VOGONS


Reply 41 of 143, by Tiido

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There are no boards with PC/PCI that do socket775 and newer to my knowledge and none of the PCI to ISA chips work on newer stuff due to lack of few signals on the southbridge that enable use of DMA and IRQ, they can only provide IO ports access. LPC to ISA bridges can provide DMA and IRQ but only a limited range of IO and they still require cooperation on southbridge side. A custom design can join the two without drawbacks and there won't be issues sourcing any parts either, all these bridge chips are long obsolete from what I have seen or lack documentation (probably need to sign an NDA and pay $$$$ to get access).

Hardware itself wouldn't be super expensive, something between 50 and 100€ is definitely doable. The fact it needs multiple boards and bunch of connectors (and thus plenty time for assembly) is what makes things inconvenient. Development and testing time for hardware and any necessary software will be months too.
I will not be accepting any dorrals to move the project further up in the todo list, I really want to work on some other stuff first.

---
I hurt my back badly a number of years ago, being confined to bed is not fun at all. I have nearly fully recovered though, still got to take frequent breaks to rest it.

T-04YBSC, a new YMF71x based sound card & Official VOGONS thread about it
Newly made 4MB 60ns 30pin SIMMs ~
mida sa loed ? nagunii aru ei saa 😜

Reply 43 of 143, by ruthan

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anthony wrote:

Conroe865 support quad cpus as well as pc/pci dma, isn’t it enough?
Most likely via south bridge than can be found on 4coredual able to handle pc/pci dma too

I have both these MBs, PCI sound card compatibility could be checked here:
https://docs.zoho.com/sheet/published.do?rid= … 04bf92a9209e034
, with SB-Link it would be 1 level better.

At least with official Bios - Conroe865PE, cant do Quads, didnt find unofficial one.

You can help with our PCI DOS Souncards chipsets compabiility matrix: // Just leave a comment on target cells
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cvhr6 … K4l0/edit#gid=0

But mainly for my both are too slow for modern use as multiboot machine - and can work only with 4 GB of RAM, VIA has some annoying Sata controller implementation too.. And PCI soundcards support is limited, no all cards are working in Dos.

For now im using X58/ICH10 chipset machine (only Yamahas and Aureals are working in Dos) which can better multiboot capabilities as my retro/back machine and this project can unlock even something faster.. Except PCI sound cards support there is not really anything which would block you use Dos on modern HW as possible, all work around are already done.

---
Health stuff, skip it, when you are not particularly interested:
My back i dont want to spam here about my health. I consider to be very lucky one, i could be dead, on wheelchair etc.. odds very against me, i fell from ~50 feet during small rock ascent, but probably fortunately (i dont really remember, anything that final crush) hit some tree branches / bushes in the process. It still hurts constantly, when i sit its quite good, when i stand, its much worse, but manageable, im walking, only pain is annoying.. pain is strange one - muscles are constantly stretched as when would constantly lifting some weight, or nerves report such feel to brain... and of course because back sucks, so i have neck and head pains.
I was able to work somehow remotely, from next week i will work 3 day in week on site (yeah no bed for short rest here..) in 200 km far city.. keep fingers crossed, if it would work, im fine, not in such good shape as before, but fine.

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 44 of 143, by digger

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I hope you will both heal quickly and completely, ruthan and Tiido! And ruthan, that's a hefty commute, even if you didn't have a back injury. Best of luck and be well.

Reply 45 of 143, by ruthan

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Ok, i survived first week, technically im still on way to home.. but it was good, except train delays (2,5 h for 2x3h tracks) and hotel very bad wifi..

I receive some message from Rayer meanwhile, rought translation is here:
Without HW mod, make sense only try Yamahas and Vortexes on newer MBs na with modern Intel chipsets 7x - 1xx, or them with PCIe to PCI adapter. I think there is probably with not difference between chips on adapter, but it more about MB design and its Bios. My P67 where Yamaha and Vortexes are working is one of last ones with Award Bios and not UEFI..

I can cofirm that my working X58 MBs are still without UEFI too and all my MB with UEFI not worked, it could be only because there are modern.

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 46 of 143, by RayeR

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anthony wrote:

Conroe865 support quad cpus as well as pc/pci dma, isn’t it enough?

No, it's not enough. We want to push it further. Some people here prefer one PC with multiboot for all work and gaming. I also have a bunch of older MB (from PC-XT to C2D) with many ISA soundcards but...
On other side, the power of current CPUs is still not enough for smooth Dosbox emulation as Dosbox runs very ineffective compared to native (or almost native like NTVDM, DOSEMU...)

I read many times here that SB Live/Audigy DOS SB16 emulation driver do the job. No, it doesn't. As it rely on some specific HW conditions it doesn't work on any intel Core 1st gen and newer. For older C2D MBs you may got Adlib but not SFX.

So currently as the best solution for such new MBs I see in YMF724/744 or Aureal Vortex PCI cards that have good emulation DOS driver for many games and demos. But it's not as well as true ISA system and unfortunatelly it's not working on all tested chipsets.
If I'm up to date, there still was not proved any fully working MB with 7x and higer chipset + YMF/Vortex, am I right?

Gigabyte GA-P67-DS3-B3, Core i7-2600K @4,5GHz, 8GB DDR3, 128GB SSD, GTX970(GF7900GT), SB Audigy + YMF724F + DreamBlaster combo + LPC2ISA

Reply 47 of 143, by cyclone3d

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I have an old NOS PCI to ISA expansion bus system. The external enclosure has 8 ISA slots.

Although the bridge says it supports DMA, the drivers do not support DMA. Very disappointing but could be used for things such as MIDI only boards, Adlib, and other stuff that doesn't use DMA.

The other option is a USB 2.0 to ISA adapter. You can get them in single, triple, or 7 slot configurations. They support IRQ, I/O, and DMA.

OS support is as folllows:
Windows - XP, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008, 7, 8.1, 10
Linux - 3.x.xx and later kernels, x86 (32/64bit) and ARM processors (raspberry pi)
Mac OS X 10.7, and later (for developers)
Android - ARM processors

http://arstech.com/install/index.php?app=ecom … show&ref=usb2.0

There is also a special version of DOSBOX (source available) from the company that makes/sells them so it can be ported to newer versions of DOSBOX.

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Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 48 of 143, by RayeR

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Oh, forgot about USB2ISA adapters. USB low-level programming is pure HELL. Don't expect that anybody will program a DOS driver for it. It's not just writing a friver for the peripheral but you also must have driver for USB controllers that exists in many form (XHCI/EHCI/UHCI/OHCI) and USB hubs... no no...
And it would be still only a half of work the second half will be writting a TSR/monitor that captures legacy access from games and convert it to calls for your USB driver)

Gigabyte GA-P67-DS3-B3, Core i7-2600K @4,5GHz, 8GB DDR3, 128GB SSD, GTX970(GF7900GT), SB Audigy + YMF724F + DreamBlaster combo + LPC2ISA

Reply 49 of 143, by cyclone3d

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RayeR wrote:

Oh, forgot about USB2ISA adapters. USB low-level programming is pure HELL. Don't expect that anybody will program a DOS driver for it. It's not just writing a friver for the peripheral but you also must have driver for USB controllers that exists in many form (XHCI/EHCI/UHCI/OHCI) and USB hubs... no no...
And it would be still only a half of work the second half will be writting a TSR/monitor that captures legacy access from games and convert it to calls for your USB driver)

Like I said, they have a version of DOSBOX with source code available that supports the adapters so you can just use DOSBOX on a modern PC and pass the sound to the ISA adapter via the Universal Software Layer:
http://www.arstech.com/install/cms-display/ste_usl.html

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 50 of 143, by LSS10999

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cyclone3d wrote:
RayeR wrote:

Oh, forgot about USB2ISA adapters. USB low-level programming is pure HELL. Don't expect that anybody will program a DOS driver for it. It's not just writing a friver for the peripheral but you also must have driver for USB controllers that exists in many form (XHCI/EHCI/UHCI/OHCI) and USB hubs... no no...
And it would be still only a half of work the second half will be writting a TSR/monitor that captures legacy access from games and convert it to calls for your USB driver)

Like I said, they have a version of DOSBOX with source code available that supports the adapters so you can just use DOSBOX on a modern PC and pass the sound to the ISA adapter via the Universal Software Layer:
http://www.arstech.com/install/cms-display/ste_usl.html

Not sure whether this combination can offer any merit than using existing DOSBox with properly configured audio emulation as the audio emulation is good enough and often not the main issue for problematic games on DOSBox. The best I could think would be if the adapter enables you to actually play around with a *genuine* YMF262 FM chip on your ISA sound card which is useful for audio trackers that allow fine tuning almost everything on the chip.

Reply 51 of 143, by anthony

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RayeR wrote:
anthony wrote:

Conroe865 support quad cpus as well as pc/pci dma, isn’t it enough?

No, it's not enough. We want to push it further.

in native way it's impossible. i'd prefer hardware support for dma with zero compatibility issues

Reply 52 of 143, by cyclone3d

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anthony wrote:
RayeR wrote:
anthony wrote:

Conroe865 support quad cpus as well as pc/pci dma, isn’t it enough?

No, it's not enough. We want to push it further.

in native way it's impossible. i'd prefer hardware support for dma with zero compatibility issues

What about a PICMG 1.0 backplane and CPU board setup? Just depends on what PCI to ISA bridge chip is used.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
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Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 53 of 143, by ruthan

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This is what i would call enough slots..
downloadlit.aspx?LIT_ID=2b7c692a-d958-430d-ac5d-849dc106c571
http://www.advantech.com/products/1-2jkn7m/pc … 44-14a92de02437

But what about case, price and other compatibility problems? Could it run Win98 too?

Last edited by ruthan on 2018-12-31, 17:04. Edited 1 time in total.

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 54 of 143, by cyclone3d

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ruthan wrote:
This is would call enough slots.. https://downloadt.advantech.com/download/downloadlit.aspx?LIT_ID=2b7c692a-d958-430d-ac5d-849dc […]
Show full quote

This is would call enough slots..
downloadlit.aspx?LIT_ID=2b7c692a-d958-430d-ac5d-849dc106c571
http://www.advantech.com/products/1-2jkn7m/pc … 44-14a92de02437

But what about case, price and other compatibility problems? Could it run Win98 too?

Yeah, the backplanes are pretty much passive.

It all depends on the CPU board. I have quite a few PCI/ISA backplanes and CPU boards but they are only Socket 478. They all have the ITE8888 PCI-ISA bridge which offers full ISA compatibility.

I've never really looked into LGA775 stuff with ISA except for PIAGP stuff (AGP/PCI/ISA) and there was only one CPU board that was ever made and it only accepted up to Pentium D. And with PIAGP, the PCI to ISA bus is an add-on card for the backplane which is pretty impossible to find unless you find a backplane with one already installed. Still the ITE8888 bridge chip though.

The PIAGP CPU board I have is Socket 478.

As far as cases go, you will need a rackmount case that has the proper back panel for the number of slots your backplane has.

Edit: And guess what, you can go up to at least LGA1155 and have full ISA compatibility.
https://www.icpamerica.com/wsb-h610-picmg-1-0-sbc/

Edit2: LGA1150
https://advdownload.blob.core.windows.net/pro … 80910102743.pdf

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
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YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 55 of 143, by ruthan

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Main question is it there are some such boards with enough PCI-E slots and at least 1 PCI + 1 ISA and with which CPUs are compabitle (faster better) and if ISA with modern CPU board would have working DMA..

I saw somewhere on forum someone who planned such project- with Skylake / Kabylake CPU, but i dont know about result. s478 is too slow and no PCI-E/AGP is no go for me and whole this thing looks very expensive and badly documented at least when i look at web descriptions.. but maybe we can find someone who using this stuff for work and can test, tell us some info.

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 56 of 143, by cyclone3d

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I have not been able to find ANY PICMG 1.3 setups with ISA slots. Pretty sure they do not exist. They only have PCI-E and PCI.

You could always look at this thread and get a PCI to ISA bridge setup.. but would have to work out the bugs with using multiple ISA sound cards.
Short on ISA slots? Try this.

Also here:
Re: The Retro-friendly Modern PC

http://www.costronic.com/

Last edited by cyclone3d on 2018-12-06, 21:56. Edited 1 time in total.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
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Reply 57 of 143, by j^aws

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ruthan wrote:
This is would call enough slots.. https://downloadt.advantech.com/download/downloadlit.aspx?LIT_ID=2b7c692a-d958-430d-ac5d-849dc […]
Show full quote

This is would call enough slots..
downloadlit.aspx?LIT_ID=2b7c692a-d958-430d-ac5d-849dc106c571
http://www.advantech.com/products/1-2jkn7m/pc … 44-14a92de02437

But what about case, price and other compatibility problems? Could it run Win98 too?

That is a PICMG 1.0 board, and with it, you are limited by the fastest PCI GPU card. With a PIAGP board, you are limited by the fastest AGP GPU card. With a PICMG 1.3 board, you are limited by the fastest PCI-express GPU card. In these cases, you are also limited by the functionality of the PCI-ISA bridge chip and their variants to provide ISA DMA.

Reply 58 of 143, by cyclone3d

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j^aws wrote:

That is a PICMG 1.0 board, and with it, you are limited by the fastest PCI GPU card. With a PIAGP board, you are limited by the fastest AGP GPU card. With a PICMG 1.3 board, you are limited by the fastest PCI-express GPU card. In these cases, you are also limited by the functionality of the PCI-ISA bridge chip and their variants to provide ISA DMA.

True.. but we are talking about DOS/Win98... so PCI-E is a moot point. You won't have any drivers for any PCI-E video cards in Win9x.

I'm also not sure exactly why we would need an uber fast CPU for DOS/Win9x.. but that doesn't stop me from wishing I had a faster PICMG or PIAGP setup than I already have. Just for fun!

The PICMG CPU boards I posted links to both use the ITE8888 bridge chip so they should have full ISA compatibility.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 59 of 143, by j^aws

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cyclone3d wrote:

True.. but we are talking about DOS/Win98... so PCI-E is a moot point. You won't have any drivers for any PCI-E video cards in Win9x.

I'm also not sure exactly why we would need an uber fast CPU for DOS/Win9x.. but that doesn't stop me from wishing I had a faster PICMG or PIAGP setup than I already have. Just for fun!

The PICMG CPU boards I posted links to both use the ITE8888 bridge chip so they should have full ISA compatibility.

Firstly, PICMG 1.3 boards with ISA slots exist. And some PCI-E GPUs do have Win98 drivers. However, in
such a setup, you'd use a fast PCI GPU for Win98 duties and the PCI-E GPU for WinXP duties. You can also supplement DOS duties with an ISA video card, too.