11 Feb
2006
11 Feb
'06
9:46 a.m.
Jim Leonard wrote:
I discovered tonight that the right-most ISA slot (the
one closest to
the power supply) in my newly-unearthed 5160 won't take the Silicon
Valley Computer ADP50L IDE controller I'm playing with. It will take
other (very short!) cards, but when I put the IDE controller into it,
either the option ROM is invisible (ie. 55AA not found) or won't
initialize for some reason, because I don't get functionality out of it
(least of all, the boot "banner" produced by the card is missing).
I can only conclude that:
1. The IDE board is slightly awry
2. The right-most ISA slot is slightly awry
3. There is some technical limitation I'm not aware of
#1 and #2 are easy to accept, but not #3. Is there such a limitation?
I think that there is. I have a Western Digital XT-150 IDE-XT
adapter, and WD's docs specifically state that "for IBM XT owners", the
card cannot be placed in the slot nearest the PSU. This also applies to
the WD XT-140.
I have no idea why that restriction exists; I just remembered seeing
it in the XT-150 docs.
Doc