Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2024-02-07, 08:48

by

by rasz_pl

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

At one point Novell seemed to be shipping a set of disks per license, so you'd see IT closets stacked with these in the 90s, then later, stacked in the hallways or free pile at colleges hoping they'd disappear. Anyway, lots of them kicking round in the day, ppl may have grabbed a couple of boxes …

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Re: Quantum Fireball EX HDD shows wrong specs and isnt showing anything on Windows

Posted on 2024-02-07, 07:58

by

by rasz_pl

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

modern (as in last 30 years) HDDs keep configuration and firmware directly on HDD platters in special service area. HDD dies if that data gets corrupted and drive cant recover using spare copy. Serial number 00000 looks like drive failed to fully initialize itself.

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Re: dISAppointment - LPC to ISA adapter - ISA on modern motherboards

Posted on 2024-02-07, 07:33

by

by rasz_pl

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

$5 LPC sniffer using Pico https://github.com/stacksmashing/pico-tpmsniffer

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Re: 12V rail shorted on ISA card - damaged motherboard. Fixable...?

Posted on 2024-02-07, 03:47

by

by rasz_pl

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Blown tantalum on the card means high current went thru motherboard, take it out and look carefully at 12V track between furthest ISA slot (or the one where you put bad card during incident) all the way to power connector. Most likely that track is fried, it might have a break or it might be …

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Re: 8-bit compatible ISA-16 Multi-I/O (and not only)

Posted on 2024-02-07, 03:29

by

by rasz_pl

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Contrary to what the previous poster said, you can use a 16-bit multi I/O card for IDE on a XT - I'm using a Pine PT-606G with my NuXT (as the built-in IDE is broken for my requirements) but the important thing is to make sure that the XTIDE ROM is explicitly set to 16-bit controller in 8-bit mode. …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2024-02-07, 02:51

by

by rasz_pl

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It seems to be an MPEG1 decoder. mpeg 1 encoder for video capture. Decoder. The best encoding you could get at the time, probably including dedicated Avid/Premiere workstation hardware, was fast hardware jpeg encoders. Encoding was soo expensive and out of reach in mid nineties to 2000, and you …

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Re: What hasn’t been done?

Posted on 2024-02-07, 02:21

by

by rasz_pl

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Especially interested in a FPGA or Pico-emulated cpu that can drop into something like socket 1-3. (is the Pi Pico fast enough to emulate a 486?) Nowhere near, particularly in this realm of pedantic cycle perfect emulation that we're stuck in. It would be a feat to get 99% accurate 4.77mhz 8088 out …

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Re: FIC 486-GAC-2 and proprietary cache module - Reproduction WIP

Posted on 2024-02-06, 15:28

by

by rasz_pl

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Progress attached, 0 errors 18 warnings. Just a couple tracks left. >I got most of those very close but slightly wrong, like swapped A11 A12. I think those were guessworks where two vias go under sram and you have to randomly pick if track goes above or below a via. scratch that, I got all the …

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Re: FIC 486-GAC-2 and proprietary cache module - Reproduction WIP

Posted on 2024-02-06, 11:21

by

by rasz_pl

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Look into what is available and cheap, feipoa seems to have a good grasp on availability of old stock srams https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=1231100#p1231100 Footprints are important. I still didnt bother to change to correct one, whats on the pcb is I think slightly too wide, Ill be fixing it …

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Re: What hasn’t been done?

Posted on 2024-02-06, 11:00

by

by rasz_pl

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've been looking at a "387 to VLB" interface for the last two weeks and think it's possible... needs only BE3, A16-23 from the CPU. OR-gate for RDYRET/READY. Three 34pin ribbon cables. VLB socket. ISA riser.. Few people were looking into building universal VLB for 386 :) Iv been posting about it …

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Re: What vintage CPU socket saw the biggest increase in CPU horsepower from release to retirement?

Posted on 2024-02-06, 10:48

by

by rasz_pl

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I loved my 775 1.6GHz Celeron 420, $35 3.2GHz straight out of the box on stock Celeron cooler. Pretty much repeat of Celeron 300A.

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Re: FIC 486-GAC-2 and proprietary cache module - Reproduction WIP

Posted on 2024-02-06, 10:17

by

by rasz_pl

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I did some measuring at the TAG chip (MD1) today: Fantastic! Some of those are easy to guess, some really hard, and a few quite impossible (I have a feeling TAG output order is really critical for example) without digging into VIA chipset datasheets looking for something VT82C486A related. Edit: …

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Re: What vintage CPU socket saw the biggest increase in CPU horsepower from release to retirement?

Posted on 2024-02-06, 08:46

by

by rasz_pl

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

socket A and 1150 did pretty great too https://www.cpu-world.com/Sockets/index.html

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Re: Native PS/2 mouse implementation for 386/486 boards using the keyboard controller

Posted on 2024-02-06, 03:27

by

by rasz_pl

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Pico rp2040 has IO quick enough to replace whole KBC providing both native PS2 and USB keyboard/mouse, maybe even with transparent joypad mapping. One plus would be ability to change board compatibility (am I correct in assuming its about how spare IO are routed to things like Turbo/A20?) in …

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Re: FIC 486-GAC-2 and mystery proprietary cache module - Help needed

Posted on 2024-02-05, 20:20

by

by rasz_pl

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

B3 is definitely ground - just like in my list. I looked at first row and somehow missed the second one, sorry >A13 >A16 the only two swapped address lines! FIC even managed to keep data lines in order without swapping :o github updated, got it down to 3 errors, 76 warnings. Edit1: Main problem now …

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Re: FIC 486-GAC-2 and mystery proprietary cache module - Help needed

Posted on 2024-02-05, 19:18

by

by rasz_pl

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Cache has two banks, and now Im struggling with chip M6 which should be in second bank, but I cant find any other way of routing its OE/CE signals but to M2, except they also share data pins so its impossible :) oh what fun. Down to ~80 unrouted signals. Ill look at the readings you got now to …

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Re: What hasn’t been done?

Posted on 2024-02-05, 14:30

by

by rasz_pl

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You cant speed up drawing with an FPU. CAD software uses FPU to do math, not draw.

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Re: FIC 486-GAC-2 and mystery proprietary cache module - Help needed

Posted on 2024-02-05, 13:59

by

by rasz_pl

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Its like a puzzle and once you fill enough knowns the unknowns become quite obvious. So it's Return of the Obra Dinn 😆 or excellent 'The Case of the Golden Idol' :) https://github.com/raszpl/FIC-486-GAC2-Cache-Module Still couple errors and ~200 warnings (unconnected traces/vias). One thing im …

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Re: FIC 486-GAC-2 and mystery proprietary cache module - Help needed

Posted on 2024-02-05, 01:56

by

by rasz_pl

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

First look at your trace image and I already spotted few mistakes in my work :) for example I made R6 go somewhere else. Goes to show two pairs of eyes are better than one! makes perfect sense now with via used for M2 power. Most basic kicad tips: Open sram.kicad_pro first, that way PCB and …

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Re: ISA Riser problems

Posted on 2024-02-05, 01:35

by

by rasz_pl

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

6 isa slots + riser is a lot of reflections going around ISA bus. It might turn out to be impossible with this board in the end. Looking at the bus with a scope would tell more. >it's kinda surprising to me that they were/are popular if they were so fundamentally flawed, they work absolutely fine in …

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