jheronimus wrote:

yawetaG wrote:

Do you have another HDD you can try? Compaq is one of those manufacturers that is somewhat notorious for using hardware that will only work in their own systems...

ATM I'm trying to get the floppy drive to work, the HDDs are disconnected. However, the disk didn't come with a Compaq, it's just a Quantum Fireball 2.5 disk that I got with another non-branded Pentium machine.

What capacity is the drive and from when is it? Depending on the VLB controller, the maximum capacity that it can access can be as low as 528 Mb, although that should not mean it can't actually detect the drive - combined with the floppy disk issues and the other issues it sounds more like a problem with either the controller or a problem with the motherboard. Could you try booting from the floppy disk drive with no video card inserted in the system? Unfortunately there are motherboards that have 2 or more VLB slots but that won't run properly with more than one VLB card...

Regarding the VLB issue, the problem usually only occurs at bus speeds above 33 MHz. Have you tried the other hard disk modes on the controller?

I've tried all the hard disk modes listed in the leaflet I posted above.

5x86 should be working at 4x33 by default. The CPU is identified as DX4-100 at the moment. I can't run the benchmarks, but even if it somehow works at 100 MHz now, it should be 3x33 anyways.

With some boards it's possible to select 2x50 (likely not stable)...

What does that DIY voltage regulator plug into? I see it sits right next to one of the VLB slots...

yawetaG wrote:

What capacity is the drive and from when is it? Depending on the VLB controller, the maximum capacity that it can access can be as low as 528 Mb, although that should not mean it can't actually detect the drive - combined with the floppy disk issues and the other issues it sounds more like a problem with either the controller or a problem with the motherboard. Could you try booting from the floppy disk drive with no video card inserted in the system? Unfortunately there are motherboards that have 2 or more VLB slots but that won't run properly with more than one VLB card...

It's a 2,5GB disk, made in ~1997. When plugged in, I can see it in the BIOS settings (it is detected as 528MB like you said). However, the main boot screen looks like the photo I've posted — no mentions of the FDD, the HDD or the 4x Creative CD-ROM (not plugged in anymore).

With some boards it's possible to select 2x50 (likely not stable)...

I'll double check the jumpers when I'll get to the computer, but I remember that the settings I've chosen were identical to those for a DX2@66 except for the multiplier. However, 2x50 is possible with this board, according to TH99.

What does that DIY voltage regulator plug into? I see it sits right next to one of the VLB slots...

Into a four pin connector. AFAIK, some of these boards actually had regulators available as an aftermarket upgrade, but there's a bit of sticky paper underneath it and the hole for it looks like it was arbitrarily drilled by one of the previous owners.

jheronimus wrote:

yawetaG wrote:

What capacity is the drive and from when is it? Depending on the VLB controller, the maximum capacity that it can access can be as low as 528 Mb, although that should not mean it can't actually detect the drive - combined with the floppy disk issues and the other issues it sounds more like a problem with either the controller or a problem with the motherboard. Could you try booting from the floppy disk drive with no video card inserted in the system? Unfortunately there are motherboards that have 2 or more VLB slots but that won't run properly with more than one VLB card...

It's a 2,5GB disk, made in ~1997. When plugged in, I can see it in the BIOS settings (it is detected as 528MB like you said). However, the main boot screen looks like the photo I've posted — no mentions of the FDD, the HDD or the 4x Creative CD-ROM (not plugged in anymore).

Okay, perhaps it's useful for you to read this: http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/sizeMB504-c.html. Near the bottom is a page is a link explaining the various failure modes. If you have a HDD with a smaller capacity, you should try it.

I'll double check the jumpers when I'll get to the computer, but I remember that the settings I've chosen were identical to thos […]
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With some boards it's possible to select 2x50 (likely not stable)...

I'll double check the jumpers when I'll get to the computer, but I remember that the settings I've chosen were identical to those for a DX2@66 except for the multiplier. However, 2x50 is possible with this board, according to TH99.

What does that DIY voltage regulator plug into? I see it sits right next to one of the VLB slots...

Into a four pin connector. There's a bit of sticky paper underneath it and the hole for it looks like it was arbitrarily drilled by one of the previous owners.

I wonder if that DIY voltage regulator might cause a voltage drop in part of the motherboard that the VLB I/O controller doesn't like. Obviously the motherboard should have worked in that state at a certain point; otherwise it would have been junked. So that leaves a few options:
1) it was never used with more than 1 VLB card, which is why I suggested you test it without video (or with an ISA video card if it can't boot without a video card) - if that works, you'll know for sure it's not the I/O controller.
2) it works fine with a better power supply.
I'm tempted by the second option, as it basically hangs at the point it would detect (and therefore spin up) the drives - i.e. the moment a large load is placed on the system. The larger, newer HDD will likely also put a heavier load on the system at start-up...

So, still no progress on VLB I/O.

I have tried the following things:

1) disconnected HDD and CD-ROM from power to test the "PSU isn't powerful enough" theory. Only the FDD was connected. Nothing changed — which was to be expected, since it's a PSU that I used with Pentium MMX/Voodoo builds;
2) tried the ISA VGA card to test the "only one VLB device can work" theory;
3) now this is interesting. Tried an ISA IO card to test the "your VLB IO is dead" theory. It actually gave me the very same symptoms: the FDD spins up (makes seeking noises at boot) and flashes, but then the boot screen freezes and looks exactly the same as with the VLB card (see the picture above).

I believe the issue is related to the motherboard and not the IO or its settings:

1) when I had HDD and CD-ROM connected, I could detect them in BIOS;
2) when I plug the FDD the wrong way, I get the "Floppy disk(s) fail (40)" message at boot. So the IO works, the system freezes for some other reason.

I/O works!

Quick update: the solution turned out to be really simple. I had a 2x multiplier set on the motherboard. As soon as I set it to 3x, the FDD can now be detected and I can boot from DOS startup disk now. Guess the 5x86 is working at 100MHz now after all. The HDD and CD-ROM don't work, though.

I had a 2.5GB HDD connected as a master device on primary IDE controller and the 4x Creative CD-ROM connected as master on secondary — the system wouldn't boot that way. With CD-ROM disconnected I can boot, but I get "HDD fail" message. Tried a 425MB disk — same thing.

jheronimus wrote:

http://i1370.photobucket.com/albums/ag262/ilembitov/DSC_1614_zps5t5x4jjm.jpg […]
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I wonder which speed mode (JP3/JP4) should I use. Going to experiment with BIOS settings too.

HDD works

Long story short: I was lazy, and didn't take the IO card out before plugging the IDE cable. Because of that I misplaced the cable leaving the second row of IDE pins unattached. Hence, the "HDD fail" message.

Another useful thing turned out to be the "IDE block mode" setting in BIOS. Without it I couldn't specify the geometry of my HDD. However, it still looks like I can't use anything bigger than 2GB. My 1.6GB Samsung drive works while 2.5GB Quantum Fireball doesn't. Looks like I'll need to update BIOS once I get DOS and network running.

Next step: getting DOS 6.22

Sounds great! Likely the motherboard isn't actually stable at higher bus speeds, even though it can be set to them 😵 The 2 Gb hard disk size limit sounds about right for a 486 system and run-of-the-mill IO controller (if we wanted more back in the day, we usually added a SCSI controller with 8 Gb limit and up to 8/16 devices). Not sure whether a BIOS update will fix it (2 Gb was HUUUUUGE back then).

For your CD-ROM drive, there's two options: 1) it's not actually IDE compatible, but requires an interface compatible with Creative's ATAPI version (i.e. a sound card) and the proper driver, 2) the BIOS can't detect it, but it will work fine with the proper driver while connected to the IDE interface.

Networking

Finally I don't have to mess with hardware anymore. Now comes the software part. As you can see, I got MS DOS 6.22 AND Windows 3.11 working. Now I want to be able to use an FTP client on this machine so I could download stuff from my Linux server. What I've done so far:

1) tried two different NICs.

Unfortunately, I don't have an ISA 3COM, so getting a proper DOS/Win3.11 driver IS an issue. At first I tried using SMC EzEther 8416T. However every driver I tried resulted in either Windows freezing at boot or various error messages. After that I realised that I have a noname UMC9003AF-based card with both RJ-45 and BNC connections. And luckily Vogons host drivers for that very card. However, Windows actually comes with built-in "NE2000-compatible" drivers for the card, so I don't really need those.

The drivers work in the sense that I can boot into Windows and get no error messages.

2) got a copy of WinSock from Vogons.

I followed the instructions and added the Winsock folder to autoexec.bat

3) Installed a WS_FTP. Vogons are hosting a different version, so I don't know whether my version is freeware or not, so I'm not going to link it.

Right now I need to figure out a way to add TCP/IP support to Windows.

jheronimus wrote:

Next step: getting DOS 6.22

In the meantime, please try OpenDOS, FreeDOS, or PC-DOS 7.1 from IBM's server toolkit.

Windows freezing at boot can also be because it's looking for the network and can't find it, not necessarily that the drivers don't work...

yawetaG wrote:

Windows freezing at boot can also be because it's looking for the network and can't find it, not necessarily that the drivers don't work...

Well, I thought so, too. But why would it depend on the card/driver combo then?

jheronimus wrote:

yawetaG wrote:

Windows freezing at boot can also be because it's looking for the network and can't find it, not necessarily that the drivers don't work...

Well, I thought so, too. But why would it depend on the card/driver combo then?

Because before plug and play (and even in the early times of plug and play) driver functionality was not always very well thought out, and some drivers will simply keep looking for the network instead of timing out after a while.

mTCP success

After all I had the greatest success with a D-Link DE-220T card. I've used Phil's excellent guide to mTCP, and since he uses a similar card, the process turned out to be pretty straightforward. Finding drivers for this card was a bit tricky, though. I've been googling pretty hard and then I accidentally stumbled upon D-Link's European FTP server. Unlike their Russian server, this one has a lot more legacy drivers but doesn't like search engines. Here is a link.

Now I finally have working FTP functionality: I use mTCP's ftpsrv to receive files from my "modern" computer and this works surprisingly well.

BTW, yawetaG was right, Windows freezing on boot has nothing to do with NIC drivers being wrong. I don't need WS_FTP anymore, so I simply keep Win 3.11 with network functionality disabled. Still going to be useful for Myst and Bad Mojo, though.

Nice to see the machine coming along 😀
If your running Windows for Workgroups no need for winsock or whatever, Just the TCP stack from Microsoft
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/99891

And instructions can be found here
http://scrounge.org/tips/wfwg/index.html

Hardest thing is finding a working combination of drivers and network card, for Widows for workgorups this will usually be in the ndis3 directory, quick google found this for the dlink?
http://contents.driverguide.com/content.php?i … path=README.TXT

Thanks for the info! Although, ATM simply typing "ftpsrv" seems a lot easier than booting into Windows every time I need to get a file 😀 I simply didn't expect mTCP to be easier to set up than Windows.

The biggest issue right now is that D-Link seems to be occupying IRQ5 which is the default setting for my PnP AWE32 CT3990. Hence, Diagnose.exe gives me a "failed to set low DMA channel at 1" error and the NIC stopped working ever since I installed the drivers for AWE32. Because of that some games (like Raptor) only get MIDI from the card, some can't detect the SFX part of AWE32 at all but also don't get any MIDI music (like Dark Forces) and some simply freeze at boot (any Doom-based game). Obviously I have two options:

1) set the NIC to a different IRQ. However, I can't find any way to do that. Here are the options for the packet driver. There is only a <packet_int_no> which seems to be a different thing entirely:

3.2 Explanation Of The Required Setup Parameters and Options ------------------------------------------------------------ […]
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3.2 Explanation Of The Required Setup Parameters and Options
------------------------------------------------------------

Packet Driver
Parameters and Options Description

<packet_int_no> is the software interrupt vector number
used by the packet driver program. This
can be from 96 to 128.

[/option] includes the following:

/? Show available parameters
/d Delay Initial - The driver program will not
initialize the network interface card until
the packet driver program is accessed by its
upper layer program.
/w The -w parameter is for use only in the
Windows environment.
/u Unload the packet driver.
/n NetWare conversion. Convert 802.3 packets
to 8137 packets
/auto Automatically detect connected media.
This is the default setting for media type.
/utp Force media type to UTP.
/bnc Force media type to BNC.
/aui Force media type to AUI.
If the selected media type does not exist on
the adapter, the driver will automatically
detect the connected media.
/sa Search all DE-220 Family Ethernet adapters.
If there is more than one Ethernet card in
the system, the driver will ask you to
select which card to work with. The default
setting is to work with the first detected
adapter.
/jition Enable JITI function.
/jitioff Disable JITI function.
If your ethernet adapter can't work.
Please try to disable JITI function.
/earlytx Enable early transmit option.
The default setting is disabled.

2) set the AWE32 to a different IRQ. Seems the easiest to do, but AFAIK IRQs other than 5 are bound to cause compatibility issues with games.

What is shown if you use "/? Show available parameters"?

PnP ISA cards tend to have a software configuration utility besides the driver - try searching for the card model number followed by "ISA configuration utility" or "ICU".

As for Windows, the problem probably is that the computer needs to be connected to a (functional) network before booting Windows. AFAIK, setting up a network once you're in Windows 3.11 isn't too difficult (certainly simpler than troubleshooting Windows XP networking).

Since you're using a FTP server located on one of your own computers, why don't you use a web browser to browse the FTP server?

yawetaG wrote:

What is shown if you use "/? Show available parameters"?

Same list of options that I've posted from the driver documentation.

yawetaG wrote:

PnP ISA cards tend to have a software configuration utility besides the driver - try searching for the card model number followed by "ISA configuration utility" or "ICU".

You're right! There is a setup.exe utility in the driver pack that I've got from D-Link FTP and it seems like it can change the IRQ. I completely forgot about it, thank you 😀 :

1.2 /D Option ------------- SETUP /D allows the adapter to be setup non-interactive. This allows remote batc […]
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1.2 /D Option
-------------
SETUP /D allows the adapter to be setup non-interactive. This
allows remote batch changes or to ease a multiple card setup.
The SETUP program will load the configuration values from a
SETUP.DAT text file. SETUP.DAT needs to be in the same directory
as SETUP.EXE.

Example SETUP.DAT file:
ƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒƒ
Connector Type UTP ---> This sets the media type
I/O Base Address 0x300 ---> This sets the I/O base address
Interrupt Number 5 ---> This sets the IRQ number
ROM Size 16k ---> This sets the boot ROM size
ROM Address 0xD0000 ---> This specifies the boot ROM address
PNP Enable ---> This enables the PnP function
FullDuplex Enable ---> This enables the full duplex function
(DE220 revision D1 above only)

NOTES:
ƒƒƒƒƒƒ
The PnP function is only used with PnP-compliant adapters.
SETUP/D only affects the parameters that are specified in the
SETUP.DAT file; other configuration parameters will remain
unchanged.
If the SETUP.DAT file specifies any parameter settings related to
the boot ROM, the boot ROM will be automatically enabled. Otherwise,
it is disabled.
If the connector type is not specified, the driver will try to
automatically detect a cable attached to it's media port(s).

I'm not at home, so I can't test it right now, but I guess that I need to change the Interrupt number to something like 6 or 7 in the setup.dat file and then add the setup.exe /d to autoexec.bat. My thinking is that unlike the sound card, the NIC's IRQ shouldn't affect other applications.

jheronimus wrote:

I'm not at home, so I can't test it right now, but I guess that I need to change the Interrupt number to something like 6 or 7 in the setup.dat file and then add the setup.exe /d to autoexec.bat. My thinking is that unlike the sound card, the NIC's IRQ shouldn't affect other applications.

Don't set it to IRQ 6 or 7, those are used for the parallel port and RTC, respectively. You can use 6 if you disable the parallel port in the computer's BIOS. My WfW manual says IRQ 11, 12, or 15 should be available. When you use the setup utility, first ask it to list the NIC settings (if it doesn't display those automatically), copy that to paper so you can use them when setting up the network in Windows, and only then change the settings (amending whatever you noted down too). Also be sure to check whether there is no conflict with the soundcard's I/O ports (for example, "200 to 20F" is listed in my manual as being used by the game port).

AFAIK, those ICU programs should just be launched from the command line and the settings are stored on the card itself. SETUP.DAT likely is a file that you can edit in a text editor, after which you use SETUP.EXE to store the settings on the card.

My generic nothing special card is similar, You need to run setup to program the IRQ but that's it. No need to run setup/d every reboot, so would think your proper dlink would be the same.
On my 486 I used 10 but here is a list of default IRQ's
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrupt ... hitecture)

Oh, and totally agree ftp is faster/easier then Windows, but I need SOME reason to have it 😜

So, good news: setting the NIC to IRQ3 solved the problems with networking. However, AWE32 still gives me "failure setting Low DMA CHannel at 1".

Tried various drivers, nothing changes. Here's a screenshot of Diagnose.exe

Here's IRQ section of msd.exe:

Here's the autoexec.bat:

And here's config.sys

Multi I/O doesn't have an LPT2 and the jumpers aren't set to use IRQ5. The motherboard doesn't have any ports. BIOS only mentions IRQ in Power Management and I've disabled all of them just in case.