VOGONS


First post, by HanJammer

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Googling around the Internet I found conflicting information or strange myths about these computers, so as owner of one of these PCs I see a need to sort them out.

BIOS
First (and the most frequently asked question) is if they do have a BIOS setup and what's the keystroke combo. Many places state they have (although nobody gives a key combination). At zimmers.net site you can even find supposed utility disk for 10/20-III series which contains setup.exe, but that's for PC40 (!). So once and for all:

Commodore PC10-III/20-III like many other XT clones doesn't have built-in BIOS setup program nor any other utility (in OS executable form) for this purpose.

However it's BIOS does have two simple utilities built-in:

COMMODORE 8088 Monitor which can be called using debug command:
G=F000:0

and

Western Digital IDE Superbios utility which can be called using debug command:
G=FA00:5

also there are two utils for DOS:
speed.exe which can be used to set CPU speed:
speed.exe -s - "Standard" 4.77MHz speed (same as pressing CTRL+ALT+S)
speed.exe -t - "Turbo" 7.16MHz speed (same as CTRL+ALT+T)
speed.exe -d - "Double" 9.54MHz speed (same as CTRL+ALT+D)

setclock.exe which can be used to set realtime clock based on system time and vice versa:
setclock.exe -r - sets system time based on realtime clock
setclock.exe -w - sets realtime clock based on system time

Jumper settings
Only two motherboard jumpers are documented in the manual.
JMP 208 - enables built-in XTA hard disk controller: enabled (jumper on pins 1-2 - position A) or disabled (jumper on pins 2-3 - position B)
JMP 614 - sets composite output mode: color (jumper in) or mono (jumper out)

however there are more jumpers that are described as factory set or not described at all - some of them do have jumper headers soldered in, some do not:

JMP 101 close = FE2010 (PC Bus and CPU peripheral controller) pin 16 set to GND. According to the data sheet, this pin is unused, Commodore has labeled the with NTSTCLR.
JMP 206 - HDD IRQ 5 ON/OFF
JMP 207 - HDD DRQ 3 ON/OFF
JMP 301 - it seems it's realtime clock CMOS clear jumper.
JMP 204/205 = U201 EPROM type:

  • 27128: JMP 204 open / JMP 205 1-2
    27256: 204 JMP open / JMP 205 2-3
    27512: 204 JMP closed / JMP 205 2-3

PAD 201-203 = FD9268 FDD controller write precompensation preset
JMP 612 = PVC4 video chip data ON/OFF
JMP 611 = PVC4 video chip READY signal ON/OFF

Keyboard
These computers doesn't need any special, propertiary Commodore keyboard. Regular XT keyboard works just fine with them.

Resources (manuals, BIOS images, utilities and more):
http://vicerveza.homeunix.net/~viric/oldcomps … ore_pc10-3.html

https://ancientelectronics.wordpress.com/2015 … 0-iii-pc20-iii/

https://oldcomputer.info/pc/commodore20/index.htm

http://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm-pc/ALLFILES.html
http://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm-pc/doc … Information.txt - most complete source of information, beside the original manuals.

Last edited by HanJammer on 2019-09-18, 13:31. Edited 11 times in total.

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Reply 1 of 4, by HanJammer

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Also I have a question - my PC20-III doesn't test/detect mouse port during POST (it won't throw any errors in regard to mouse port as well) and Amiga mouse connected to this mouse port is not detected by mouse driver (MS DOS driver or others as well). From the diagram I see the port is connected directly to the FRANK'N'MOUSE controller. I don't see why it wouldn't work. Is there a way to turn off this controller somehow? I couldn't find any jumpers for this purpose.

I also have trouble connecting second floppy drive - I have a brand new FZ-502 FDD just like the one originally installed in the PC10-III/PC20-III. I connected it to the ribbon cable and set it as unit 1 with the jumper (while the original FDD is unit 0). Also I removed termination jumper from this unit (and it's installed on the original one / unit 0). So it's like that:

[CONTROLLER]------[UNIT 1 / no termination]-----[UNIT 0 / termination]

Both drives are tested in correct order during post. I can hear the unit 1 spinning when I insert a floppy. Also this unit is working fine in my 286s. But it doesn't seem to work here - floppies work perfectly fine in drive A, but when I try to read the drive B - LED turns on but I doesn't really hear any activity and it would fail after several seconds.

Edit (2022.01.05) : Floppy drive B required some modification on the PCB (soldering some jumpers between pads on the PCB) - it seems not all FZ-502 are XT-ready from the factory. After modification it started working fine.
As for the Frank'n'Mouse - the mouse is being properly detected during POST when the XTA HDD is disconnected. I didn't had this problem with another machine with original WDC HDD so it may be caused by this particular Seagate ST-351X drive.

Last edited by HanJammer on 2022-01-05, 17:34. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 3 of 4, by HanJammer

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evasive wrote on 2022-01-05, 16:47:

This board was added to UR recently:
https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/10115

We will add the info from this thread

Here is the better photo of the pristine, unmodified motherboard:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1IGhD- … bxb?usp=sharing
(there were several with some important changes)

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