Today's #retrocomputing build reminded me of all the fun we had in the late 90's with #bios lba.

The build itself was simple, a P166 #mmx 32mb ram, 2gb cf card, es1370 audiopci, rtl8019 network card (with rom socket), adaptec aha-2940uw, matrox mystique pci and ps/2 mouse.

Secondary goal was to create an image of the 40mb #scsi hdd from my #mac colour classic.

It started off easy enough, motherboard is a ga-586tx3 ( https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/gigabyte-ga-586tx3-rev-1-0x ) that has at & atx power, as well as 72pin and sdram sockets. 2x 16mb edo i had, a 450w off the shelf atx power supply and an atx case (fractal popair) with two external bays for floppy and pata ide dvd writer.

I found:
- an ne2000 driver for the rtl8019 https://github.com/Manawyrm/ISA8019/tree/master/Drivers/Crynwr%20packet%20driver%20-%2016bit%20ISA
- "cute mouse" driver https://cutemouse.sourceforge.net/
- and the soundcard driver for the audiopci works like a soundblaster (once you set up the pci and legacy irqs in the bios: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=87967&p=1071189&hilit=audiopci%201370#p1071189 ).

I managed to get it all going (minus the dvd drive, need to get more ide cables), using xt-ide card, and then the xt-ide rom on the network card.

Then it gets fun. The xt-ide rom does not play well with the scsi card, ignoring bios drive entry. Then, do you think I can find a dos utility to raw read a hard drive?!

Well, i eventually downloaded the latest #elks floppy image and booted it so i could use dd; but when i removed the xt-ide card, lba translation failed between modern pc and 1997 bios. After some trial and error, i found a 512mb cf card in my collection that wouldn't trash the filesystem; setting it up as "large" in the bios. https://github.com/ghaerr/elks/releases

Finally got the image done, and it booted first time with https://infinitemac.org/

After all that, i think this build might end up with the scsi card and I'll get another #BlueSCSI to go with it. I probably could have grabbed one with initiator mode and bypassed this whole circus.

That means i could alternate between msdos, freedos, linux, netbsd, win95, win nt, even "Native" Oberon, etc...

My next #retropc project is to get xt-ide running in one of my n2800 #netvista "thin clients" with a #Pentium MMX 266, cf card slot and 128-256mb ram; overkill mini dos machines. http://ohlandl.ipv7.net/8364/8364_netvista.html

Same issue here with lba bios and modern computers not agreeing on the formatting.

Local Facebook boomer post: “one of the election candidates is 18 years old and obviously they have no life experience so they shouldn’t be on the ballot I won’t vote for them.

My response was, sadly, deleted.