Old MFM controller on a PCI bus machine

From: Eelco Huininga <e.huininga_at_sozawe.groningen.nl>
Date: Tue Jan 27 04:07:33 2004

You could try a BIOS update to see if this works. Also you could try deactivating the onboard IDE controller since this one usually uses interrupts 14 and 15.


Cheers,
Eelco


>>> Vintage Computer Festival <vcf_at_siconic.com> 01/26 7:43 >>>

I haven't played with MFM hard drives and controllers in a LONG time
(about 10 years now) so I have some questions.

I'll start off easy. Should there be any reason an old 16-bit ISA MFM
controller won't work properly in a Pentium-class PC with ISA and PCI
slots? I imagine I would just have to configure the BIOS to reserve the
proper interrupt (I believe it's 14, correct?) for the MFM controller.

I did all this but the MFM controller wreaked havoc on the system. It
killed the on-board floppy disk and IDE controllers (not physically killed
but basically disabled them and the system couldn't boot).

I'm trying to determine if there is a natural conflict before I venture
forth with this configuration. This may be a problem related to the PC
I'm trying to plug the card into because there are other oddities with the
IDE controller that is preventing the system from booting with 4 hard
drives installed (2 per IDE interface). It halts after it auto-recognizes
the drives on the primary controller. Weird.

Anyway, any insight would be appreciated.

I'm going to do more experimentation in the meantime. I'll get another PC
with ISA and PCI slots to work with, and will also find an old 386 to test
the MFM controller on to make sure it is working fine.

-- 
Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger                http://www.vintage.org 
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers   ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com  || at http://marketplace.vintage.org  ]
Received on Tue Jan 27 2004 - 04:07:33 GMT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Oct 10 2014 - 23:36:48 BST