VOGONS


Reply 21 of 58, by MrSmiley381

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nztdm wrote:
There is this PS/2 to XT Keyboard Converter that I build. https://monotech.fwscart.com/PS2_to_XT_Keyboa … 4_19714002.aspx Out of […]
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There is this PS/2 to XT Keyboard Converter that I build.
https://monotech.fwscart.com/PS2_to_XT_Keyboa … 4_19714002.aspx
Out of stock until I get around to drilling the enclosures for the next batch.

I do plan on a PS/2 to Serial Mouse converter box at some stage, that can optionally be mounted inside a PC.

That's actually one of the parts I ordered from you! Happy to say it's been perfectly reliable with my Lexmark era Model M. In fact, I've had zero issues with it. That's infinitely fewer issues I've had compared with any PS/2 to USB adapter I've used. The EternalCRT and XT-IDE cards have been super useful as well. The DeluxeFloppy was serving me fairly well, but then I got something extra silly from the XT era to replace it. I'll have to show it off soon 😜

I spend my days fighting with clunky software so I can afford to spend my evenings fighting with clunky hardware.

Reply 22 of 58, by nztdm

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MrSmiley381 wrote:
nztdm wrote:
There is this PS/2 to XT Keyboard Converter that I build. https://monotech.fwscart.com/PS2_to_XT_Keyboa … 4_19714002.aspx Out of […]
Show full quote

There is this PS/2 to XT Keyboard Converter that I build.
https://monotech.fwscart.com/PS2_to_XT_Keyboa … 4_19714002.aspx
Out of stock until I get around to drilling the enclosures for the next batch.

I do plan on a PS/2 to Serial Mouse converter box at some stage, that can optionally be mounted inside a PC.

That's actually one of the parts I ordered from you! Happy to say it's been perfectly reliable with my Lexmark era Model M. In fact, I've had zero issues with it. That's infinitely fewer issues I've had compared with any PS/2 to USB adapter I've used. The EternalCRT and XT-IDE cards have been super useful as well. The DeluxeFloppy was serving me fairly well, but then I got something extra silly from the XT era to replace it. I'll have to show it off soon 😜

Glad to hear all the goods are serving you well! 😀

Reply 23 of 58, by BloodyCactus

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Id rather see far less noise on the isa bus / power rails. maybe next revision.

--/\-[ Stu : Bloody Cactus :: [ https://bloodycactus.com :: http://kråketær.com ]-/\--

Reply 24 of 58, by nztdm

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BloodyCactus wrote:

Id rather see far less noise on the isa bus / power rails. maybe next revision.

What do you mean? I haven't taken any readings for this revision. The board has gone to 4 layers with separate GND and VCC layers.

Reply 25 of 58, by BloodyCactus

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ah I was thinking the revision with the issues I guess. 4 layers with gnd/vcc will totally remove a lot of that! nice.

--/\-[ Stu : Bloody Cactus :: [ https://bloodycactus.com :: http://kråketær.com ]-/\--

Reply 27 of 58, by mothergoose729

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I got my board in yesterday 😁. Just getting setup now, thought I would share some pictures. I ended up getting the full tricked out version with 512kb of VRAM and the 8087 math coprocessor.

IMG-20190705-152550.jpg

It arrived in an anti static bag, sandwiched under a thick layer of styrofoam and cardboard. When I opened it up it smelled like new electronics 😎 I love that smell, beats the new car scent any day. The charcoal PCB is just gorgeous.

For size comparison, a full atx 1156 board on the right, and an AT socket 7 board on the left

IMG-20190705-152627.jpg

First thing I did was boot on an anti static bag with an ATX psu I had laying around. As it comes, it is fully ready to go for playing very early DOS games. All I had to do was add a power supply and then turn it on with the power switch build into the board.

IMG-20190705-171415.jpg

The board has a CF Card activity LED, a power LED, and LEDs for 5v, 12v, and 3v power. When I turned it on, it plays a little jingle and then goes into a RAM check.

Here I am running Lemming in VGA mode

IMG-20190705-171441.jpg

I assembled it in a Thermaltake V100 case, with an ESS 1688f sound card, a gotek floppy emulator, and an IDE DVD Drive. The IDE controller on the ESS card almost certainly won't work, but I should be able to get sound out of it once I install and configure the drivers.

IMG-20190706-193214.jpg

IMG-20190706-193043.jpg

Still getting acquainted with the board and setting everything up. I need to get some PCI covers, more zip ties, a molex to 3 pin fan adapter for my exhaust fan, and a few other odds and ends. I plan on adding a 3Com networking card, an IDE controller, as well as a parallel port expansion card.

I am really happy so far 😀. Before I got this I was thinking about buying a Tandy 1000 or IBM XT used on ebay; that would have cost me a lot more money and I probably would have had to repair or replace several components on the board. This thing is pretty much plug and play. I am looking forward to messing around with it some more, on my journey to build my "ultimate" IBM XT compatible machine 🤣 .

Reply 28 of 58, by nztdm

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mothergoose729 wrote:

I got my board in yesterday 😁. Just getting setup now, thought I would share some pictures. I ended up getting the full tricked out version with 512kb of VRAM and the 8087 math coprocessor.

I am very happy to hear you like it!
That looks nice in that case.

Some tips:
There is no 3V on this board. The LEDs are for 5VSB, 5V, 12V, -12V, -5V, CF activity, and Bus Activity.

Use the PSU fan as exhaust. This system uses such little power, you won't need another fan.

The IDE interface on the ES1688 is likely hardwired at port 170. If so, you can use it for a CF card only, in a CF-IDE adapter. You will need to add a second controller to the XT-IDE BIOS. The controller you'd use is "16-bit interface in 8-bit mode".

To alter the XT-IDE BIOS, you should first configure it with DOSBOX on your main PC.
XT-CF at 300h, 16-bit-in-8-bit-mode at 170h. Use ide_xtpl.bin for better performance, but requires NEC V20.

You must then use a hex editor to put the 16K XT-IDE image into the 128K ROM image at the very start, overwriting the existing XT-IDE BIOS.
Then program with a universal programmer such as TL-866 II Plus. The hardware is on the NuXT to write from within DOS, but I've yet to get the software working to do that.
There is also a later System BIOS that Sergey just released that adds support to always start in 9.55MHz mode, so you don't have to press Ctrl Alt + on every boot.
If you'd like a pre-configured updated image, and you own a universal programmer, I can supply one.

Without a universal programmer, you can use most network cards with a 32-pin ROM socket to write this chip. Use FLASHROM for Linux or DOS. I find 3com PCI cards work great as ROM flashers.

Cheers
JD

Last edited by nztdm on 2019-07-07, 04:25. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 29 of 58, by mothergoose729

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nztdm wrote:

Without a universal programmer, you can use most network cards with a 32-pin ROM socket to write this chip. Use FLASHROM for Linux or DOS. I find 3com PCI cards work great as ROM flashers.

Cheers
JD

Thanks for the tips 😀. I know that fan isn't needed, but I am going to run it anyway 🤣

I am not planning on adding a second hard drive, just an optical drive. I figured the IDE controller on the ESS card probably wasn't going to work for that. I was thinking about getting the IDE controller on your website as some point for the optical drive. Would that require any edits to the ROM image to get working?

Reply 30 of 58, by nztdm

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mothergoose729 wrote:

I am not planning on adding a second hard drive, just an optical drive. I figured the IDE controller on the ESS card probably wasn't going to work for that. I was planning on get the IDE controller on your website as some point for the optical drive. Would that require an edits to the ROM image as well?

You can't use an IDE optical drive, as this needs a real 16-bit IDE interface.
You need to use an optical drive that has an 8-bit interface, such as parallel port, SCSI, or an 8-bit proprietary sound card CD-ROM interface, if there is one.
Optical drives are a bit new for for such a system, and wouldn't be of much use. A 5.25" floppy drive may suit your front bay better.

Reply 31 of 58, by mothergoose729

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nztdm wrote:
You can't use an IDE optical drive, as this needs a real 16-bit IDE interface. You need to use an optical drive that has an 8-bi […]
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mothergoose729 wrote:

I am not planning on adding a second hard drive, just an optical drive. I figured the IDE controller on the ESS card probably wasn't going to work for that. I was planning on get the IDE controller on your website as some point for the optical drive. Would that require an edits to the ROM image as well?

You can't use an IDE optical drive, as this needs a real 16-bit IDE interface.
You need to use an optical drive that has an 8-bit interface, such as parallel port, SCSI, or an 8-bit proprietary sound card CD-ROM interface, if there is one.
Optical drives are a bit new for for such a system, and wouldn't be of much use. A 5.25" floppy drive may suit your front bay better.

I see, thanks. I need to do more research.

I know that optical drives on an IBM XT doesn't make a lot of sense, I just think it would be fun to see if I can get it to work 🤣

Reply 33 of 58, by nztdm

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I've written a small NuXT user manual. Some of the info is redundant as it's on the PCB too, but it's clearer in the manual.

https://github.com/monotech/NuXT/blob/master/ … er%20Manual.pdf

Feel free to let me know if there's any mistakes or things you think should be added.

Cheers

Reply 34 of 58, by mothergoose729

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nztdm wrote:
I've written a small NuXT user manual. Some of the info is redundant as it's on the PCB too, but it's clearer in the manual. […]
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I've written a small NuXT user manual. Some of the info is redundant as it's on the PCB too, but it's clearer in the manual.

https://github.com/monotech/NuXT/blob/master/ … er%20Manual.pdf

Feel free to let me know if there's any mistakes or things you think should be added.

Cheers

This is super helpful, thank you for including this! I had no idea that that you could switch to 7mhz with a different hotkey, or that I needed to install drivers to better utilize the upper memory. I also didn't realize that some video modes on the trident require a driver in order to work. This might explain why I have seen a few NMI errors when trying to run some of my oldest DOS games.

Quick question, the switches for controlling the upper memory banks are all turned off by default. Is there a reason for that? With the 512k of VGA memory, I can turn on up to 4 banks for 128k of additional memory, or am I able to turn on all six provided I don't add any ISA cards that have their own memory banks?

Reply 35 of 58, by nztdm

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If you look at the Upper Memory Map in the manual, VGA RAM isn't there. Only the VGA BIOS is there, which shares the same area as UMB switch 1.
So if you have no other cards installed that have a BIOS extension or use upper memory, you can turn on switches 2 through 6. You can then configure it with the UMB DOS Config oage.

Could you give me an example of a few games that cause the NMI issue? That shouldn't happen due to lack of a driver for switching modes. Display drivers in DOS don't work as they do in Windows. It isn't loaded in DOS, but is written for a specific application. For example, you can have an AutoCAD driver or a Windows 3.0 driver.

Reply 36 of 58, by mothergoose729

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nztdm wrote:

If you look at the Upper Memory Map in the manual, VGA RAM isn't there. Only the VGA BIOS is there, which shares the same area as UMB switch 1.
So if you have no other cards installed that have a BIOS extension or use upper memory, you can turn on switches 2 through 6. You can then configure it with the UMB DOS Config oage.

Could you give me an example of a few games that cause the NMI issue? That shouldn't happen due to lack of a driver for switching modes. Display drivers in DOS don't work as they do in Windows. It isn't loaded in DOS, but is written for a specific application. For example, you can have an AutoCAD driver or a Windows 3.0 driver.

Ah, I understand now. So for example if I move my sound card driver into upper memory, I'll want to disable the UMB switch that corresponds to those address so as not to get a resource conflict. The documentation is helping me out a lot.

I'll put more effort into configuring my machine and see if the problem goes away on it's own. The problem may resolve its self. If not, I'll send you a PM with what I am seeing. Thank you.

Reply 37 of 58, by nztdm

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Hello

The only things that can conflict in the upper memory area is device RAM such as EMS cards or network cards, and ROMs.
The RAM in the upper memory area you've allocated, is there for you to use. Put your sound driver there (do you need a sound driver?).
Note how I say "the RAM in the upper memory area".

Cheers

Reply 38 of 58, by matze79

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If you need a mouse converter you can use this one:

https://github.com/matze79/PS2-Adapter

Its a project running since 2015 and has made a bit of progress.
Its running very well.

Also supports 19200 Baud mode in DOS to speed up Mouse trough KVM (Lag reduction)

PS/2 to Microsoft Serialmouse Adapter Converter / Updated First Post / Firmware Update added

there is also a updated version but i had no time to build a test pcb yet.

https://www.retrokits.de - blog, retro projects, hdd clicker, diy soundcards etc
https://www.retroianer.de - german retro computer board

Reply 39 of 58, by nztdm

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matze79 wrote:
If you need a mouse converter you can use this one: […]
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If you need a mouse converter you can use this one:

https://github.com/matze79/PS2-Adapter

Its a project running since 2015 and has made a bit of progress.
Its running very well.

Also supports 19200 Baud mode in DOS to speed up Mouse trough KVM (Lag reduction)

PS/2 to Microsoft Serialmouse Adapter Converter / Updated First Post / Firmware Update added

there is also a updated version but i had no time to build a test pcb yet.

Ahh yes I have seen this project before. I may implement it in a later version.
Thanks for the awesome work!

I'd likely use a 16C552 dual UART + parallel port, or combine that + IDE + floppy with an SMSC multi-I/O chip.
One serial port would be used for the PS/2 mouse converter.
It would be nice to have a stacked dual mini-din-6 connector, but I can't find them.
I'd have the parallel port as a header, as I am unable to find raised DB-25 connectors for a reasonable price.
I could possibly use a panel-mount DB-25 connector on a vertical daughterboard, or mounted to a 3d-printed I/O shield which would mount to the motherboard.