for the command line options. Not much to be gained from there. I hoped for something to avoid long scanning for example to tell the driver to install one hd at ID 3, LUN0 etc.

One thing I would like to add with respect to the PowerSCSI version 4.1. I tried the setup but it freezes the machine. Maybe another indicator for a hardware problem?

[hargle]

I have a spare BIOS already programmed into an eprom that I got from lynchaj that I put into one of those apple port 850M (mine was an 850MER)

I have absolutely no use for it since lynchaj sent me 2 eproms, and the 1st one I tried worked brilliantly.

Pop me a PM with your address and I'll happily mail it to you.

[bendix]

Thank you for your kind offer, hargle, I just sent you my address. It was actually your previous posting I was refering to earlier.

I just read the thread about the PC 286 and was surprised to learn about the head parking utility for MFM disks. Maybe that is the reason, why my 20 MB MFM disk frequently refuses to spin up? When that happens the machine makes a tak tak tak noise and the monitor shows a signal similar to an ECG.

[lynchaj]

I have a spare BIOS already programmed into an eprom that I got from lynchaj that I put into one of those apple port 850M (mine was an 850MER)

I have absolutely no use for it since lynchaj sent me 2 eproms, and the 1st one I tried worked brilliantly.

Pop me a PM with your address and I'll happily mail it to you.

Hi All,

I recently came into possession of a rather large cache of old EPROMs of the mostly 2764, 27C128, 27C256, and 27C512 variety. There are a sprinkling of other types in there as well and a good sized pile of 2732's as well.

I can help individuals with EPROMs as they need them for older machines. However, the largest chip I can program is 32 pins (1Mx8, AFAIK) so the more recent stuff like Mac and Amiga are probably out.

I am willing to help out on a per case basis if anyone needs it. Let me know.

Thanks and good luck!

Andrew Lynch

[bendix]

Yesterday I found hargles eprom in the mail, 11 days after he brought it to the post office, so we all have a better understanding now of the enormous size of that ocean that lies between us.

I pressed it carefully in its socket remounted the TMC card into the PC and there was the BIOS message. My 1 GByte Micropolis drive is now C: without any drivers from a floppy. And like mbrutman said: the hard drive access and general speed is considerably quicker than with just the drivers.

If I load software drivers (CAM and cdrom) for cdrom access it is still painfully slow and takes a long time until I get the prompt but that's not important, since I will not have much use for cdroms on the 5150 anyway.

Anyway I would like to say "Thank you very much!!!" to both of you, lynchaj for making it and sending it to hargle in the first place and hargle for being kind enough to send it all the way to Germany. It was hard enough to find one of this rare TMC adapters anyway even without an eprom chip. I did not dream to be supplied with the correct bios version.

So again, thank you!
Matthias

[Anonymous Coward]

How much is Hargle's service? Though I have a copy of the v8.2 I do not have the equipment to make a new ROM. I could really use two copies of this ROM.