18 Oct
2006
18 Oct
'06
1:36 p.m.
I have this board here, marked "Reveal / Part No. 14-004-008" with an
FCC ID if BEJGCD-R420B. It is an 8-bit ISA card with a few jumpers
(1-4 and 1-9) and a single 40-pin IDC connector.
From a bit of googling, it seems to be an ancient
CD-ROM interface.
That would be interesting as it's 8-bit and AFAIK, ATAPI
devices are
16-bit only. There's not much on the card - a couple of buffers ('244,
'245), an address comparator ('688), and a wee bit of logic ('32 x 2,
'08, '00)... nothing to, say, latch two 8-bit writes into a 16-bit
register.
Anyone recognize this beast? Is it useful in anything besides a DOS/Win3.1 box?
-ethan
18 Oct
18 Oct
2:06 p.m.
Ethan Dicks wrote:
I have this board here, marked "Reveal / Part No.
14-004-008" with an
FCC ID if BEJGCD-R420B. It is an 8-bit ISA card with a few jumpers
(1-4 and 1-9) and a single 40-pin IDC connector.
Probably some sort of Mitsumi interface. I expect it would be useful as
a fast-ish 8-bit parallel port...
Gordon.
From a bit of googling, it seems to be an ancient
CD-ROM interface.
That would be interesting as it's 8-bit and AFAIK, ATAPI
devices are
16-bit only. There's not much on the card - a couple of buffers ('244,
'245), an address comparator ('688), and a wee bit of logic ('32 x 2,
'08, '00)... nothing to, say, latch two 8-bit writes into a 16-bit
register.
Anyone recognize this beast? Is it useful in anything besides a
DOS/Win3.1 box? 
4:37 p.m.
On 10/19/2006 at 9:36 AM Ethan Dicks wrote:
I have this board here, marked "Reveal / Part No.
14-004-008" with an
FCC ID if BEJGCD-R420B. It is an 8-bit ISA card with a few jumpers
(1-4 and 1-9) and a single 40-pin IDC connector.
Anyone recognize this beast? Is it useful in anything
besides a
DOS/Win3.1 box?
Ethan, there were 8 bit cards for early CD-ROM drives. These were
"IDE-like" and not necessarily ATAPI. I've got a document somewhere that
details all of the nonsense--but you'll need an early "IDE" CD-ROM drive
and driver software to use this thing.
Cheers,
Chuck
19 Oct
19 Oct
8:35 a.m.
On Wednesday 18 October 2006 07:37 pm, Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 10/19/2006 at 9:36 AM Ethan Dicks wrote:
I have on hand here a number of early ISA sound cards and one or two adapter
cards that just provide the CD interface for those pre-IDE interfaces. And I
think *one* CD drive that uses one of them, if anybody would find such stuff
useful...
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, dealiest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of spac, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
I have this board here, marked "Reveal / Part
No. 14-004-008" with an
FCC ID if BEJGCD-R420B. It is an 8-bit ISA card with a few jumpers
(1-4 and 1-9) and a single 40-pin IDC connector.
Anyone recognize this beast? Is it useful in anything besides a
DOS/Win3.1 box?
Ethan, there were 8 bit cards for early CD-ROM drives. These were
"IDE-like" and not necessarily ATAPI. I've got a document somewhere that
details all of the nonsense--but you'll need an early "IDE" CD-ROM drive
and driver software to use this thing. 
18 Oct
18 Oct
5:10 p.m.
On Thu, 19 Oct 2006, Ethan Dicks wrote:
I have this board here, marked "Reveal / Part No.
14-004-008" with an
FCC ID if BEJGCD-R420B. It is an 8-bit ISA card with a few jumpers (1-4
and 1-9) and a single 40-pin IDC connector.
From a bit of googling, it seems to be an ancient CD-ROM interface. That
would be interesting as it's 8-bit and AFAIK, ATAPI devices are 16-bit
only. There's not much on the card - a couple of buffers ('244, '245),
an address comparator ('688), and a wee bit of logic ('32 x 2, '08,
'00)... nothing to, say, latch two 8-bit writes into a 16-bit register.
Anyone recognize this beast? Is it useful in anything besides a
DOS/Win3.1 box?
It should be supported under Linux or *BSD. I have one of these that I
used to use under Linux, so I know they used to be supported anyway. The
cdrom drive isn't ATAPI, but was a very common interface before ATA cdrom
drives became available. If memory serves, there were 3 non-ATAPI
interfaces that were fairly common. Some of the early Soundblaster cards
that supported an ATAPI drive also had the other 3 connectors on them.
-Toth
19 Oct
19 Oct
1:29 a.m.
On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 19:10:32 -0500 (CDT)
Tothwolf <tothwolf at concentric.net> wrote:
It should be supported under Linux or *BSD.
At
least NetBSD supports only the old Mitsumi CDROM controller: mcd(4).
Linux supported way more of those funky, proprietary IDE like CDROMs.
But most likely this junk was removed from (semi) recent kernels.
If you need a CDROM with a 8 bit ISA interface you may use a SCSI drive
with a ST-01 / ST-02 or NCR 53C400 SCSI adapter.
--
tsch??,
Jochen
Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/
9:25 a.m.
Jochen Kunz wrote:
Linux supported way more of those funky, proprietary
IDE like CDROMs.
But most likely this junk was removed from (semi) recent kernels.
Removed from the SOURCE tree, or from most compiled distros?
If removed from the source tree, I had better hold onto my older versions...
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
9:53 a.m.
On Thursday 19 October 2006 12:25 pm, Jim Leonard wrote:
Jochen Kunz wrote:
I can't speak for other distros, but in Slackware I believe that stuff is
still included, just not installed or configured by default.
Who gets rid of older versions, anyhow? :-)
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, dealiest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of spac, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
Linux supported way more of those funky,
proprietary IDE like CDROMs.
But most likely this junk was removed from (semi) recent kernels.
Removed from the SOURCE tree, or from most compiled distros?
If removed from the source tree, I had better hold onto my older
versions... 
24 Oct
24 Oct
3:58 a.m.
On Thu, 2006-10-19 at 11:25 -0500, Jim Leonard wrote:
Jochen Kunz wrote:
Neither. On the generic Ubuntu Dapper kernel:
toresbe at fortran:/lib/modules/2.6.15-26-386/kernel/drivers/cdrom$ ls
aztcd.ko cdu31a.ko gscd.ko mcdx.ko sbpcd.ko sonycd535.ko
cdrom.ko cm206.ko isp16.ko optcd.ko sjcd.ko
Same sets are there on the default x86 Debian Sarge kernels, but
understandably not on sparc64.
Tore
Linux supported way more of those funky,
proprietary IDE like CDROMs.
But most likely this junk was removed from (semi) recent kernels.
Removed from the SOURCE tree, or from most compiled distros?
8:57 a.m.
Tore Sinding Bekkedal wrote:
Neither. On the generic Ubuntu Dapper kernel:
toresbe at fortran:/lib/modules/2.6.15-26-386/kernel/drivers/cdrom$ ls
aztcd.ko cdu31a.ko gscd.ko mcdx.ko sbpcd.ko sonycd535.ko
cdrom.ko cm206.ko isp16.ko optcd.ko sjcd.ko
Same sets are there on the default x86 Debian Sarge kernels, but
understandably not on sparc64.
Excellent. This means that, memory and cpu target permitting, I can use
recent distros on older hardware.
I know that Redhat switched over to Pentium-and-higher only CPU targets
a while ago; do any of the major pre-compiled distros (Fedora Core,
Ubuntu, Debian, etc.) still support 386?
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
Linux supported way more of those funky, proprietary
IDE like CDROMs.
But most likely this junk was removed from (semi) recent kernels.
Removed from the
SOURCE tree, or from most compiled distros? 
9:47 a.m.
Jim,
On 10/24/06, Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org> wrote:
I know that Redhat switched over to Pentium-and-higher
only CPU targets
a while ago; do any of the major pre-compiled distros (Fedora Core,
Ubuntu, Debian, etc.) still support 386?
I know that Ubuntu (Dapper) at least still compiles for a 386 target
by default. The problem being that there isn't enough RAM that you
can cram onto an "average" 386 board that'll support it. When it
comes to 386s and 486s (and some low Pentiums), I always stick with
earlier versions of the distributions I run (Slackware, mainly) so
that I have RAM left over to be useful.
To make it on-topic: My Network General Sniffer (Compaq Portable/386
with 6MB of RAM, math coprocessor, and backpack with a modem and
network card) runs a hybridized 3.0-to-4.0 Slackware Linux, cramming
in the kernel, base tools, networking tools and clients, C compiler,
Basic interpreter, my favorite text editor and some other tools in
30MB of the 40MB Connor drive it came with. That leaves me 5MB for
swap, and 5MB user space. Plenty of room for fun! ;)
Josef
--
"I laugh because I dare not cry. This is a crazy world
and the only way to enjoy it is to treat it as a joke."
-- Hilda "Sharpie" Burroughs,
"The Number of the Beast" by Robert A. Heinlein
12:29 p.m.
Jim Leonard wrote:
Excellent. This means that, memory and cpu target
permitting, I can use
recent distros on older hardware.
I know that Redhat switched over to Pentium-and-higher only CPU targets
a while ago; do any of the major pre-compiled distros (Fedora Core,
Ubuntu, Debian, etc.) still support 386?
I think Slackware does and I know Debian does out of the box. Even a
late-gen kernel can be built to run in small memory, but you'll probably
want an older distribution anyway, in order to get a userland
lightweight enough to run in < 8MB of memory.
Unless you need something unique to Linux, I'd suggest NetBSD or
OpenBSD for small-memory systems.
Doc
19 Oct
19 Oct
4:17 p.m.
On Thu, 19 Oct 2006, Jochen Kunz wrote:
On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 19:10:32 -0500 (CDT)
Tothwolf <tothwolf at concentric.net> wrote:
Wouldn't surprise me really, from what I remember, a lot of the driver
code was kludgey at best. I might have to pull out some of those old
drives over the holidays and see what the current driver code looks like.
Its been awhile since I did any kernel hacking anyway.
It should be supported under Linux or *BSD.
At least NetBSD supports only the old Mitsumi CDROM controller: mcd(4).
Linux supported way more of those funky, proprietary IDE like CDROMs.
But most likely this junk was removed from (semi) recent kernels. If you need a CDROM with a 8 bit ISA interface you may
use a SCSI drive
with a ST-01 / ST-02 or NCR 53C400 SCSI adapter.
Speaking of which, I unearthed an odd one myself a few weeks ago while
sorting out drives. It is a external Hitachi drive with a special
interface card. I never did manage to get it working under Linux or
FreeBSD (no driver or docs). I'm not sure which box the card is in right
now, but I did locate the drive again. Its built like a tank and unless
I'm mistaken, its a single speed drive.
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12 comments
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participants (10)
-
cclist＠sydex.com -
doc＠mdrconsult.com -
ethan.dicks＠gmail.com -
gordon＠gjcp.net -
jkunz＠unixag-kl.fh-kl.de -
josefcub＠gmail.com -
rtellason＠verizon.net -
toresbe＠ifi.uio.no -
tothwolf＠concentric.net -
trixter＠oldskool.org