ARCO AC-1070
Two variants of this- the AC-1070 and the AC-1070EXT (External) 
@6263.ADF - Arco  AC-1070 IDE Controller 
@62B6.ADF - Arco AC-1079 SLIM Drive Adapter Allows Mirroring!

ARCO in an 8550
CD Rom on 1070 (Early)
IDE and SCSI
PIO Mode Only
Max Drive Size
ADF Sections



AC-1070 (Early)

This card has the removeable slot cover .


AC-1075 (?) 

This version seems to be an advanced version of the 1070. Note the much reduced chip count. 

J1, J4 Two pin headers 
J2 Drive power connector 
J3 A three pin header that has pins 2 and 3 shunted 
P1 IDE connector 
U1
U2
U3 BIOS 



ARCO in a 8550
From Peter
Some versions of the Arco IDE had been designed to substitute the "HD Riser" card in the hidden 4th slot on the Mod. 50. You just remove the blue tab at the card front and remove the rear slotcover - and  the card should fit in there.
 

IDE in an IML Machine?
  Well, sort of. The IDE controller can only be installed in a non-IML machine, such as the 8580, or a 90/95/85 with Flash BIOS. If you have a Type 1 upgrade DX2-66 complex OR a Type 4 complex, OR a 9585 then you can use this controller and IDE drives. I installed an AC-1070 and hooked up a WD-AC2420 drive in my 9590-OPT.... 

System Partition on IDE?
   Yes and no. Yes it will install a system partition, BUT it will be a 3MB primary partition. You can install an extended partition, but you still cannot access the system partition the drive laid down (shades of the IBM Fast SCSI-2). Of course, the AC1070 does not use the Int4b interface required by IML systems... 

Start Up Sequence
   Make sure you select A: then Hard Drive 0 in startup sequence if you want to boot from the IDE drive. If you have a SCSI controller, you can have a SCSI drive selected as the boot device. 

AC-1070 with IBM SCSI Adapters under W95
  Although the startup sequence functions just fine selecting either the IDE drive or the SCSI drive for a start up device, W95 bombs when you try to look at hardware performance. There is no provision in the ARCO adf to change the AC-1070's IRQ from 14. And everyone knows that the IBM SCSI adapters only have IRQ 14 support. Though the two IO ranges are seperate (ARCO in the 200s, IBM in the 300s) W95 can't handle the shared IRQs. 

W95 and the AC-1070
  From a snippet- (Looks as if Win95 does not recognize the Arco as valid IDE controller ... control panel does not even show the HD). 

More to come. I must get my 9590 back up to install W95 on an IDE drive.... 

BIOS Capabilities
Version E (BIOS EPROM ver 3.03) supports 2Gb hard disk on PS/2 70; but version C (BIOS EPROM ver. 3.00) only supports 540 meg (525 Mb) hard disk in the same system. 

Which version of the BIOS supports CD Roms? 



CD Rom Drives on ARCO 1070
William Walsh was cracking the whip down at Farmwagon.com, and came up with:
  Ddecided to try my ATAPI CD-ROMs with the Arco 1070 controller. According to the startup screen, the controller has ROM Version 3.05. I was doing this in a Model 50Z PS/2. I also tried all of this in a 9577
Bermuda, an 8557slc, and a Model 8570-E61.

The first thing I learned from trying this is that there must be a hard disk attached to the adapter as well. I couldn't seem to get it to find any of my CD-ROM drives without a hard disk attached. The ADF and Set
Configuration screens kind of hint at this...you are allowed to pick a type of IDE device for the slave device only. There is no similar option for the master device.

Next thing I learned is that you have to use an external power supply for any CD-ROM drive above 6X with your Model 50. (The 70 PSU seemed to handle things OK.) The 50Z PSU simply couldn't stand the 8X and
higher drives, even with no other adapters in the machine. I sort of expected this, seeing as it is a small supply.

The Arco adapter also seems to be picky about what kind of CD-ROM drives it will accept. I had no problems with all of my 4X or 6X drives (all NEC units, and one Torisan), and of the one 24X drive (Toshiba) I tried, it was found by the adapter as well. I did not have the same luck with any of my 8X Hitachi drives. Those drives (8X Hitachi) resulted in system lockups and hard disk (10xxx) errors during POST.

Anyway, once I had a CD-ROM drive installed and recognized by the adapter, I tried loading DOS device drivers for the CD-ROM drive. The first driver I tried (a seemingly universal one) just locked the machine
whenever it loaded. No text, no errors, nothing at all. Just a lockup. I tried other drives with that, and when I was finally satisfied that it was not the drives, I tried another universal IDE CD-ROM device driver. It loaded,
but found no drives, no matter what.

It seems that the unusual I/O addresses of the Arco adapter throw the CD-ROM device drivers that I tried for a loop.

Summary: In theory, it seems that BIOS revision 3.05 of the Arco card will support certain CD-ROM drives, but that the device drivers I tried to use to make these CD-ROM drives work either locked the computer or could find no CD-ROM drives.
   It looks as though if someone wanted to use this adapter for a CD-ROM drive, they would have to write their own device drivers for it...it's a shame that I don't know how to do that...I would if I could...



PIO Mode Only

 >The .ADF for the Arco makes NO reference to the IRQ used (if any). Now this could mean that it's hard-wired to IRQ14 (as is the onboard ESDI), or that it is I/O polled. 
From Peter
   It seems to be used in PIO mode. If it were using any IRQ it should have the INT mentioned under "fixedressources" as have the IBM MCA SCSI controllers like in the below example: 
 fixedresources 
    pos[2]=1X1000XXb 
    pos[1]=XXXXXXXXb 
    pos[0]=XXXXXXXXb 
        int 0eh 
   The ARCO also uses 16 I/O adresses on 2510h to 251Fh (alternatively: 2520h - 252Fh), which is pretty unfamiliar. Usually the IDE adapters uses 8 I/O ports in the 1F0h - 1F7h (170h - 177h secondary) as data-port and 3F6h (376h secondary) as control-/ status port. And IRQ 0Eh (0Fh) as interrupt. 
    So the Arco is anything but not a standard IDE-controller anyway. I  think it is best used under DOS/Win3.x or (probably) OS/2 ... not recommended for Win95 / 98 / NT - as usual. 
   The ROM-BIOS -by the way- can be set to disabled in the Setup. Will continue the quest on Thursday ... 



Max Drive Size
   The ARCO may not see the 2.5(doubtful) It does have an EIDE limit of  2.1GB accordingly and also supports internal EIDE CD-Roms(for 5.25 inch bay units).  But the it has its own Drive table settings on the card.  Most likely when you preformatted the drive on a different computer the Cyls/Hds/S-T are different than what the BIOS on the card is going to see 

  The AC-1070 controller's adapter BIOS supports IDE drives up to 2 Gb.  If a drive was partitioned and formatted to a higher capacity, the controller will not permit the drive to operate under that partitioning scheme. 

  My question- will it allow multiple 2.1 GB partitions? 



ATAPI CDROM Support
  The @6263.adf, dated 07/02/95 has a section for CD Rom support. 

MCIDE.EXE
   MCIDE.EXE shows you the configuration of any hard drive attached to an Arco MCA hard drive adapter.  The program displays the drive information provided by the hard disk manufacturer, so it may not always be accurate.  MCIDE.EXE will also display the Arco adapter information. MCIDE.EXE is available on the Arco BBS (305-925-2791). ( Ed. Is it?) 

ATAPI CDROM Installation
  Oops, my only ATAPI CD-Rom nuked itself (plastic gear snapped off). When I find out more, I'll tell. 



IDE and SCSI
From Tim Clarke
   Before this gets too out of hand - the rules for mixing an IDE/ESDI adapter with SCSI adapter(s) *for the Model 80* (and probably all others) are as follows:
   1) you may only install one IDE or ESDI adapter
   2) IDE/ESDI adapter's BIOS ROM *must* be configured with a lower address than that of the SCSI adapter(s)

   This is because the IDE/ESDI BIOS ROM code isn't intelligent enough to "add" the drives that it supports after any drives which may have already been installed by another BIOS ROM (e.g. multiple SCSI adapters with multiple HDs each). It assumes that the drive(s) that it supports will always be Drive 0 (BIOS Drive 0x80) and Drive 1 (BIOS Drive 0x81). The IBM SCSI adapters' BIOS ROM is designed to "add" it's drives to a system which already has one or more HDs already "installed" and utilises the XBDA (eXtended BIOS Data Area) to chain Int 13h, Int 4Bh (IBM SCSI) and note "first" and "count" values for each SCSI adapter.



AdapterID 6263  Arco Computer Products, Inc (IDE Adatpter)

Adapter Memory Location
   Select the ROM segment for the ARCO IDE adapter
      <"Segment DC00" (dc00-dfff)>, D800 (d800-dbff), D400 (d400-d7ff), D000 (d000-d3ff), CC00 (cc00-cfff), C800 (c800-cbff), ROM DISABLE

IO Address
   The Adapter  I/O address location is:
     <"2510-251F"(2510-251f)>, 2520-252F (2520-252f)

Slave Drive is
   Supports ATAPI device (CDROM) that is a slave drive
      <"ATA Device>, ATAPI Device, Not Installed
 
 

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