Got the card, but didn't come with a driver diskette. Am I going to be able to
use this controller as the only I/O in the system? (ie. I can boot off the
card's BIOS, yes?)
Jim Leonard wrote:
> I've ordered one, thanks! I'll benchmark it to see how it performs
> against a WD1002 w/ST-225.
>
> Glen Goodwin wrote:
>
>> 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
>>>
>
--
Jim Leonard (trixter_at_oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
Received on Thu Jan 06 2005 - 17:06:38 GMT