@Paul_V

Any luck recovering from that bad experimental VGA BIOS flash?

Duffman wrote on 2022-12-26, 17:28:

@Paul_V

Any luck recovering from that bad experimental VGA BIOS flash?

Hi, sorry for a bit of a delay. Voodoo resurrection rituals requiring proprietary connection to the outworld are long and tiresome without an appropriate connector.

I've just reverted the BIOS back to the one with 32KB ROM. Driver installer does not detect the video chip, neither does manual install.

Duffman wrote on 2022-12-26, 08:47:

But there's no chip on that though, unlike the Sintechi ones on ebay that are known to work with 98SE.

Yup. So in theory you don't necessarily need a chip, since the SOM is handling it internally. If it doesn't connect via its internal methodology, it reverts back to IDE. Pretty clever stuff to be able to wire an SPI connection through the IDE channel like that, but it's done literally all the time in these other boards. I realize that there exists different circuitry for the one we both linked, but the basic idea is the same: some pull-downs, some caps for filtering, and some smaller resistors to prevent any damage to the SD card during eject/insert. The circuits you're linking to also do some other stuff like bus mastering, IDE port emulation, or other things that the modern SOM already can do for us I bet, but you'd need to look at the chip datasheet to know specifically what it's doing, along with knowing more about the SOM.

The thing is, this mechanism works plenty fine in DOS mode. More than fine - full speed fine. No slow down issues at all. The move to Win 9x is what slows it down, so it is highly likely to be a driver issue, one where Win 9x decides it needs to run in IDE compatibility mode. The question isn't then if the circuitry is the issue here - it's likely not (although there could be other issues like maybe you need other parts of the IDE channel grounded, but you will see that rasteri already has done that) - it's mainly why Win 9x suffers in performance and DOS 6.22 does not. There is something going on in the Win 9x driver for the IDE controller or file system PDR whatnot that is causing the issue and getting the system bugged out.

I mean, we believe we have the correct driver file, just Windows barking about it being "wrong." So in theory, even with the "right driver" we still are seeing Win 9x freak out over nothing. There is some sort of thing that the system does ever so slightly different that Win9x is not prepared for, and whatever that is is the thing causing our issue.

Because related to that issue is the issue of mounting virtual CDs, where accessing the data can lockup the system -- as well as for USB disks in disk drives (under certain circumstances). Not all CDs mind you, but quite a large number of images I have that I know work otherwise cause massive issues with hard lockup in Win 9x. What could possibly be going on to have this issue, the issue with the Refresh Devices button in Device Manager causing the same hard lockup, and the IDE controller being in compatibility mode... It has to be a problem with Win 9x somehow, and that's where I think we'll find our answer.

In the end, I wouldn't be too surprised if it turns out that it's some awkward off by 1 error, or something not being grounded, or some other easy-to-miss issue. Very likely software related, but possibly could involve a hardware fix such as you describe with an IDE emulation for a SPI based SD card.

(Oh and to answer the early question: SPI is serial programming interface, used extensively alongside I2C in embedded electronics -- if you ever do any Arduino you learn SPI and I2C pretty early on as short-distance embedded systems communication protocols.)

@Nachtrave

I honestly haven't encountered any hard lockups during file transfers, can you send me one of your files that is known to consistently cause a hard lockup?

maybe it's my BIOS settings?
here's what I've changed

Plug and Play OS: YES
IRQ 5 Reserved for ISA Sound.
ATA(PI) 80-Pin IDE Cable Detection: Device
IDE Operate Mode: Native

Also, I'm thinking, as an experiment, Should I try maybe bypassing all the error checking in ESDI_506.PDR and see if that changes anything?

@Paul_V

Was this Original VGA BIOS? or my modded 32KB VGA BIOS?
For the driver I linked Use my modded BIOS
My modded one should have a different Device ID of 18CA 0040 so the killbill driver should be fine to install on it.
Can you check whether the BIOS mod successfully changed the Device ID?

Duffman wrote on 2022-12-27, 03:22:

@Nachtrave […]
Show full quote

@Nachtrave

I honestly haven't encountered any hard lockups during file transfers, can you send me one of your files that is known to consistently cause a hard lockup?

maybe it's my BIOS settings?
here's what I've changed

Plug and Play OS: YES
IRQ 5 Reserved for ISA Sound.
ATA(PI) 80-Pin IDE Cable Detection: Device
IDE Operate Mode: Native

Also, I'm thinking, as an experiment, Should I try maybe bypassing all the error checking in ESDI_506.PDR and see if that changes anything?

@Paul_V

Was this Original VGA BIOS? or my modded 32KB VGA BIOS?
For the driver I linked Use my modded BIOS
My modded one should have a different Device ID of 18CA 0040 so the killbill driver should be fine to install on it.
Can you check whether the BIOS mod successfully changed the Device ID?

You could do some disk benchmarks, like atto disk benchmark or crystal disk mark, and post the results.

Duffman wrote on 2022-12-27, 03:22:

Was this Original VGA BIOS? or my modded 32KB VGA BIOS? For the driver I linked Use my modded BIOS My modded one should have a d […]
Show full quote

Was this Original VGA BIOS? or my modded 32KB VGA BIOS?
For the driver I linked Use my modded BIOS
My modded one should have a different Device ID of 18CA 0040 so the killbill driver should be fine to install on it.
Can you check whether the BIOS mod successfully changed the Device ID?

Modded 32KB. Device ID is 18CA 0020
If I replace the BIOS using MMTOOL the ID stays the same.
If i delete the old one before replacing, the ID changes to 18CA 0021 but the BIOS becomes unbootable.

@Paul_V

It seems I missed a few bytes - all the IDs should be 18CA 0040 now.

uploaded new 32KB ROM.

I manage to get passed the BSOD I was getting trying to mod the driver to enable 3D.

But with this version Windows are not being drawn correctly, so this may or may not be the right approach.

uploaded her if anyone else wants to try it out: https://ufile.io/lqtivxkn

Duffman wrote on 2022-12-27, 03:22:

I honestly haven't encountered any hard lockups during file transfers, can you send me one of your files that is known to consis […]
Show full quote

I honestly haven't encountered any hard lockups during file transfers, can you send me one of your files that is known to consistently cause a hard lockup?

maybe it's my BIOS settings?
here's what I've changed

Plug and Play OS: YES
IRQ 5 Reserved for ISA Sound.
ATA(PI) 80-Pin IDE Cable Detection: Device
IDE Operate Mode: Native

I just tried these, no change in file copying behavior. Ramp up. Ramp down. Several seconds pause. Rinse/repeat.
I copied a 1 gb file from my modern PC (win10) to my WeeCee into a shared folder - it did that behavior.
I copy-pasted a 600 Mb ISO file already in my WeeCee to the same directory to create a clone - it did that behavior again.

Mu0n wrote on 2022-12-27, 23:19:

I just tried these, no change in file copying behavior. Ramp up. Ramp down. Several seconds pause. Rinse/repeat.
I copied a 1 gb file from my modern PC (win10) to my WeeCee into a shared folder - it did that behavior.
I copy-pasted a 600 Mb ISO file already in my WeeCee to the same directory to create a clone - it did that behavior again.

Ah, right, I see it now.
No crash as of yet though, just slow.

I've got some rather glitchy looking graphics with some XGI driver hacking.

Something I noticed when booting up XP's installer.

It's also getting the SD card size wrong.
So even if I did somehow manage to backport XP's ATAPI driver to 98SE we'd still have issues.

I know you won't want to hear this, but I genuinely think we've got a hardware issue here. I don't think ICOP's SD card circuit calculates the SD card size properly.

@rasteri @Nachtrave

If you're able, Can either of you try and hook up one of these onto the weecee for testing to see if it works?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/291873933509

In the mean time, I've gone and purchased a 16GB SD card off of ebay - the 16GB ones I've noticed are a bit hard to come by, 32GB and larger are plentiful though.

It'll take about a month to get to me though, but I'll test it as soon as I have it.

What's a good way to properly test to see if anything past the 24.9GB is actually readable?

Duffman wrote on 2022-12-30, 06:35:

If you're able, Can either of you try and hook up one of these onto the weecee for testing to see if it works?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/291873933509

Just tried it.

This gets rid of the yellow marks in device manager, but doesn't really increase the speed much (2.7MB/sec instead of 2.0)

I think this proves that it isn't a driver problem.

My uninformed theory is that the particular access patterns that Windows 98 uses just aren't suited to SD cards for whatever reason. Possibly it could be a sector-offset issue or something like that.

rasteri wrote on 2022-12-30, 12:10:

Just tried it. […]
Show full quote

Duffman wrote on 2022-12-30, 06:35:

If you're able, Can either of you try and hook up one of these onto the weecee for testing to see if it works?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/291873933509

Just tried it.

This gets rid of the yellow marks in device manager, but doesn't really increase the speed much (2.7MB/sec instead of 2.0)

I think this proves that it isn't a driver problem.

My uninformed theory is that the particular access patterns that Windows 98 uses just aren't suited to SD cards for whatever reason. Possibly it could be a sector-offset issue or something like that.

Can you please post how you did it? We have similar results except my Cached Speed is now 214 MB/sec. And Max Read Speed is 4.26 MB/sec

@rasteri

My theory is it has something to do with the BIOS reporting the SD card size wrong, even XP has the issue and that's a supported OS.

Can you see if you can bug ICOP about possibly getting a BIOS update to fix this?
I tried asking them earlier but they wouldn't talk to me since they asked for proof of purchase and I haven't purchased anything directly off of them.

Duffman wrote on 2022-12-30, 13:05:

@rasteri […]
Show full quote

@rasteri

My theory is it has something to do with the BIOS reporting the SD card size wrong, even XP has the issue and that's a supported OS.

Can you see if you can bug ICOP about possibly getting a BIOS update to fix this?
I tried asking them earlier but they wouldn't talk to me since they asked for proof of purchase and I haven't purchased anything directly off of them.

I regularly order processors from ICOP in Taiwan. Now I wrote to them. As soon as I know the answer I will post it here.

Vridek wrote on 2022-12-30, 12:30:

Can you please post how you did it? We have similar results except my Cached Speed is now 214 MB/sec. And Max Read Speed is 4.26 MB/sec

I just plugged an SD-to-IDE adapter into the IDE port of another vortex86DX board that I have.

@rasteri

If you've got the time, hook up an IDE to SATA adapter and try out an SSD.

Curious to see how fast it'll go.

Also, If 137GB+ size is a problem just use rloew's TBPLUS and that'll fix it.

Hey I just wanted to point out something that I just encountered with one of the folk who purchased a unit off of me. They were having issues with their keyboard/mouse interfering with one another (typing when moving mouse, mouse moving when typing, etc), and it turned out they were using the incorrect Y-adapter.

For these PS/2 ports, you want to be sure you're using specifically a PS/2 adapter for mouse/keyboard. They sell these cheap Y-splitters that are NOT the same thing. The one I have pictured below is NOT for connecting a kb/mouse into the same output, but for doubling the same input into two different outputs. These splitters directly wire pin 1 to pin 1, pin 2 to pin 2, etc., and won't work for combining the kb/mouse input into the correct output.

The PS/2 port spec you can look at http://www.burtonsys.com/PS2_keyboard_and_mou … or_pinouts.html for details.

Essentially the correct Y-adapter that you will need takes pin 1&5 of the mouse's PS/2 output (data & clock) and puts it on pins 2&6 (both normally reserved/unused). This makes it so the KB will be on pins 1&5 and the mouse pins 2&6. If your adapter doesn't do this correctly, then it is a standard Y-splitter, not a Mouse/Keyboard Y-adapter, and you will see such issues as mouse/kb interference.

Anyways, just wanted to point this out.