@Nachtrave

Have you got a link to one you know that works?

I have used the adapter from this eBay seller with the WeeCee and can confirm it works. I used a USB to PS/2 adapter with a USB Microsoft Intellimouse (PS/2 compatible), an IBM Model M keyboard, and they both worked flawlessly together. The seller also clearly lists that the adapter is intended for this purpose.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/303116324181

When I used the mouse on USB it would freeze periodically, seemingly mostly when the SD card was in heavy use. So the PS/2 adapter was a nice improvement.

Duffman wrote on 2022-12-31, 03:54:

@Nachtrave

Have you got a link to one you know that works?

Typically I would advise always getting one with the green/purple ends, that way it is more specific for that function. If you absolutely need them to be black, paint them. Not worth the trouble otherwise.

Another dead give-away is the order in which they say it, e.g. "1x male to 2x female, " meaning that it's a signal splitter/duplicator not a signal combiner.

For example, on the product I linked to earlier, in the description it says: "This Y cable is used to split one DIN6 6 pin male to two DIN6 6 pin female." This is intended to be a one way conversion, but goes on to *cough* intentionally? *cough* confuse it as a standard PS/2 KB/Mouse adapter (along with reviews that say it worked). The first sentence is likely written by the engineer while the remaining likely added by a marketing person wanting to maximize on keywords.

Always read the full description and make sure it is specifically for combining a PS/2 keyboard and mouse (as inputs) into a single output (typically the right-hand portion of the text). If you check on a meter, you should see mouse input pins 1&5 wiring to output pins 2&6 while keyboard input pins 1&5 wiring to output pins 1&5.

divideBYzero wrote on 2022-12-31, 05:20:

I have used the adapter from this eBay seller with the WeeCee and can confirm it works. I used a USB to PS/2 adapter with a USB Microsoft Intellimouse (PS/2 compatible), an IBM Model M keyboard, and they both worked flawlessly together. The seller also clearly lists that the adapter is intended for this purpose.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/303116324181

When I used the mouse on USB it would freeze periodically, seemingly mostly when the SD card was in heavy use. So the PS/2 adapter was a nice improvement.

Yup, PS/2 is the way to go with these systems. Typically that's what they're designed to primarily handle. It wasn't until later Windows systems where the USB was much better integrated into the kernel/system itself.

Also can give my thumbs up on the link, thanks for contributing that!

What do you think the odds are that ICOP or DMP will actually help and provide a fix for the incorrect SD card size issue?

It's been about 10 years since the last BIOS update, would they still provide support?

Duffman wrote on 2022-12-27, 07:06:

@Paul_V

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

uploaded new 32KB ROM.

Didn't work either. It is bootlable only if I swap the ROM with the same ID.

Duffman wrote on 2023-01-01, 12:04:

What do you think the odds are that ICOP or DMP will actually help and provide a fix for the incorrect SD card size issue?

It's been about 10 years since the last BIOS update, would they still provide support?

Have you tried any other SD cards? Mine is 32Gb Class 10 HPe and it's working fine. But I think I got one from SanDisk somewhere, which don't.
SD cards and adapters tend to be a hit and miss in term of compatibility.

@Paul_V

I've got a 16GB SD card on the way so I'll see if that works when it arrives.
hmm... I haven't tried 32GB actually, only 64GB and 128GB (and they both show up as 24.9GB). I'll try 32GB too when I can get one.

@rasteri @Nachtave @Paul_V

OK, So I've received a reply from ICOP

Dear x, […]
Show full quote

Dear x,

Our engineer reply as below.

ICOP VDX SD to IDE adapter only support to SDHC, then SDHC SD card MAXIMUX size is only to 32GB.

Your SD card capacity size is 128GB and type is SDXC we supposed, then ICOP VDX module is not support to SDXC.

If you have any question, please feel free to contact me.

Ah OK, so we're limited to 32GB
A bit of a shame we can't go larger than that with the existing weecee revision.
At least now we know.

@rasteri

If you ever decide to do a hardware revision of the weecee, you could replace the SD card with an IDE to SATA adapter and have an opening in the enclosure to insert a 2.5 inch SSD.

I also got an answer, but a little more specific than Duffman's. I'm just sorry we're sending duplicate queries.

Letter:

Thanks for your feedback.
The first question is about a system freeze issue in Win98SE: I looked for its document, and you might try to put "Enable" in "Standard IDE compatible" of the BIOS Advanced setting (attached picture: dx_bios_ide_configuration.jpg). Or you can try selecting "System Properties" in Win98SE; and changing the "Dual IDE Channel" in "Standard Dual PCI IDE Controller Content" to be “Primary IDE Channel” (attached pictures: win98_ide.jpg and win98_sys.JPG).

BIOS setup:

• Power on and press “Del” key into the BIOS setup.
• Go to “Advanced” and “IDE Configuration” selections.
• Set “OnBoard IDE Operate Mode” to “Legacy, and “Standard IDE Compatible” to “Enabled”.
• Press “F10” to save the changes and exit.

The VDX processor only supports SDHC card, with a storage capacity up to 32 GB with class 10. Please do not use SDXC on VDX board because it may have the problem during data communications.

I have moved my Win98 install to from a 128GB card to a 32GB card using Symantec Ghost, the BIOS reports the card size correctly now, but the IDE controller still isn't behaving. I went into the registry to remove the NoIDE value, however that did not seem to help getting it out of compatibility mode. The only other noticeable difference from changing the BIOS settings and Windows settings as described is that just stopped the computer from BSODing when the NoIDE value was removed, unfortunately it didn't get it out of compatibility mode.

@divideBYzero

I've done the same on my WeeCee and can confirm identical behaviour on my end too.

Man for whatever 98SE just really hates this SD card slot!

I'm starting to think I might want to just build a Win95 OSR2 build in a card, just accepting that Win98 is a dead end. Will it make me avoid all that noise? I think the games I care to run on this thing might be all compatible. I don't really care about Starcraft, or near that era on my WeeCee. I care about early FMV games like Phantasmagoria or Gabriel Knight III and stuff like Full Throttle though.

The graphics drivers don't work at all on Windows 95. On startup you will get a BSoD about missing symbols. Might be fixable though!

I was able to get networking enabled, but it had issues.

Windows 95 feels much faster though! The UI is more responsive etc... I don't remember how the Read/Write from the SD card was though.

.........Windows ME?

In my tests Windows 95 had the same slow transfer rate as 98.

Windows ME had a much faster rate.

rasteri wrote on 2023-01-04, 20:57:

In my tests Windows 95 had the same slow transfer rate as 98.

Windows ME had a much faster rate.

It's worth a throwaway uSD card, as long as it plays Gabriel Knight III I'm good

Tried Windows ME, no go. BSOD on boot about compatibility mode, identical behavior as 98SE. Minus the DOS goodness.

Tried Windows 2000, great luck! Works in Ultra DMA mode, got all drivers installed. Everything runs smooth as butter so far. Transfers about 70MB from a flash drive in 15 seconds for about 5MB/s with a super cheap MicroCenter 32GB microSD card. I need to test it with a better card now to see how it can really do. I think the MicroCenter card is the bottleneck now.

Power draw seems to be 80-100mA less with Win2k at idle. In addition, power draw goes up about 80mA higher than Win9x under load.

I went through the resource assignments of the hardware on both systems to compare. Of notable interest, Win2k does not assign an IRQ to the unused secondary IDE controller, whereas Win9x does. I will post a list of the data below if it of any use.

Resource Assignments
Win98:

Primary IDE
Input/Output Range 01F0 - 01F7
Input/Output Range 03F6 - 03F6
Interrupt Request 14
Input/Output Range EF00 - EF07

Secondary IDE
Input/Output Range 0170 - 0177
Input/Output Range 0376 - 0376
Interrupt Request 15
Input/Output Range EF0B - EF0F

Dual PCI IDE
Input/Output Range 01F0 - 01F7
Input/Output Range 03F6 - 03F6
Interrupt Request 14
Input/Output Range 0170 - 0177
Input/Output Range 0376 - 0376
Interrupt Request 15
Input/Output Range EF00 - EF0F

Win2k:
Primary IDE
Input/Output Range 01F0 - 01F7
Input/Output Range 03F6 - 03F6
Interrupt Request 14

Secondary IDE
Input/Output Range 0170 - 0177
Input/Output Range 0376 - 0376

Dual PCI IDE
Input/Output Range EF00 - EF0F

Do you have access to the full size of the SD card?

Windows 2000 shows the card as 28.8GB. I hadn't noticed that yet. I'll take note of the size when I try cloning the install to a 128GB card using Symantec Ghost. I found Ghost is handy because it readjusts the partition tables automatically for larger or smaller cards. As long as the transferred data fits within the card, it will work and adjust accordingly. I might also try an install with NTFS to see how it preforms.

Windows 98/ME show the card as 29.7GB. All systems formatted with FAT32.

Edit: I should also point out the Win98 card was created by cloning with ghost on another computer, the Win2k card was created on the WeeCee using the install CD iso. So it's possible the WeeCee's BIOS had some influence on that one.