Excellent! So glad the mobo is in your hands Carlos 😁

I am also waiting for a parcel to arrive from the US so I can build my IDEXT card as well - hopefully it will arrive soon. In the meantime I started restoring that Hyundai clone I just got, maybe I use it instead of the Acer one, it has more slots and more space .

Seems like 2015 is the XT year or something 🤣

keropi wrote:

Excellent! So glad the mobo is in your hands Carlos 😁

I am also waiting for a parcel to arrive from the US so I can build my IDEXT card as well - hopefully it will arrive soon. In the meantime I started restoring that Hyundai clone I just got, maybe I use it instead of the Acer one, it has more slots and more space .

Seems like 2015 is the XT year or something 🤣

I know right? There's been like a sudden rush of XT build related threads.

Yeah you seem to get the most epic complete XT boxes now, the Acer one is awesome and this Hyundai seems to have a lot of potential.

I'm gonna have to find a desktop case for this system. Kixs has an interesting DTK branded one, which would be really fitting since the board is DTK but...there's always a catch...the case does NOT have a power button. Instead the AT PSU that comes with the case has the power button on the back. Bummer, because i just restored the Seasonic PSU and i'm not gonna spend more money restoring another. Buying the case + shipping is already fairly expensive.

I feel that for DOS games all you really need is 2 computer builds. A Socket 7 and and a Turbo XT. The Socket 7 will pretty much cover anything EGA, VGA and Super VGA and all the games that aren't XT speed sensitive. My socket 7 build can be a 386DX-25+, 386DX-40, 486DX-33, 486DX-40, 486DX2-66 (really close to) and all sorts of Pentiums.

The Turbo XT will cover 4.77MHz games, plus others that might run too fast even on a 386DX-25. I'm thinking of Bubble Ghost a game i really like and should run pretty OK in a 10MHz XT. I want to play Digger as well, which is a very CGA dependent game, but that i know that will run well on a VGA card that can switch to CGA mode. It ran great on a Tseng ET4000AX!

I guess i might also take a look into the Music Quest clone cards so i can drive my LA modules.

True, you need to also have another more powerful pc and use XT as a specialized build.
I am seriously considering using the Hyundai one as my main XT build at this point, it just has more expansion space without resorting to tricks and cramming stuff. I have yet to find if there is a key combo to make it 4,77mhz - maybe there isn't.
With a nice pizza-box the DTK mobo will be epic , you just need a real IBM CGA IMHO, proper composite is important 😁

keropi wrote:

With a nice pizza-box the DTK mobo will be epic , you just need a real IBM CGA IMHO, proper composite is important 😁

You know what? I've been thinking about it and i'm still tinkering between available choices. The most obvious choice is to use a VGA card which can switch to CGA for some compatibility but...i do wanna try CGA to SCART, i'll probably ask someone to build one for me. It's great that a TV can be used for both RGB and composite and i would like to try that. 😀

As far as getting a true CGA i don't know. If a good deal appears...definitely!

If you're Hyundai can't go down to 4.77MHz that's a big no no. And keep in mind that besides hard work you've been upgrading that Acer machine very wisely. You should be proud of the work you done on it, expanding the machine like you did is just epic!

well, there's a 30$ IBM CGA here: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-IBM-CGA-Col … =item3d04bdbb69 , price is OK in my book - not sure about shipping though...

I have no idea what's the deal with the Hyundai clone, will need to search some more about it.
Yeah the Acer clone is nice and compact, that's a big plus and all is thought-out - but still: more space = better 😁 Maybe I just use both in the end 🤣 🤣 🤣

Nice, that motherboard is almost exactly like the one in my turbo XT I found last month at a flea market

My motherboard I believe is Acer though. came with a 80887-1 and everything though the 8088-1 is an odd one. not Intel or AMD but Fujitsu or something like that.

Holy crap that case looks sweet. I'll admit though, i will have to prefer an AT case simply because my Seasonic PSU will fit better in such case since it does not have a rocker switch on the side.

A little update. I ordered 2 brand new ATMEL 28C64B EEPROMS to replace the SGS M2764AFI EPROM with the DTK ERSO BIOS. I burned one EEPROM with DTK ERSO 2.42 and the other with PHOENIX XT BIOS 2.52. I tried the PHOENIX BIOS first and found it faster than the DTK ERSO, so I kept the PHOENIX BIOS EEPROM in the board.

Besides being faster usually BIOS upgrades for XT's don't add any functionality at all.
I also found a heavily modded BIOS for XT's that was originally a generic Taiwanese XT BIOS but the guys who modified it added some nifty features like 101 keyboard support and pretty cool POST info. I tried it in PCem and it's pretty neat. I'll eventually try it on my DTK board as well.

Nice to see you are working on this Carlos!
This pimped BIOS, can you post some shots of it?

^ Here's a link to the download section and some screenshots:

http://www.phatcode.net/downloads.php?id=101

ah yes, I've seen that before ... I wonder how well this would work on the Hyundai I have...
I was expecting more pimpage tbh 🤣 🤣 🤣

Here's some pictures with

Phoenix BIOS:

Turbo XT BIOS 2.5:

I like this BIOS its pretty cool. I also burned a Winbond W27E257 EEPROM with all ROM BASIC glued together which will then fit on a 32kb chip. The photo above shows the motherboard booting without an EEPROM on the ROM BASIC socket.

Below you'll see 2 pictures. The first shows that the BIOS finds ROM BASIC is available and gives you 3 seconds to press SPACE to boot BASIC. The second picture shows what happens after i press SPACE. The system hangs and a Random ASCII character appears after the CPU ID. On this picture occasion that character happened but other characters had appeared on other occasions.

So i'm wondering if i burned the EEPROM correctly. When i read the EEPROM the ASCII table matches the file i burned so maybe its the file. I got the ROM BASIC file from the package i got the BIOS from, it is basically all 4 BASIC 8kb ROMS glued together.

I would like to get this working but i don't know if these boards had different ROM BASIC from the IBM PC models.

Gave it a go on the Hyundai XT , it doesn't boot at all , all I get is a blank screen.
TBH I kinda expected it not to work 🤣 🤣 🤣

keropi wrote:

Gave it a go on the Hyundai XT , it doesn't boot at all , all I get is a blank screen.
TBH I kinda expected it not to work 🤣 🤣 🤣

Yeah it's meant for generic clones... OEM's always require their own BIOSes

However this pimped can work on IBM 5150's and 5160's, though they might need to be recompiled with the proper switches.

yeah no big deal ... I actually wanted to test the enhanced keyboard functionality but turns out that it also works with the Hyundai BIOS so I do get usable F11/F12/etc with the 104key keyboard switched on XT mode . I'm just missing the boot pimping , the stock one is boring 🤣

Success!!!!

Nice one! What's next?

bjt wrote:

Nice one! What's next?

Thanks! I should be building XT-IDE next tuesday obviously adding HD floppy BIOS. I'm gonna take a look at the BIOS source code to see if i can do any additional custom visual pimpage... 🤣

Just like you did i wanted to build a 1MB RAM board to use UMB's. As far as sound i will at first use a genuine Sound Blaster Pro 2 and i will try to find a true Gameblaster card. My Innovation SSI-2001 replica is gonna go in too. 😀 I really hope Tronix can finish his Gameblaster clone so that we can build our own instead of paying premium for a true one.

However i have bigger plans for this machine. That is dependant on the feasability of a custom CPU socket board with its own set of crystals. I can imagine some people know what i'm talking about and i popped the question to James Pearce for his opinion.

Are kits with the PC + components being sold anywhere or you have to order everything separately?