VOGONS


First post, by Bs0Dd

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I recently received a working Halikan LA3540 laptop.
There is almost no information about it on the Internet, so I had to figure it out myself.

Main characteristics:

  • Harris CS80C286-20 processor (and a place for the 80287)
  • C&T 82C2xx chipset (NEAT CS8221)
  • 1MB RAM (2 banks with 4x 256k chips - MB81C4256-80PSZ)
  • Stingray Rev 4+ VGA card (CL-GD610/620 chips with BT471KPJ50 RAMDAC and 256k VRAM - 8x D41464L-80 chips)
  • Epson SMD-300 FDD (1.44MB 3.5")
  • Conner CP3000 HDD (41MB IDE, Type 42)
  • 2x COM (DB9 and proprietary), 1x LPT, Keyboard connector (PS/2?), VGA out
  • ISA16 and ISA8 slots (the NE1000 network card is very useful here!)
  • Grayscale VGA LCD

Here AMI BIOS with XCMOS is used, but in ROM there is only the main CMOS setup and the DIAGS utility.
So for XCMOS setup (and to fix the "XCMOS checksum failure" error) you can use NEAT QUICKSET or SETNEAT: https://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/neat_chipset.php

For the Stingray VGA (mine has BIOS v3.02) card there are CLUtils: https://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/Manufacturer … gic/clgd610.php

But there is a problem with this VGA card when using external monitor via VGA out.
Some colors seems to be shown incorrectly.

There are correct colors (XT 5160 with Oak OTIVGA 067):

Photos (XT VGA)

pUanhz4.jpeg lwM8cxx.jpeg

And the same tests with Stingray and grayscale LCD:

Photos (Stingray LCD)

BCz5cy1.jpeg 9Y7xdCI.jpeg

But when I using "external display mode", there are problems with some light colors:

Photos (Stingray VGA)

Ub4BSie.jpeg h0mPTaT.jpeg

You may notice that, for example, the light gray color (in the cga palette) is somehow indistinguishable from white (which already creates problems).
Some bright shades look the same or are completely white.

What could be the reason? RAMDAC?

I also noticed that there is a set of jumpers near RAMDAC, but their purpose is unknown to me and I am not sure if this is related to the video.

Photo

JT9lzej.jpeg

Reply 1 of 1, by Bs0Dd

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Well... It's time to answer my own question.

There is a BT471KPJ50 RAMDAC.

And it uses an external Voltage Reference - there it's a LM385.

LM385

g3ABI0d.jpeg

Normally, it must be "configured" as a 1.2V reference.

JkmgspO.png

But it turned out that it's configured as 2.0V here!
So the VGA signal is overvoltaged, of course.

Instead of changing LM's mode, there is a simpler way:

dbKlOpu.png

By changing the RSET resistor (R46 here), it can be adjusted to match the 2.0V reference.
The most optimal was 200 Ohms instead of 130.

Replaced

nC5lu9V.jpeg

So now the colors look like they should be!

After replace

f2nsb8g.jpeg rk4GMGb.jpeg

Don't know if it's a mistake in the circuit or in the assembly, but at least this way you can easily return everything to normal if someone suddenly has a similar laptop suffering from the same problem.