As usual, I'm coming into this conversation late, but for those
who are interested, you can still buy Rancho RT-1000B 8-bit
ISA SCSI controllers for $15, brand new with a 90-day warranty:
http://www.hitechcafe.com/eshop/product.asp?dept_id=4&sku=RT1000B-2
I used these extensively years ago, and built hundreds of Win 3.1 and
Win 95 machines with them. They are bootable, and used to include the
driver
diskette (I still have some of the diskettes -- as well as a few of the
controllers). Remarkably, I never, ever saw one fail, and they worked
with every (small) SCSI hard drive and CD-ROM I ever tried with them.
Until a couple of months ago, I was still using one with a 50MB drive in
the machine we used for a cash register in our shop.
And, now that I recall, I've done a number of data transfers from
XT clones to newer machines for customers by sticking an RT-1000B,
with a small hard drive attached, into the XT clone, xcopy-ing the data
from an ST-225, then moving the controller and the SCSI drive to the
newer machine and reversing the process.
Later --
Glen
0/0
----- Original Message -----
From: Fred Cisin <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 4:40 PM
Subject: Re: Possible to speed up I/O subsystem of 5150?
> On Thu, 9 Dec 2004, 9000 VAX wrote:
> > There are 8 bit SCSI controllers too. Once I sold two to one guy for
> > $10. Both used NCR 53c90, both had ROM and were bootable.
>
> I have a DTC 3250 (SCSI + floppy) with manual AND DRIVER DISK!, and a
> Future Domain TMC-840. Both have ROMs (EPROMs?) They are available if
> they will help.
> (I found them a few days ago while looking for my ST-01s (another thread);
> Some book or magazine had had source code for a stand-alone CD-ROM driver
> using the ST-01, and I had gotten a few to play with many years ago.)
>
>
> > > SMARTDRV was bundled with Windoze 3.10, and will work with
> > > some of the <3.30 DOS versions.
> > > But you need to use 3.31 or newer to have any partitions
> > > larger than 32M.
> > XT's do not have more than 640K memory, thus SMARTDRV is not very
useful.
> But wouldn't a few hundred K of cache be helpful?
>
> While it's true that XTs can not have more than 640K of REAL memory
> (actually 1M minus some overhead with some hardware and software hacks),
> not even HIMEM, and certainly no XMS (Extended Memory Specification),
> I have had up to 8meg of "Expanded" memory on XTs.
> I have a tote full of TallTree JRAM, JLASER, etc. stuff.
> I don't know what the max was on the later LIM (Lotus Intel MicroSoft)
> EMS (Expanded Memory Specification).
>
> --
> Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin_at_xenosoft.com
>
Received on Sat Dec 11 2004 - 11:26:33 GMT