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First post, by Susanin79

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Greetings,

I'll be appreciated if you help me to find any additional documentation, software to early XT era multi-function adapter. It is hard to google it due to it name: "Orchid Blossom". I know that this was a well known brand back in a days. At the moment I was able to find only this link to late eBay bid here.
This board has a fault capacitor on 12V line, now it is replaced and board is working except the fact that some memory modules is fault and need to be replaced.
So it would be nice to find any additional information and/or software for this board.
In any case I'll try to detect the setting by playing with the dip switches and jumpers on it, test it with different amount of memory and reproduce all variants.

Thanks in advance.

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Reply 1 of 8, by Horun

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Cannot find anything. Minus-0 has some info on the RamQuest series but nothing else....
earliest Orchid archive: http://web.archive.org/web/19961018060251/htt … driverlist.html
note: it refers to micronics ftp for all their files 🙁

added: found this very lengthy article in PC Mag from Feb 5, 1985 about the Orchid PCnet and Blossom. No real jumper/switch settings but some info.....
https://books.google.com/books/about/PC_Mag.h … id=Q2ad61ZUYQMC
slide to Feb 5, 1985 (volume 4 number 3), click the upper cover then go to page 229 in that magazine, is about 5 pages long...

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Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 2 of 8, by Susanin79

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Thanks so much, interesting article about this board. File sharing, text messaging within the network clients, network boot sounds very modern for 1884 )
Here is the nice poster with this board:

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Reply 3 of 8, by Horun

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Great ! Found a bunch of Orchid manuals on various Micronics mirrors but nothing for Orchid PCnet Blossom.

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 4 of 8, by Susanin79

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Found another interesting article and couple other nice ad pictures, but nothing more.

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Reply 5 of 8, by Horun

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Susanin79 wrote on 2021-10-11, 18:56:

Found another interesting article and couple other nice ad pictures, but nothing more.

Based on the first article you posted, found SetAlarm and Dtime in some Orchid archives. The other programs were with them and may also work with your card, or maybe not.
Some I had to Hexedit to see what they were and did. Some already had some text info.
Best I can find so far.... unfortunately no jumper/switch settings...

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Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 6 of 8, by Susanin79

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Great, thanks so much, it is very promising start.
Will play with the switch settings and check them with the different amount of memory installed, just need to identify the broken memory module first, now motherboard can see only 256K on board.

Reply 7 of 8, by Susanin79

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Greetings!

Have spent few days with this board, at least half of the jumpers are known at the moment. Also one failed module was found and replaced, now all 384KB are available.
All jumpers labeled as they marked on the board.

SW1 - Starting memory address configuration.
MB memory | L1 | L2 | L3 | L4 |
------------------------------------
64KB | on | on | on | off |
128KB | on | on | off | on |
192KB | on | on | off | off |
256KB | on | off | on | on |
320KB | on | off | on | off |
384KB | on | off | off | on |
448KB | on | off | off | off |
512KB | off | on | on | on |
576KB | off | on | on | off |

CM1 - Set COM1
CM2 - Set COM2

P1 - set LPT Address 378H
P2 - set LPT Address 278H

L1 and L2 does not work for me, at any settings, port was always detected as LPT1.
Jumpers P, S2, S1, R does not correspond with serial an parallel ports, there were no changes when jumpers set to any of this values.
Did not touched the lower block, as it configure IRQ and channels for network, that I can not test.

So, at least I can configure it and use in the real configuration. Next step is to prepare hdd and try vendor tools.

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Reply 8 of 8, by Horun

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Great work ! Well if another LPT port set as 378h is not in the computer when address is to 278h on the card then it could appear as LPT1 since there is only one and the older BIOS and OS just see it that way....
Making a wild guess looking at the back of the board that the Jumpers P, S2, S1, R relate to the UART (found in the INS8250N data sheet mentions of Chip select and Read with C0, C1 and C2 as select and Rd). Not sure what P would be for...Did note that the S1, S2 and R appeared to be tied together in a way that could force them low/high based on the jumpers.....just a guess....
someone else might be able to figure it better.

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun