VOGONS


First post, by lihinian

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Hi everyone, new member here with a new project!
Today I became the new owner of this nice Tulip 486dc/33i TC38.
V9NoV4o.jpg
I was on the lookout to find a tulip for quite a while so I was quite pleased when one finally showed up in decent condition. Or so I thought.

Upon arrival I heard loose things rumble around in the case. Opening It up I found out it was most of what was left of the old corroded battery holder. Almost entirely shattered.
Even both ends of the 10pin cable + led circuit + pc speaker has been severly corroded. Not to mention what the leakage has done to the case. 😠
Even the 10 pin connector on the motherboard had corroded pins, as if it was sucked all the way through the cable 😒

W99BsdR.jpg
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The motherboard luckily seems to be in good condition.
Specs:
486dx33
Cirrus Logic GD5428
1mb on board video memory
4mb on board ram
It has no cache 🙁

I got a lot of cool upgrades and gear on the way including a matching keyboard and tulip speakers. 😎

Update 1:
Keyboard arrived, needed some good cleaning.
eMl2vJE.jpg
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Next step: cleaning and restoring corroded case,still waiting for new pc speaker, led and cmos battery.

More stuff on the way:
Intel overdrive DX4ODPR75
16MB Ram
Genius Mouse GM-6
Tulip Computer Speakers
Gravis PC GamePad
Yamaha YMF719E-S ISA Soundcard
Gotek
StarTech IDE to CF reader

Update 2:
Today I picked up a LG Flatron 795FT Plus 17" monitor along with some respectable 90's pc speakers.
I was planning on using the Tulip speakers, but those just sounded tinny and weak.
vm4NK0f.jpg
I got rid of the corrosion and rust with vinegar,baking soda and sandpaper. However, new black rust quickly formed all over the place in new spots. Will have to dry it faster next time.
p9Hh3QX.jpg
Soon I'll start fixing the front led/pc speaker/cmos situation.
However, I'm still waiting on a pc speaker with a cone, It's an old new stock from the 1970's. Which I believe will sound much better.
VHcclUR.jpg
Still waiting for:
Intel overdrive DX4ODPR75
Genius GM-6 Mouse, I might end up using the newer Genius mouse though.
When I started I was aiming for an 80's look. But ended up in the 90's stratosphere instead. That might Change If I can get ahold of a cool vintage vga Tulip monitor.
Gotek Floppy Emulator
Gravis Gamepad

Update 3
Redid the case again, this time I only used sandpaper and made sure I dried it right away.
I didn't manage to clear out the rust inside the screw mounts completely. Will have to figure something out for that. The only viable option seems to be sandblasting, which might be pricey.
8qjYznv.jpg
PC speaker arrived. It had a lot of rusty spots. But not anymore 😀
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New gravis gamepad! It came with joystick attachment, manual and CD.
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Update 4!
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With some luck I picked up another exact same tulip vision line a few weeks ago. It's in great condition and came with monitor, keyboard, mouse and a ct2290 sound blaster 16. So that's what I'v been using. Wasn't really feeling like sharing it, because I wanted to make it work first. 😒 But now It does, so celebration update! 😎

I've got both of my sandisks cf cards to work now. What I did was install ezdrive, and manually install dos becuase none of the dos bootdisks I tried booted into the dos setup. I had to use format c: and then sys c:. Instead of format c: \s to make it work.
And for the battery pack, which is completely intact. I use rechargeable eneloop batteries. They're 1.2v but work perfectly.
I wont use the recharge setting (jumper on J14), because I'm not sure it would work correctly on these batteries. I can charge them myself, if I have to.

I ordered another ide to cf adapter, so I can use the other cf card on the other Tulip.
It will be fun to have 2 different systems, so I can set them up with different sound setups. Maybe get a gravis ultrasound someday or something else.
I have that YMF719E-S still, but that would be kinda samey and thus boring. For now, at least the systems have different pc speakers 😀

Benchmarks:
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Keen 4 boot screen without memory optimization:
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After qemm optimization and fiddling with config.sys settings. note: dos shouldn't be loaded into high memory, otherwise keen won't have the extended memory available...
gSTA6NH.jpg
...Which is useful for running keen mods like keen ep58! It eats memory, and won't play music in many levels without it.
Wd5t2Rf.jpg

Update 5:
Nearing completion!
The reason I got into this project was to get a system similar to the old 80286 tulip we had at home decades ago, but with some extra horsepower.
For some games this was too much , and had to install a nice tool like Mo'Slo to make them work.
These Dolch Keycaps help to make this computer look a little older that it actually is. They're really good quality, and actually thicker than the original keycaps.
All in all, I had a lot of fun with this project. The only thing left now is fixing the other tulip. But for now I'm taking a break. 😎

Dolch Double Shot Alps Keycaps from Tai Hao:
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Mo'Slo Deluxe 3.3 in action:
frxf0Tr.jpg

Last edited by lihinian on 2018-07-21, 18:49. Edited 14 times in total.

Reply 3 of 30, by lihinian

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Update 2!
Includes acquiring a new mouse,speakers & monitor along with some corrosion & rust removal pictures.

Half-Saint wrote:

How is the restoration going? I love those slim desktop cases 😀

Me too! There's something about punching in the power button in quick succesion to the screen above it.
That feeling just doesn't happen with modern tower cases which usually sit several feet apart underneath the desk or somewhere elso.

Reply 4 of 30, by Liveandlearn

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I have a TC38 aswell. Although my pins for the hard drive and diskette drive face upwards. My board is doing quite well. I was my second pc ever. But here's the kicker, some things I just can't find anything about on the internet.

I have a hard time finding out certain things.
- how to install a second hard drive. Bios supports it. For some reason its not working. Anything special I need to consider.
- Second is there any way to install a battery pack like yours since my main board doesnt really show me were to connect it.
- Third which pins are for the pc speaker. Mine doesn't have one.
- Forth I gave tried a couple of replacement floppy drives but none of them worked. Any reason why?

Wish you the best with your system love the nostalgia.

This is my board btw.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BjVUDWyjaf8/?utm_ … rr8bvmovd&r=wa1

Reply 6 of 30, by tabm0de

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Liveandlearn wrote:
I have a TC38 aswell. Although my pins for the hard drive and diskette drive face upwards. My board is doing quite well. I was m […]
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I have a TC38 aswell. Although my pins for the hard drive and diskette drive face upwards. My board is doing quite well. I was my second pc ever. But here's the kicker, some things I just can't find anything about on the internet.

I have a hard time finding out certain things.
- how to install a second hard drive. Bios supports it. For some reason its not working. Anything special I need to consider.
- Second is there any way to install a battery pack like yours since my main board doesnt really show me were to connect it.
- Third which pins are for the pc speaker. Mine doesn't have one.
- Forth I gave tried a couple of replacement floppy drives but none of them worked. Any reason why?

Wish you the best with your system love the nostalgia.

This is my board btw.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BjVUDWyjaf8/?utm_ … rr8bvmovd&r=wa1

- how to install a second hard drive. Bios supports it. For some reason its not working. Anything special I need to consider.
Stupid question did your computer "restart" after you added config to second disk in bios? for some reason tulip likes top keep booting after changing bios settings without actually activating it before restart.

- Second is there any way to install a battery pack like yours since my main board doesnt really show me were to connect it.
- Third which pins are for the pc speaker. Mine doesn't have one.

Mine and lihinian have a cable going from the board to a small board which speark/battery/leds are connected to. lihinian have if im not wrong removed the board or modified it whit his replacement parts.

- Forth I gave tried a couple of replacement floppy drives but none of them worked. Any reason why?
Here is the info for floppy fro my thread [UPDATE 4 / DONE] The journey of Tulip Vision Line DC 486sx TC35 :

I got a gotek working following a atari post regarding gotek.

http://www.tonmann.com/2014/08/gotek-fl ... -atari-st/

"The Atari (in contrast to a PC) expects the first drive to be ID0." <- so tulip would need to see the drive as ID0

naa, nothing yet...

Reply 7 of 30, by CarlHopkinsUK

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Man I've been looking for one of these for years. Although I had the 486 SX version as a kid...

I still had the matching tulip monitor until recently when I recycled it as the vga cord had broken.

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Reply 8 of 30, by Liveandlearn

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tabm0de wrote:

Mine and lihinian have a cable going from the board to a small board which speark/battery/leds are connected to. lihinian have if im not wrong removed the board or modified it whit his replacement parts.

I was trying to figure out the pinout from the pictures but its a little blurry. As far as I can tell the print has only some line on it. Want to put in 1 led for the hard drive activity since mine has 1 hole for a led and a battery pack cause setting up the bios everytime is annoying.
But its a bit hard to find the pinout from the pictures. Haven't gotten around measuring with a meter though 🤣 but I prefer the use a pinout manual of sort instead of try and maybe mess things up 🤣

Reply 9 of 30, by lihinian

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Wow, cool to see this thread is still alive! wasn't expecting that.
Haven't been making much progress myself, but cool to see new tulip fans coming here 😀

Here's a pinout I made, not sure if it's any good. But at least both speaker and led should work.
You need a green/orange common cathode led. It might not change when it's writing to disk. Can't confirm much I'm afraid. As I haven't done much testing.
YFKhJet.png

Reason for my lack of progress:
I tried installing dos 7.1 onto a 8GB sandisk compact flash card. But it won't boot to dos. It fails to recognize it as a drive. I can only access it through a bootdisk.
Right now I'm waiting on a kingston 512mb card. Because the bios limits anything bigger, workarounds have failed me so far. Including ezdrive9 and making partitions.

Another thing that I can't get to work is the intel overdrive odpr 100mhz processor. It just gives me a black screen. I tried both jumper settings, but no luck.

So progress has been slow indeed. But at least this thread rekindled some motivation 😈

Reply 10 of 30, by tabm0de

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lihinian wrote:
Wow, cool to see this thread is still alive! wasn't expecting that. Haven't been making much progress myself, but cool to see ne […]
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Wow, cool to see this thread is still alive! wasn't expecting that.
Haven't been making much progress myself, but cool to see new tulip fans coming here 😀

Here's a pinout I made, not sure if it's any good. But at least both speaker and led should work.
You need a green/orange common cathode led. It might not change when it's writing to disk. Can't confirm much I'm afraid. As I haven't done much testing.
YFKhJet.png

Reason for my lack of progress:
I tried installing dos 7.1 onto a 8GB sandisk compact flash card. But it won't boot to dos. It fails to recognize it as a drive. I can only access it through a bootdisk.
Right now I'm waiting on a kingston 512mb card. Because the bios limits anything bigger, workarounds have failed me so far. Including ezdrive9 and making partitions.

Another thing that I can't get to work is the intel overdrive odpr 100mhz processor. It just gives me a black screen. I tried both jumper settings, but no luck.

So progress has been slow indeed. But at least this thread rekindled some motivation 😈

Good and easy pin picture, thanks i keep that to 😜

Regarding ez drive i followed philis howto but setted the bios to "type 9" since i couldnt fingerout how to do it manully the first time 😜
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LzCB6kDVC8

Regarding

Another thing that I can't get to work is the intel overdrive odpr 100mhz processor. It just gives me a black screen. I tried both jumper settings, but no luck.

http://tulipgv.nl/leden/upgrade.htm - this was the url i found some time ago.

Since your board has built in cpu i think you have to have "ODP" and not "ODPR" since odp has one extra pin to "disable" the onboard cpu. if there isnt any manully way to disable the builtin cpu whit jumpers. And whit 25mhz you will only be avaible to run 75mhz.

naa, nothing yet...

Reply 11 of 30, by lihinian

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I managed to solve 1 of my problems. Apparently my mobo only supports DX2 intel overdrives. So I got a DX2 66mhz. Worked right away.

The other one still remains. I followed that exact video, and had no succes. Now I'm going to buy a batch of CF cards of different sizes and brands. If that fails, I might have to just buy a regular old hdd 😵

btw, is this the same bios you have? It's the most basic bios ever, it gives you zero control over boot settings.
YudhgPV.jpg

Reply 12 of 30, by tabm0de

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lihinian wrote:
I managed to solve 1 of my problems. Apparently my mobo only supports DX2 intel overdrives. So I got a DX2 66mhz. Worked right a […]
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I managed to solve 1 of my problems. Apparently my mobo only supports DX2 intel overdrives. So I got a DX2 66mhz. Worked right away.

The other one still remains. I followed that exact video, and had no succes. Now I'm going to buy a batch of CF cards of different sizes and brands. If that fails, I might have to just buy a regular old hdd 😵

btw, is this the same bios you have? It's the most basic bios ever, it gives you zero control over boot settings.
YudhgPV.jpg

Did you select type 6 also and not just manually configuration?
Also some cf does not work and need to be patched if I remember right.

I would say my bios is a look alike but black and white 😉

naa, nothing yet...

Reply 13 of 30, by Liveandlearn

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Indeed the hard drive limitations are 540mb as far as i know. Had an actual 540mb hard drive before.

But now I use a 512 mb CF card to. What I did was put that card in another pc and let it recognise automatically . It wil then give you 3 sets of specs.

When the precomp says 65k you use -1 on the tulip. From the 3 options (Normal, LBA and a 3rd one i forgot). I think only the settings from normal worked for me because the other values were higher then the tulip bios would accept.

As for the cmos battery. What kind of batterys were in the battery pack (i think i saw 3x 1,5volts in series?.) There is a jumper which makes it choose between that battery pack and the battery on chip.

Reply 14 of 30, by Liveandlearn

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tabm0de wrote:
Did you select type 6 also and not just manually configuration? Also some cf does not work and need to be patched if I remember […]
Show full quote
lihinian wrote:
I managed to solve 1 of my problems. Apparently my mobo only supports DX2 intel overdrives. So I got a DX2 66mhz. Worked right a […]
Show full quote

I managed to solve 1 of my problems. Apparently my mobo only supports DX2 intel overdrives. So I got a DX2 66mhz. Worked right away.

The other one still remains. I followed that exact video, and had no succes. Now I'm going to buy a batch of CF cards of different sizes and brands. If that fails, I might have to just buy a regular old hdd 😵

btw, is this the same bios you have? It's the most basic bios ever, it gives you zero control over boot settings.
YudhgPV.jpg

Did you select type 6 also and not just manually configuration?
Also some cf does not work and need to be patched if I remember right.

I would say my bios is a look alike but black and white 😉

There are a lot more options in the bios but for that you need the tulip boot disk.

Reply 15 of 30, by lihinian

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3x 1,5v in series is Correct. But I have no idea how a recharable battery on chip would be installed.
Do you happen to have that tulip boot disk? Would love to have that at my disposal 😀

About the CF. I ran the whatide.exe utility from the a: drive after booting dos. And it gave me all the specs I needed, except the L Zone (LZ) and the precomp (pre) data you're talking about.
I tried using -1 for pre and 1016 for LZ from the type 33 setting, which seemed closest to the size I have (which whatide.exe read as 488mb).
Is there a legitimate way to find out those l zone and precomp data?

Which exact card are you using?

Reply 16 of 30, by lihinian

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Okay, finally got it working! thanks to tabmode's card suggestion. A Sandisk Ultra 16GB 50mbs card. Those can still be easily bought new.
Dos 6.22 is installed with ezdrive9 and phils ms-dos starter kit.
Soundblaster and mouse are also working fine. Happy times 😀

Reply 17 of 30, by Liveandlearn

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lihinian wrote:
3x 1,5v in series is Correct. But I have no idea how a recharable battery on chip would be installed. Do you happen to have that […]
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3x 1,5v in series is Correct. But I have no idea how a recharable battery on chip would be installed.
Do you happen to have that tulip boot disk? Would love to have that at my disposal 😀

About the CF. I ran the whatide.exe utility from the a: drive after booting dos. And it gave me all the specs I needed, except the L Zone (LZ) and the precomp (pre) data you're talking about.
I tried using -1 for pre and 1016 for LZ from the type 33 setting, which seemed closest to the size I have (which whatide.exe read as 488mb).
Is there a legitimate way to find out those l zone and precomp data?

Which exact card are you using?

I am using a 512 sandisk card. Put the card is another system. Did auto detect and used those settings on the tulip precomp 65535 i use -1 on the tulip. Socket 7 systems with award bios can do an auto detect for hard drives and it will give you up to 3 values.

As for the battery I don't think they are rechargeable batteries in the battery pack. For that you would need to change the loading voltage etc. I think there the same as those 3v cr2032 batterys are. No chargable and dissipate over a long time. J14 jumper will have a jumper on it when you have a battery pack. I dont have a jumper nor battery pack. When I leave the system on for a whole day my battery in the IC chip has enough charge to remember the settings for 1 of 2 reboots then iits empty again.

I have a a couple of Tulip disks yes
I will make some img files from the tulip disks.
There dutch so might be dutch language which isn't strange since Tulip was a dutch company 🤣

I will diskcopy using a virtual machine to make the img files. Is there support for these files on tthis forum somewhere?

Last edited by Liveandlearn on 2018-07-10, 09:24. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 19 of 30, by lihinian

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I have a a couple of Tulip disks yes
I will make some img files from the tulip disks.
There dutch so might be dutch language which isn't strange since Tulip was a dutch company 🤣

Very nice! please do, I won't mind the dutch because I speak dutch 😎
See my main update post about the battery, allthough I'm still unsure about the "battery on a chip" being a real configuration on this board. See https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/T/T … DC-DT-TC38.html.