Hey,

I now bought the MS-98L9 V2.0, cause it was about 50€ cheaper than the CS620-H310.

The Chipset for the PCI-Slot 5 / the ISA bridge is a Fintek F85226AD:

First of all I'd like to test the ISA-Card I have, a SAC-201 for an HiLo All03 / Sunshine Expro-60 eprom progammer. It doesnt need DMA or IRQs, it's just pure I/O, there are dip switches to set the port on the card.

One last test with real hardware, an old igel thin client:

The card still works, at the moment it is set to 0x2D0:

On my VM host machine this port is free as I understand :

1cat /proc/ioports
20000-0cf7 : PCI Bus 0000:00
3  0000-001f : dma1
4  0020-0021 : pic1
5  0040-0043 : timer0
6  0050-0053 : timer1
7  0060-0060 : keyboard
8  0064-0064 : keyboard
9  0070-0071 : rtc_cmos
10    0070-0071 : rtc0
11  0080-008f : dma page reg
12  00a0-00a1 : pic2
13  00c0-00df : dma2
14  00f0-00ff : fpu
15    00f0-00f0 : PNP0C04:00
16  02e8-02ef : serial
17  02f8-02ff : serial
18  03e8-03ef : serial
19  03f8-03ff : serial

How can I connect this to a DOS VM running on linux now ?

I freshly installed Debian 11 as the MSI board doesnt come with a customized Ubuntu 16.04 Image as the CS620-Board does, see:
https://www.dfi.com/Uploads/DownloadCenter/16 … 4/DFI-CS620-ISA Card User Guide_1.1.pdf

I created a DOS machine directly via QEMU as virt-manager doesnt have the options for the ISA i/o ports from the document above. I guess this is their customizing.

1qemu-img create -f qcow msdos.disk 2G
2qemu-system-i386 -hda msdos.disk -m 64 -L . -fda dos622_1.img -boot a
3qemu-system-i386 -hda msdos.disk -m 64 -L . 

How can I add the i/o port from the host to the VM ? Does someone understand the QEMU documentation ?
https://qemu-project.gitlab.io/qemu/system/de … -emulation.html

Cheers,
Banane

Do virtual machines support passthrough of PCI and ISA slots?

Of PCI at least, this forum is full of examples.

The linked document for the other board even does it via virt-manager 😀.

I would really like to see some Freedos booting usb stick quick test with some PCI or ISA Dos sound card.. if at least one game would work it means that DMA is here..

I see no config options for ISA PnP in BIOS screenshots in manual, so this thing likely does not have ISA PnP support .

A baremetal test running DOS with a non PnP ISA card that requires DMA and an IRQ (making sure there are no IRQ conflicts with the gazillion serial ports that are integrated) would be a good test before trying to use PCI passthrough for a PCI to ISA bridge

Since ISA PNP is mostly a software solution, some PnP software should fix that.

easiest simple test for the isa would be inserting a gameport card/soundcard with gameport,
booting a Dos version, and reading out the ports in debug.
- i 200
- i 201
? 😀

Hi everyone, thanks for your answers.

@ruthan:
Step by step, I can do this test later 😀. For the Sound fraction here I already told it's a F85226AD. If you google for that string you find a manual for a WSB-BT CPU Card - https://www.contradata.it. There they say that neither DMA nor PnP are supported. But okay, I will test it later.

@darry: Thanks for the hint. Here is the ISA card I have working 'bare metal' on FreeDos with just the I/O Port (no pnp, no DMA, just I/O)

Before I continue with the DMA testing etc:
How can I forward an I/O port from a host to a QEMU VM just to get my use case here running ?

ruthan wrote on 2020-03-16, 16:39:

Well we would need some guinea pig.. to get one MB through some big company contacts and after that we can try to make some Vogons bulk order, if it would be good:)

If some reputable chinese brand were to decide to produce new 4004 to 486, s7/8 or slot they would sell even if asked to confirm a 10k preorder.
Retro fans would be enough to buy if the price is right.

Commenting on the board, many old industry machines still run on 286/386/486 machines. A new board as a replacement could be interesting.

Look over here - I am the guinea pig

banane wrote on 2021-09-19, 11:23:

Look over here - I am the guinea pig

Cuy ?

anyway.
Mention of gpu passthrough, pci passthrough, but IO ports... sigh, tends to lead to networking crud which is not applicable to this case.
I've been looking for several hours now and can't find it.
yes, it's something with virt-io and something with passthrough, and yes you need an IOMMU
but damned if I get some solid concrete examples of running just a portrange to a vm.

so either you'll need to create your own virtio passthrough device for the ISA part of the LPC device or ... beats me.

good luck !

edit: and oh yeah, offcourse you can passthrough a network card.
edit2: https://elinux.org/R-Car/IO-Virtualization

so either you'll need to create your own virtio passthrough device for the ISA part of the LPC device or ... beats me.

haha, thanks for sharing my experience 😀

Well, I think I do not really need to "passtrough" a single i/o address, I would also be fine with the full PCI-Bus or whatever is needed.
This should work, right? As baremetal DOS also sees the device then.

I must say I am a bit overwhelmed, cause I don't really understand what I connected to what with all that PCI-E/PCI/ISA-Bridges.

Here is what 'lscpi' give me. What device would you start with ? 😀

00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation H110 Chipset LPC/eSPI Controller [8086:a143] (rev 31)

this one, since the ISA bridge is , should be, connected to it.

Heck, it even says ISA bridge 😉

I did a passthrough of the whole IOMMU group the ISA bridge is in (see https://mathiashueber.com/windows-virtual-mac … through-ubuntu/).

Well, this forward the bridge I guess, but still I can not access it from within the machine.

What magic did the guys from DFI do for their CS620-H310 board ?

DFI provides a virtualization solution that new X86 platform can also use ISA device. CS620 provides a host image (Ubuntu), whi […]
Show full quote

DFI provides a virtualization solution that new X86 platform can also use ISA device.
CS620 provides a host image (Ubuntu), which includes hypervisor KVM and let user
install their legacy image. This document will guide user how to install legacy image
and configure ISA device setting.

Did you manage to find a download link for the host image for the dfi board ?

edit:
DFI SW package (With ISA support. Please contact DFI if need more information.)
I guess no link will be publicly available... sigh

Unfortunatly there is nothing to download, right. I found one of the names mentioned in the documentation at linkedin. He's from taiwan. I just wrote him via a contact request.

damn, i'm really clutching at straws here.

does anyone know how I could create a device on the host for the I/O port that I could pass to the VM? For example, this is how it works with /dev/parport0

banane wrote on 2021-09-20, 20:44:

Unfortunatly there is nothing to download, right. I found one of the names mentioned in the documentation at linkedin. He's from taiwan. I just wrote him via a contact request.

damn, i'm really clutching at straws here.

does anyone know how I could create a device on the host for the I/O port that I could pass to the VM? For example, this is how it works with /dev/parport0

yeah, that's definitly a straw, since the dfi board apparently uses a different chip 😀
though it might give some clues, as to how and what.

Just guessing here, if the dfi board uses the IT8888F (a 16yr old chip) (the fintek isn't that much younger)
but the it8888f is a pci device. Reminds me of the Via 82c586. While the fintek is an LPC device...
oh well, in the end it's probably going to be a software solution required thing.

weedeewee wrote on 2021-09-20, 21:13:

Just guessing here, if the dfi board uses the IT8888F (a 16yr old chip) (the fintek isn't that much younger)
but the it8888f is a pci device. Reminds me of the Via 82c586. While the fintek is an LPC device...
oh well, in the end it's probably going to be a software solution required thing.

The DFI board uses the IT8888G, IT8892E and the IT8893E.

IT8888G data sheet wrote:

ISA Interface − Supports full ISA compatible functions − Supports ISA at ¼ of PCI frequency − ISA Bus Master supported − […]
Show full quote

ISA Interface
− Supports full ISA compatible functions
− Supports ISA at ¼ of PCI frequency
− ISA Bus Master supported
− Supports 4 ISA slots

No idea though how this is to be understood.
Will see when I got Windows98 running on that machine. (Which would be easier if there were 512MB DDR3 modules... any idea whether there exists a supplier for such?)
My aim is to run this machine with Soundblaster AWE32.
If that works out then it might be cool to put in an i7-4790K (single core speed 4.4GHz), if the energy-saving i5-4670T which is currently installed does not manage to run Descent in max resolution with max effects without jerking.

Will see when I got Windows98 running on that machine. (Which would be easier if there were 512MB DDR3 modules... any idea whether there exists a supplier for such?)

Win98 is not big dead, its running on everything modern with at least one PCI slot, or PCI-E to PCI bridge.. I tried at least Z170, but newer HW will run too,
but Dos with sound is big deal.

So far best i saw working is Ivy / Sandy bridge (where is still right PCI DMA supporting chip) beside workstations x58/x79 so Haswell would be one step better.

I think you can use HIMEM to artificially limit how much high memory is available. I don't know this is carries through into Windows though.

You will have to load HIMEM in config.sys before Windows starts to prevent it from using its own HIMEM.SYS in the Windows directory.

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-09-20, 23:21:

I think you can use HIMEM to artificially limit how much high memory is available. I don't know this is carries through into Windows though.

You will have to load HIMEM in config.sys before Windows starts to prevent it from using its own HIMEM.SYS in the Windows directory.

I tried this with BS_RAM9X.EXE. But, for some reason the Windows install did not finish correctly on the DFI board with the smallest DDR3 module I currently have (2GB), it was not usable. It went down just the same way it did when I tried to install with anything more than 512MB, no matter which board/CPU, even with old Slot A Athlon or Pentium3.

There are some other utilities as well, for example vmm98sed.zip.
However, if I understand correctly, it needs to have Windows 98 already installed before adding that mod.

So I set up a pre-zeroed 120GB drive with Windows98s' DOS7 and the copied Windows98 CD on it, and currently am zipping it, which takes a while, as I forgot to multihread it 🙁

After that my next step is to try to install it from the HDD.
This to avoid CD driver problems and the annoying side effects of having installed MSCDEX active while Windows install.
I'll try installing it using an Asrock 939Dual-VSTA, for which I have a 512MB DIMM.
There is no support for its' ULI chipset in W98, so the installation will be as generic as possible, as I take care of disabling all onboard stuff except HDD.
After that I will install BS_RAM9X.EXE as well as the other mod, and hope Win98 will then work on the DFI when I put the HDD into that computer.

However, I have no real experience yet with running Win98 on systems >512MB. So I am glad about every advice.
After Win98 is up, I'll continue with installing some DOS games and look how they work. (Will report back)