On my first and probably last dump I've been given 2 of those cards:
I've tried to hook it up but as video card won't work (probably because the ram sockets are not populated), it also takes the control of floppy drive and the hard drive.
Is it a all in one card?
Why should I prefer it over an isa vga and a separate super i\o controller?
Why? it uses only one ISA slot.
and the VGA does appear to have memory, those 4 chips above the square chip look like memory to me.
now why the vga does not work is anyone's guess. Could be the jumper Envga is in the wrong place.
edit: and if you can, dump the bios eproms.
Right to repair is fundamental. You own it, you're allowed to fix it.
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
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https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/Serial_port
It looks like it already has 512K of VRAM so it should work. You might try re-seating the two video BIOS chips. It looks like you also have two enable VGA jumpers but no documentation to know how to set it.
As the VGA chip is completely blank, I guess you don't know what kind of video card it is.
I could see preferring it if you're trying to jam one of those really small 386DX-40 boards into a MicroATX case (requires drilling) and only have four slots to work with.
I took the other card, the vga chip is an ATI 28800-5.
There are 2 jumpers with envga, one is labelled j11 while the other is near the lowest memory socket, they both need to be switched to make the vga enabled, it has 512kb of video memory as suggested.
I also took off the jumpers the hdd enable and that made the super i\o card to take back the control for the CF card, while despite I switched side J3 (fdd en) it spins but I get a: error during post.
Here is another picture that shows the jumper description (I noticed they were not visible in the other picture:
I'm missing something here... according to the jumpers there should be 3 com ports and 2 printer ports? There are no connectors for them...
Edit: any tool to dump the bios eproms?
Really there is no documentation about this card?
with all three serial jumpers set the same does the computer report 3 serial ports ? ie io ports 3f8, 2e8, 3e8 in use .
The amount of line drivers/receivers would indicate 2 serial ports. (ds1489, sn75188) i'm guessing the acer m5105 only does 2 serial ports normally, so no idea where the third one is coming from.
CN4 should be a serial port I think, and CN3 a game port.
yeah the serial is odd. linedrivers suggest at least 2, yet connectors only allow one.
an idea would be that the jumpers are to set the address of the only com port, ie 1st, 2nd or 3rd port in the machine. similar idea for the printer port. ie 3BC or 378
edit: just noticed, the vga has a little eeprom to store some settings. just an fyi.
edit2 : looking at an IO card with the m5105, the address settings for the lpt port seems to require only two jumpers, and serial uses three, no five. ugh. though likely three is enough. 😀
still leaves me wondering where the connector for the second port would be.
edit3: forgot to mention, given the line drivers/receivers you could use a multimeter and do a continuity test to figure out where the serial input/outputs are connected, if anywhere.
Right to repair is fundamental. You own it, you're allowed to fix it.
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Do not ask Why !
https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/Serial_port
It reports 2 com ports (2F8H and 3F8H) and 1 lpt port (378H).
I switched the jumpers of all com ports but checkit still shows the same result, 2 com ports and 1 lpt.
Just under the Acer chip there is another jumper which says: HW\SW and it's actually set for SW setting.
Just for the sake of knowledge.
Edit: about the multimeter, tell me where I should use the tips and Ill do it, you know i'm not good with those things 😁
What do you think 8/16 bit jumper is for? Isa bus?
Nemo1985 wrote on 2023-02-24, 22:37:What do you think 8/16 bit jumper is for? Isa bus?
That being next to the ENVGA probably switches the Vid portion to use 8bit or 16bit ISA, could be handy if you want VGA in a XT.
added: the Nmos chip is being used as the Ramdac sot of like the Music TR9C1710 used on this vid card with same ATI 28800-5: https://vgamuseum.ru/wp-content/gallery/ati-2 … i_28800-5_f.jpg
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
Good news everyone!
The guess about 8\16 was right, changing the jumper made the card use 8 bit isa.
That's not the end of the story
The hw\sw switch did the trick!
Switching from SW to HW made the card enable or disable the stuff according to the jumpers!
So the plot tickens there was probably a dos software to control the ports?
Any chance to find it?
As a bonus I also did some benchmark comparing my few isa cards:
Do you think more video memory could help the performance? I have some AAA1M304, but i'm not sure if they work, if I can try them with the tl866 I will give a try.
Nemo1985 wrote on 2023-02-25, 11:07:Do you think more video memory could help the performance? I have some AAA1M304, but i'm not sure if they work, if I can try them with the tl866 I will give a try.
Doubtful. On these pre-3D cards not having enough memory just restricts the resolution and color depth you can use. I know of two exceptions. I believe there are some later Cirrus Logic chips that can do 64-bit accesses instead of 32-bit accesses when fitted with 2MB. And I have some ISA CL-GD5428 cards that seem to need upgraded from 512K to 1MB in order for the full-blown accelerated Windows driver from Cirrus to work (otherwise the generic unaccelerated SVGA one worked with 512K).
