First post, by alexanrs
Hi guys!
Recently I bought this nifty compact 8088 motherboard. It supports 640KB of RAM (5 20/18-pin DIP sockets for 424256 or 421000 DRAM ICs), 8 8-bit ISA slots, and 10MHz turbo speed. It is a "Triple D International TD-20" from what I can check, and I couldn't find a lot of info about it online before it arrived. Here comes PC grandpa:
The seller claimed it was new, and I don't doubt it. The board looks pristine, like it was never used, and it even came with the manual. Here is a RAR file with the pictures I took of it (do not have access to a scanner right now). Haven't tested it yet, but I borrowed 256KB of DRAM from a Trident 8900 ISA card and plan on doing so when I have the time. I have a CGA card stored and that should be enough to see if it at least turns on. Am I right to assume that I now need the following?
- IDE controller
- Floppy controller
- Serial/Parallel ports
- Sound card (AdLib compatibility being a must)
Could I use a more modern 16-bit multi-IO card? I assume IDE wouldn't work, but is that just due to the IRQs newer cards allow being too high? Or would these controllers be unable to operate without the higher data bits? If its just the IRQ, would soldering a jumper wire from, for example, IRQ15 to IRQ 3 or 5, provided the card has all ISA contacts, allow me to use the IDE ports (+XTIDE on a network card)? Also, is there any value to hunting down some ancient SoundBlaster for this thing, or would any SBPro compatibile non-PnP card be just as good for compatibilit with anything a XT can throw at it (OPL3 = 100% OPL2 compatibility, SBPro compatibility = 100% compatibility with ancient SB1/2 standards, etc.)?
Thanks!
EDIT: Scanned the manual and created a proper PDF
EDIT: Added a dump of the original BIOS chip (a 16KB BIN file from the 27128 chip)
EDIT: It seems the BIOS supports HD floppies... at least i got a 1.44MB formatted floppy to boot successfuly