eisapc wrote on 2020-01-28, 10:26:

Wide SCSI controllers for EISA are hard to find. Best fit would be the Compaq SMART 2/E RAID Controller, while the Adaptec 2740W […]
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Wide SCSI controllers for EISA are hard to find. Best fit would be the Compaq SMART 2/E RAID Controller, while the Adaptec 2740W might be the easiest to find.
There is a wide SCSI EISA availiable from Compaq as well (PN 199633-001) based on the NCR 825 (which is more common than the onboard NCR 710).
https://651c328d1de292af2c4b-28651361a0deac96 … /199633-001.jpg
Other manufacturers I had good experience with are DPT and ICP Vortex, both manufacturers of RAID and caching SCSI controllers were bought by Adaptec meanwhile.
http://download.adaptec.com/pdfs/smartraid4.pdf (Raid and Cache are optional with the DPT controllers)
Wide SCSI controllers for EISA are rare due to the fact it was new when EISA was common and most EISA systems stuck on fast SCSI at this time.
eisapc

Thank you for answering!
The Compaq SMART 2/E RAID seems to be available under HP brand:
https://www.harddrivesdirect.com/product_info … ducts_id=141284
HP 194751-001. Is it the correct number?
Are you sure that it is supported inside the Compaq Prosignia Server?
Actually I find the idea to have a hardware raid controller in a 486 PC pretty cool, also I like the idea of using original Compaq/HP parts.
On the negative side, I guess I must use then Windows NT 4.0 instead of Windows 98SE, which is a disadvantage for the possibility to run some games.
I don't think there will be Windows 98 drivers for this controller.

I don't understand your picture of the 199633-001, you are referring to the 199634-001, that I already mentioned in my previous posting, am I correct?

EDIT:
And yes, the PM3332UW would be super cool, too, it has Windows 95 drivers, so I am 99%sure it will run under Windows 98, thx for the link to the smartarray iv!

well 1st there is no such thing as compaq/hp parts during this time. EISA time it was just compaq. HP bought compaq in 2002 long long long after this server and this server was no longer even supported then. So there is no such thing as HP/Compaq as it refers to any part that goes to this time period.

Warlord wrote on 2020-01-28, 21:33:

well 1st there is no such thing as compaq/hp parts during this time. EISA time it was just compaq. HP bought compaq in 2002 long long long after this server and this server was no longer even supported then. So there is no such thing as HP/Compaq as it refers to any part that goes to this time period.

Sure.
But I assume that the HP Smart Array 2/E is the same as the Compaq Smart Array 2/E (so only re-branded, and later manufactored). Anybody knows, if that is right?

CoffeeOne wrote on 2019-12-27, 12:12:

An EISA graphics card that can do 1600x1200 will be hard to find. I am not even sure, if such a card exists.
I have the compaq 1024/E card inside (1MB VRAM as far as I know), it can do 1024x768 256 colours with 60Hz.
In my second 486er EISA machine, I have a ATI Graphics Ultra Pro 2MB VRAM, it can do 1280x1024 256 colours 60Hz. These cards are rare, I was lucky to get one 😀

I have a Supermac Spectrum/24. It has 3MB VRAM. I think it only does true colour (24 bit) modes, and the highest resolution I have tried is an intermediate one between 1024x768 and 1280x1024. It looks like it might accept a memory expansion module, but I haven't ever seen one for sale. Perhaps it can do 1600x1200 if you can find it.
There's the ELSA Winner 2000 dualbus card. That can definitely do 1600x1200, though I think at just 256 colours.
There were also TIGA cards made for EISA bus which could accept large amounts of memory. I'm sure some of those can handle 1600x1200.

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2020-01-29, 04:08:

I have a Supermac Spectrum/24. It has 3MB VRAM. I think it only does true colour (24 bit) modes, and the highest resolution I ha […]
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CoffeeOne wrote on 2019-12-27, 12:12:

An EISA graphics card that can do 1600x1200 will be hard to find. I am not even sure, if such a card exists.
I have the compaq 1024/E card inside (1MB VRAM as far as I know), it can do 1024x768 256 colours with 60Hz.
In my second 486er EISA machine, I have a ATI Graphics Ultra Pro 2MB VRAM, it can do 1280x1024 256 colours 60Hz. These cards are rare, I was lucky to get one 😀

I have a Supermac Spectrum/24. It has 3MB VRAM. I think it only does true colour (24 bit) modes, and the highest resolution I have tried is an intermediate one between 1024x768 and 1280x1024. It looks like it might accept a memory expansion module, but I haven't ever seen one for sale. Perhaps it can do 1600x1200 if you can find it.
There's the ELSA Winner 2000 dualbus card. That can definitely do 1600x1200, though I think at just 256 colours.
There were also TIGA cards made for EISA bus which could accept large amounts of memory. I'm sure some of those can handle 1600x1200.

My shopping list just got a bit longer...

Not much has been done since my last post. Found a 2.1gb harddrive that i hope will work.

This thing looks like a precursor to ATX standard....

Not sure about the SMART 2/E, but I can confirm the SMART working in the Prosignia and due to the fact it based on the same technology it is most probably supported.
Missing W9x drivers for these controllers are definitely an issue. Did not think about tis due to the fact mine are running Netware and NT.

199633-001 and 199634-001 is probably the same board, or just different revisions.
This board is still a good choice if you do not intend to build a RAID system.

High end video for EISA is much more hard to find, due to the fact EISA was mainly used for server systems.
Compaq QVision and ELSA Winner are the only common EISA graphic boards known to me.
The most other cards that can be found are TIGA boards made for CAD applications, delivering only poor windows acceleration.
Windows accelerators came up mostly during the following VLB era.
So an EISA/VL board is the best choice for an EISA gaming system.
eisapc

So have you tested TIGA under Windows? My understanding is that it shouldn't be worse than 8514/A, which was it's main competitor. Apparently Hercules' main target market for their TIGA cards were Windows users. I've never owned a TIGA card, so I wonder if there is much variation in performance between different models.

Thinking about buying one, it's on my eBay watchlist. Does it have L2 support?

Nitroraptor53 wrote on 2020-02-24, 18:16:

Thinking about buying one, it's on my eBay watchlist. Does it have L2 support?

From what I can see it seems to have 256k L2 cache installed.

Progress is slow on this computer, but I have finally found a SCSI-cable that is long enough to hook up two harddrives and the CD-rom.

At the moment I'm stuck with a network card that doesn't want to talk to other computers. I think it might be a bit shy or have some kind of conflict with its other card-buddys in the case... or a simple IRQ-collission. Some day that will be solved 😀

Got some work done today and found some new problems!

First of all, the networking card was a simple IRQ conflict, it didn't like sharing IRQ with the SCSI-card. After running the config utility, 3c5x9cfg.exe and changing to IRQ 10 everything worked great and I could connect to my other computers, for example my virtual machine that runs Windows 3.11.

One problem solved, one new appeared when I installed my sound card, a Sound Blaster 32 PnP (ct3670) that has been with me since my first 386. It has been used in a lot of computers without any problems until now... The Prosignia finds the card in the bios/setup utility and from what I can see there it gets assigned the correct IRQs and memory addresses. The installation program (from the original CD) for has other opinions, it can't find it at all. Now I'm stuck in the beginning of the installation where the program tries to find the card but it can't find it any of the memory addresses.
The configuration should be memory address 220 and 330, irq 5 and dma 1 and 5.

Without the card installed all the resources is free so I can't see any reason why there would be any problems. I tried with another identical sound card and got the same error so the next thing to try now is to test them in another computer and see what happens. All suggestions for getting this to work is appreciated 😀

OSkar000 wrote on 2020-02-27, 17:57:

Got some work done today and found some new problems! […]
Show full quote

Got some work done today and found some new problems!

First of all, the networking card was a simple IRQ conflict, it didn't like sharing IRQ with the SCSI-card. After running the config utility, 3c5x9cfg.exe and changing to IRQ 10 everything worked great and I could connect to my other computers, for example my virtual machine that runs Windows 3.11.

One problem solved, one new appeared when I installed my sound card, a Sound Blaster 32 PnP (ct3670) that has been with me since my first 386. It has been used in a lot of computers without any problems until now... The Prosignia finds the card in the bios/setup utility and from what I can see there it gets assigned the correct IRQs and memory addresses. The installation program (from the original CD) for has other opinions, it can't find it at all. Now I'm stuck in the beginning of the installation where the program tries to find the card but it can't find it any of the memory addresses.
The configuration should be memory address 220 and 330, irq 5 and dma 1 and 5.

Without the card installed all the resources is free so I can't see any reason why there would be any problems. I tried with another identical sound card and got the same error so the next thing to try now is to test them in another computer and see what happens. All suggestions for getting this to work is appreciated 😀

1) I recommended to put the 3Com 3C509 into EISA mode, then it will be fully controlled via ECU.
2) Do you use an EISA configuration file for the sound blaster 32?

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2020-01-29, 10:31:

So have you tested TIGA under Windows? My understanding is that it shouldn't be worse than 8514/A, which was it's main competitor. Apparently Hercules' main target market for their TIGA cards were Windows users. I've never owned a TIGA card, so I wonder if there is much variation in performance between different models.

The bottleneck of 8514/A was the interlaced display mode causing heavy flickering if not used with the original IBM 8514 Monitor.
The problem was overcome with 8514/A clones with C&T chipset like the ELSA Winner 1280

I tested several TIGA boards under Windows. Even with Windows drivers availiable main target of TIGA was CAD like Autocad or EAGLE, but these needed application specific drivers.
Main profit of the TIGA Win drivers is the higher screen resolution and colour depth, acceleration was not the main focus.
For this reason a second focus for TIGA might have been DTP.
I can try to do a comparision of different TIGA boards I own if I find the time (and the boards) someday.
Possible participants are:
Texas Intruments TIGA Star
SPEA FGA
MiroTiger
Hercules Graphic Station
ELSA Gemini
Matrox PG1281

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2020-01-29, 10:31:

So have you tested TIGA under Windows? My understanding is that it shouldn't be worse than 8514/A, which was it's main competitor. Apparently Hercules' main target market for their TIGA cards were Windows users. I've never owned a TIGA card, so I wonder if there is much variation in performance between different models.

I'm speaking under correction, but the main idea of TIGA was not speed, it was power/performance.
Thanks to a truely programmable graphics processor, the TIGA was able to perform heavy tasks, such as font rendering, form filling, scaling graphics primitives etc.
This smartness of the card made it possible that a weak PC could do awesome graphical stunts.
That's in contrast to the later Windows accelerator cards. They were dumb, but could do simple tasks very quick - provided that the PC had enough power
to send all the commands over to the card fast enough.
Or let's put it this way: The TIGA was akin to the shader unit concept of modern GPUs. The TIGA card was able to do run more or less complex "programs" onboard.

CoffeeOne wrote on 2020-02-27, 21:24:

OSkar000 wrote on 2020-02-27, 17:57:

Got some work done today and found some new problems! […]
Show full quote

Got some work done today and found some new problems!

First of all, the networking card was a simple IRQ conflict, it didn't like sharing IRQ with the SCSI-card. After running the config utility, 3c5x9cfg.exe and changing to IRQ 10 everything worked great and I could connect to my other computers, for example my virtual machine that runs Windows 3.11.

One problem solved, one new appeared when I installed my sound card, a Sound Blaster 32 PnP (ct3670) that has been with me since my first 386. It has been used in a lot of computers without any problems until now... The Prosignia finds the card in the bios/setup utility and from what I can see there it gets assigned the correct IRQs and memory addresses. The installation program (from the original CD) for has other opinions, it can't find it at all. Now I'm stuck in the beginning of the installation where the program tries to find the card but it can't find it any of the memory addresses.
The configuration should be memory address 220 and 330, irq 5 and dma 1 and 5.

Without the card installed all the resources is free so I can't see any reason why there would be any problems. I tried with another identical sound card and got the same error so the next thing to try now is to test them in another computer and see what happens. All suggestions for getting this to work is appreciated 😀

1) I recommended to put the 3Com 3C509 into EISA mode, then it will be fully controlled via ECU.
2) Do you use an EISA configuration file for the sound blaster 32?

I changed the 3Com-card to use EISA-mode and that seems to work just fine.

I don't have any configuration file for the SB32 but it seems like the bios/setup-utility sets all resources correct. But the installation program for the drivers can't find the card so I'm a bit stuck here.

OSkar000 wrote on 2020-03-21, 11:03:

CoffeeOne wrote on 2020-02-27, 21:24:

OSkar000 wrote on 2020-02-27, 17:57:

Got some work done today and found some new problems! […]
Show full quote

Got some work done today and found some new problems!

First of all, the networking card was a simple IRQ conflict, it didn't like sharing IRQ with the SCSI-card. After running the config utility, 3c5x9cfg.exe and changing to IRQ 10 everything worked great and I could connect to my other computers, for example my virtual machine that runs Windows 3.11.

One problem solved, one new appeared when I installed my sound card, a Sound Blaster 32 PnP (ct3670) that has been with me since my first 386. It has been used in a lot of computers without any problems until now... The Prosignia finds the card in the bios/setup utility and from what I can see there it gets assigned the correct IRQs and memory addresses. The installation program (from the original CD) for has other opinions, it can't find it at all. Now I'm stuck in the beginning of the installation where the program tries to find the card but it can't find it any of the memory addresses.
The configuration should be memory address 220 and 330, irq 5 and dma 1 and 5.

Without the card installed all the resources is free so I can't see any reason why there would be any problems. I tried with another identical sound card and got the same error so the next thing to try now is to test them in another computer and see what happens. All suggestions for getting this to work is appreciated 😀

1) I recommended to put the 3Com 3C509 into EISA mode, then it will be fully controlled via ECU.
2) Do you use an EISA configuration file for the sound blaster 32?

I changed the 3Com-card to use EISA-mode and that seems to work just fine.

I don't have any configuration file for the SB32 but it seems like the bios/setup-utility sets all resources correct. But the installation program for the drivers can't find the card so I'm a bit stuck here.

Hi,

The screenshots look good. You may want to disable the IDE port via ECU, too, gives you one more free IRQ when you have nothing connected as in the picture.
But I don't think that has something to do with your sound card driver problem. I am not a specialist, but I am sure others can help.

Please, give more details.
What OS do you run now? MS-DOS?
What installation program?

I know it's bit time consuming, but consider installing Win9x (if possible), because all your hardware should be autodetected, then you would be sure, that all the components work together well. But for that you should have at least a 66MHz cpu (5 volts variant needed) available, with a DX-33 it would be a pain in the ...

@OSkar000

For the SB32 (in DOS), you may try Unisound to check if it detects your card (if it does, the card will be initialized):
UNISOUND - Universal ISA PnP Sound Card Driver for DOS v0.81b

JazeFox wrote on 2020-03-21, 15:41:

@OSkar000

For the SB32 (in DOS), you may try Unisound to check if it detects your card (if it does, the card will be initialized):
UNISOUND - Universal ISA PnP Sound Card Driver for DOS v0.81b

I did a quick test and after running Unisound it seems to work. I could install the drivers and software.

However... i have to run Unisound in autoexec.bat before the soundblaster-drivers and programs are loaded... so there is some more testing left.

OSkar000 wrote on 2020-03-22, 12:09:

I did a quick test and after running Unisound it seems to work. I could install the drivers and software.
However... i have to run Unisound in autoexec.bat before the soundblaster-drivers and programs are loaded... so there is some more testing left.

For DOS: Unisound alone does almost everything the official drivers do, so you don't need them at all, you can remove them from your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. With one exception: soundfonts management. If you need to load a soundfont bank to AWE RAM with MPU emulation, you'll need to add AWEUTIL /GM (or whatever MIDI option you need) from official drivers.
Only one requirement in AUTOEXEC.BAT: if you don't want the default values Uniound use for address, IRQ/DMA, etc... you'll need to put the BLASTER environment variable before Unisound in AUTOEXEC.BAT (example: SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 E620). Anyway, it is recommended to always set the variable, as some games require it.

Fow Windows 3.x: The same as with DOS, but in addition you must install windows drivers. It is possible that the installation would modify the config and autoexec aswell, but you can modify them later removing anything that is not needed.

CoffeeOne wrote on 2020-03-21, 15:17:

Hi, […]
Show full quote

OSkar000 wrote on 2020-03-21, 11:03:

CoffeeOne wrote on 2020-02-27, 21:24:

1) I recommended to put the 3Com 3C509 into EISA mode, then it will be fully controlled via ECU.
2) Do you use an EISA configuration file for the sound blaster 32?

I changed the 3Com-card to use EISA-mode and that seems to work just fine.

I don't have any configuration file for the SB32 but it seems like the bios/setup-utility sets all resources correct. But the installation program for the drivers can't find the card so I'm a bit stuck here.

Hi,

The screenshots look good. You may want to disable the IDE port via ECU, too, gives you one more free IRQ when you have nothing connected as in the picture.
But I don't think that has something to do with your sound card driver problem. I am not a specialist, but I am sure others can help.

Please, give more details.
What OS do you run now? MS-DOS?
What installation program?

I know it's bit time consuming, but consider installing Win9x (if possible), because all your hardware should be autodetected, then you would be sure, that all the components work together well. But for that you should have at least a 66MHz cpu (5 volts variant needed) available, with a DX-33 it would be a pain in the ...

OS = Dos 6.22 and WFW 3.11
The installation program I'm reffering to is the setup for the soundcard on the CD I got with it so it should be the original drivers from 1995.

Disabling the IDE-port on the card is on the list of things that I should do but I have to figure out how to do it first. As you say, at the moment its not a problem.

But at the moment it seems like the problem is solved, maybe not the most correct solution but it seems to work fine.

Windows 95A should run quite good on this computer, lots of memory and a "fast" hard drive makes big difference. I ran W95 on a 386DX/33 and 20mb ram for about two years before I got my first Penitum in 1998.

Another thing on the todo-list is to straighten out some pins on a 486 DX/2 66 Overdrive that I found in a box here. I will test it on another motherboard before I put it in the Prosignia since I'm not sure if its ok or not.

JazeFox wrote on 2020-03-22, 13:11:

For DOS: Unisound alone does almost everything the official drivers do, so you don't need them at all, you can remove them from […]
Show full quote

OSkar000 wrote on 2020-03-22, 12:09:

I did a quick test and after running Unisound it seems to work. I could install the drivers and software.
However... i have to run Unisound in autoexec.bat before the soundblaster-drivers and programs are loaded... so there is some more testing left.

For DOS: Unisound alone does almost everything the official drivers do, so you don't need them at all, you can remove them from your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. With one exception: soundfonts management. If you need to load a soundfont bank to AWE RAM with MPU emulation, you'll need to add AWEUTIL /GM (or whatever MIDI option you need) from official drivers.
Only one requirement in AUTOEXEC.BAT: if you don't want the default values Uniound use for address, IRQ/DMA, etc... you'll need to put the BLASTER environment variable before Unisound in AUTOEXEC.BAT (example: SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 E620). Anyway, it is recommended to always set the variable, as some games require it.

Fow Windows 3.x: The same as with DOS, but in addition you must install windows drivers. It is possible that the installation would modify the config and autoexec aswell, but you can modify them later removing anything that is not needed.

Thanks! This has helped me a lot!
I just made a really quick test earlier today so I still have lots of things to do before its done. And my config.sys / autoexec.bat is a total mess at the moment so lots of things has to be done there.

Next problem on the list... Drivers for the SCSI CD-ROM!