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Home / I-Opener Areas / I-Opener Technical Stuff Turbo3's Floppy Drive Hack Enabling Floppy on IOpener

Turbo3's Floppy Drive Hack (modified 0 times) Wild_Pencil Profile | Email OK, just finished doing the Floppy Drive hardware hack "the hard way" -- by soldering directly to the motherboard's test pads as Turbo3 had pioneered. I'm actually amazed that I got it right the first time around, considering how tiny those darned pads are. As a test, I fired up my machine, booting off of a RedHat 7.1 CD-Rom. Went into "Rescue Mode" to quickly get an sh prompt, mounted /dev/fd0, and lo-and-behold, a rewarding sign of life appeared in my floppy-drive enclosure. Linux was able to read and write the floppy, no problem. (Figured it would, since it has its own floppy driver that doesn't depend on the BIOS). *Whew*, the hard part is now behind me -- I now have a confirmed working floppy drive running on my IOpener. Now all I have to do is figure out why the floppy drive doesn't show up in the BIOS hardware scan; which in turn makes it impossible for DOS/Windows to use the floppy. My guess is that it's all mucked up in there because of the Sandisk enabling logic. Ah well, at least it's now a software issue for my lab machine. Next test is to make an INT-13 TSR out of the Floppy-Driver used in the Tiny BIOS project.. if that works, I can create a brute-force "Floppy-Enabled" BIOS image 'til I figure out how to unlock what's really wrong with the IOpener's Award BIOS.. -WP 07-13-2001 23:20:50

RE:Turbo3's Floppy Drive Hack (modified 0 times) Ragnar Profile Well done!!!! Will the motherboard pin locations be available any time soon? Thanks. 07-14-2001 08:26:21

RE:Turbo3's Floppy Drive Hack (modified 1 times) Wild_Pencil Profile | Email See Turbo3's Floppy Drive Hack pictures at http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/turbo3pictures Mobo Pin / Floppy Header Pin / Floppy Function A6 / 28 / Write Protect A7 / 22 / Write Data A8 / 12 / Disk Select 1 (Zero-Based) B6 / 30 / Read Data B7 / 24 / Write Gate aka Write Enable B8 / 14 / Disk Select 0 (Zero-Based) C6 / 34 / Disk Change C7 / 32 / Head Select aka Side Select C8 / 16 / Motor 1 Activate(Zero-Based) D7 / 08 / Index D8 / 18 / Direction D9 / 02 / Drive Density Select 0 E7 / 26 / Track 0 Status E8 / 20 / Step E9 / 10 / Motor 0 Activate 07-14-2001 09:59:01

RE:Turbo3's Floppy Drive Hack (modified 0 times) Kludgemeister Profile Fantastic, W_P! You are obviously both left- and right-brained. A couple of questions from someone who programs things by banging on them with the nearest rock or animal bone: I had an old RLL hard drive controller in my 286 days that had its own BIOS in ROM, and somehow loaded it during bootup. Is the TSR you're thinking of something like that? And is the RedHat floppy driver unique to that OS, or is it something shared by other *nixes? 07-15-2001 18:52:40

RE:Turbo3's Floppy Drive Hack (modified 0 times) Wild_Pencil Profile | Email The TSR is just a test program to make sure the floppy BIOS support will work with DOS before I drop it into the BIOS. It's still crashing my machine at this point, so I'll need to dive into the code and see what's going on under the hood. Your RLL hard-drive's BIOS is functionally equivalent to the ISA Option ROMs that Programmer and I have produced to enhance the BIOS. In your system, the ROM existed physically as a chip that responded to memory reads at or above segment C000. In the IOpener's Award BIOS, we embed Option ROMs directly into the Award BIOS image as a compressed ROM. On startup, Award BIOS decompresses the System ROM (original.tmp) and all option ROMs into the proper locations, and then hands control over to the System ROM to continue initializing the machine. All this work to eliminate extra ROM chips. The CD-Boot support was written as an Option ROM. The FixUSB/Memory-Interleave/Mode CO80 fixes were also produced this way. The RedHat Linux floppy driver is a core part of the Linux Kernel.. not usable by other operating systems. I'm sure other O/S variants have similar support. DOS, and Windows "compatibility mode" are a different story -- they go through the broken BIOS. -WP 07-15-2001 21:08:27

RE:Turbo3's Floppy Drive Hack (modified 0 times) Kludgemeister Profile >The RedHat Linux floppy driver is a core part of the Linux Kernel.. The reason I asked was, though I'm currently using a DOS ("the other command-line OS") app to control my milling machine, there is a precompiled EMC (Enhanced Machine Controller) freeware running on BDI Linux. r_fl_z is already running it on his i-o, but I'm loathe to make the 500+MB download and learn a new operating system unless it is reeeeally necessary or desirable (a working floppy would almost fit the latter criterion)... All kludge, all the time. 07-15-2001 22:43:41

RE:Turbo3's Floppy Drive Hack (modified 0 times) Kludgemeister Profile And thanks for the ROM BIOS explanation, W_P. That address brings back memories! I was having problems with the hard drive, and remember going through endless cycles of "G=C800:5" in debug to try low-level formatting it... Never solved the problem--the drive would occasionally sit there with the access light shining but the heads not moving--always on a read, fortunately never on a write, and I'd have to cycle the power switch as the only way of "unsticking" it. All kludge, all the time. 07-15-2001 22:52:02

RE:Turbo3's Floppy Drive Hack (modified 0 times) Finatronics Profile Forgive me if this has already been answered (it doesn't appear that it has been, because a search for "floppy" returns this as the most relevent and newest modified thread)... Wild Pencil, Did you actually get this working in the BIOS? I bought a BIOS from you a few months ago, would it already be supported in here? I see it listed in the BIOS Setup program, but everything I've read so far makes it sound like the BIOS still doesn't let it work. Honestly, the reason I want it is so I can hook up a 5.25in floppy drive to my I-Opener whenever I need to use those ancient disks (happens relatively often with all the old computers in the family, and the junk that I always get hold of). I intend on putting a 34pin header on the case (or possibly a DB-35 on the case, haven't decided) to which I can connect whatever floppy drive(s) I need at the time. The thing that brought this idea on was that I want to test my new Serial I/O adapter, and I wanted to use a serial mouse to do it. However, the only serial mouse DOS drivers I seem to have are on a 5.25in floppy. I know I could probably download them somewhere, but this is also for the hack value in addition to being useful (to me) for other projects. I'm asking now because it's been a long time since anyone talked about the floppy hack, and it was still left in the air. I don't want to solder all those tiny pads and cut holes in the case and spend so much time on this if it's not going to work and noone is interested in making it work anymore! WildPencil, your contributions here have been more than amazing. Thanks so much! I hope you haven't gotten burnt out on the I-Opener ;) Eric 04-12-2002 16:44:36

RE:Turbo3's Floppy Drive Hack (modified 0 times) Finatronics Profile Whoa! I was just looking over Turbo3's pictures and noticed that he seems to have the "missing CF chip" built into his board! My IO doesn't have that, and I don't remember Codeman's (from the CF hack) having it either. Turbo3, is there any way you could take a better picture of that chip and the surrounding components? If we could get some specs on it, we might be able to figure out if this is the Hot-Swap chip that we've all been dreaming about! Furthermore, Turbo3, I think you could still install the CF slot even with the floppy connector installed, since the CF would be above the header. (Didn't you post about not being able to do the CF hack since you put the floppy header there, on the CF thread?). Thanks a lot guys! This has been quite fun, even if I am a "late bloomer". Eric 04-12-2002 16:53:07

RE:Turbo3's Floppy Drive Hack (modified 0 times) Finatronics Profile doh! Someone corrected me... it's the sound chip for the v5 :/ Ah well... 04-12-2002 19:15:27

RE:Turbo3's Floppy Drive Hack (modified 0 times) Finatronics Profile Did anyone notice that the CyberBlade's spec sheet says that there needs to be 1k pullup resistors on 5 of the lines to the floppy drive? http://www.linux-hacker.net/downloads/I-Opener/cbi7.pdf page 76... look at the FDD connector schematic down at the bottom right corner. I think I'll go with what they suggest.. Eric 04-12-2002 21:23:34

RE:Turbo3's Floppy Drive Hack (modified 0 times) Finatronics Profile Well, I tried both ways, and when I'm in DOS and try to switch to A: it says "Write Protect Error reading Drive B:" Notice that it specifically says B not A, even though I tried switching to A. I tried using the pullup resistors, but it didn't change anything. I also tried telling the BIOS that it was on A and tried on B, and the only difference was that when I set it to B (didn't change what position it was in on the cable) it said floppy seek error. Makes me think that the BIOS is supporting it at least somewhat, because it sees it when it's hooked up right. I wonder if I wired it wrong (I checked everything three times after soldering, I guess I should check again). Eric 04-13-2002 12:08:18

RE:Turbo3's Floppy Drive Hack (modified 0 times) *SF* Profile The last post or 2 of this thread might explain your confusion about B: ? & to answer an earlier question, I don't remember anyone mentioning the pullup resistors before. But I could have forgotten ! 04-13-2002 22:41:16

RE:Turbo3's Floppy Drive Hack (modified 0 times) Finatronics Profile I was hoping there was more news about the workability of this... I have read that thread before, that's why I tried both ways (connecting it to the first connector "A:", with the twist, and the second connector "B:" without the twist). Both gave the same error. But, thanks for pointing it out to me again, maybe it'll inspire new ideas in me sooner or later. If that's the last word on the issue, it seems as if the floppy never worked in DOS and probably never will... no? I can install it in Linux, that's not an issue. It's just quicker and easier to do things in DOS since I have dozens of copies and drivers and stuff already (don't have to make disks and install it and such). And I would have liked it to be bootable... No DOS/Boot support *sniffle*? Eric 04-14-2002 18:14:24

RE:Turbo3's Floppy Drive Hack (modified 0 times) Wild_Pencil Profile | Email The IOpener's BIOS doesn't implement the floppy handler.. at least, not anything usable. Floppy support works in the Hybrid BIOS, and it did boot a floppy properly. Since the Hybrid worked, and there wasn't much interest in developing the floppy upgrade, I put this on the backburner, unfinished. If there are more people interested in this, I can pull it out of storage once the movers arrive with my stuff. :-/ While I can't legally distribute the Hybrid, I can slap on the needed floppy-support routines to the v5 BIOS. -WP 04-15-2002 17:56:02

RE:Turbo3's Floppy Drive Hack (modified 0 times) Finatronics Profile WP: Hybrid? Do you mean combining code from a similar BIOS into this one? This is different from your BIOS-addons that you've done before (such as the SmartBoot option), right? I wouldn't want you to do anything illegal (then again, isn't everything we're doing to these poor little machines somewhat illegal? Going against the EULA...), but it would be nice to have support. If I'm the only person who's still interested in this, maybe you could explain how to "hybridize" my own BIOS to have support...? How would "slap[ping] on the needed floppy routines" work? Would it be bootable and usable as on a "normal" computer? Is this another BIOS-addon, or a hack to the actual existing BIOS code (not that it matters, I'm just trying to learn along the way ;)? If you do find time and motivation to modify the BIOS again, would you mind putting the escape button back in the BIOS screens rather than (or in addition to, if possible!) F4, or explain to me how to do it? My natural reflex from working with these BIOS's is to hit Escape, and it's kinda frustrating. Do you have a website with documentation of how you did (and figured out how to do) these modifications? I'd be very interested in reading it, if you did! I've been learning about Assembly for microcontrollers, and I imagine it's quite similar (though much more sophisticated) on PCs... I love to learn ;) While I feel sad that I'm just using other people's already-documented hacks and haven't been able to contribute anything new myself, I'm glad they're available and that I didn't have to figure this stuff out for myself, or I would have given up LONG ago... Your dedication and motivation are quite inspiring, and I am (and probably everyone is) quite thankful for your great work on these hacks. It brings quite a bit of fun to those of us with the hardware/software skills to do them, but without enough skill/experience to actually figure them out for ourselves, while also teaching us about methods to figure these types of things out on our own. Eric 04-15-2002 21:26:11

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