Re: Amstrad PC2386 keyboard

Posted on 2020-06-04, 10:41

by

by Kubik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks! Actually, I found those links myself already. The mystery continues, because after taking the keyboard apart (mostly to clean it), it revealed the controller PCB is MK0006A - that corresponds to that PC2386 keyboard mentioned in the second of your links. The controller is exactly the same, …

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Amstrad PC2386 keyboard

Posted on 2020-06-03, 15:06

by

by Kubik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I recently bought PC2386 in a good shape, with keyboard and mouse, for I price I could not resist :) The keyboard was said not working, but I took my chances... and yes, the keyboard doesn't work. I know Amstrad used some special keyboard protocol in the past. But I assumed that was just the funny …

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Re: 1MB RAM in IBM PC-XT - JEDEC file for U44, anyone?

Posted on 2019-06-26, 09:41

by

by Kubik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks a lot, but I am fine. I have my (t)rusty ALL-11 that can burn pretty much everything, and I've got a handful of 16V8s salvaged from various boards.

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Re: FOREX 386 Cache board doesn't post

Posted on 2019-06-25, 09:18

by

by Kubik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Many boards come with electrolytic capacitors that simply dry out over time. Tantalum capacitors don't. They tend to short out as they age. I've had one board recently with one tantalum exploding on power on, and I had another board that didn't get out of reset because tantalum cap in the reset …

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Re: PC-XT: HD floppy and CF card on regular I/O card?

Posted on 2019-06-25, 09:10

by

by Kubik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

OK, so just if someone is interested. It turned out that most of my CF cards were formatted on 386 system using the native BIOS IDE support on the board - and that was somehow incompatible with the combination of XT-IDE and HD Floppy BIOS. I used Linux and dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc (or whatever …

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Re: 1MB RAM in IBM PC-XT - JEDEC file for U44, anyone?

Posted on 2019-06-25, 08:27

by

by Kubik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yep, I got it from there. Now I need to fix those 5160 boards I found and I'll give it a try 😀

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Re: 1MB RAM in IBM PC-XT - JEDEC file for U44, anyone?

Posted on 2019-06-24, 19:54

by

by Kubik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

OK, I found it - it's called U44V2M.ZIP

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Re: 1MB RAM in IBM PC-XT - JEDEC file for U44, anyone?

Posted on 2019-06-23, 19:47

by

by Kubik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Depends on how much can you use :) Typically, the safe bet is 128KB in segments D and E, but depending on the graphics card you have and other cards that may or may not have their option ROMs, you can map RAM to other segments that are not used. http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?62626-1M- …

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Re: ISA SCSI setups.

Posted on 2019-06-23, 19:10

by

by Kubik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, as long as you get all the terminators sorted out, it should work. With recent hard drives (e.g. SCA drive with corresponding adapter), you might get better performance off a SCSI drive as Adaptec ISA SCSI controllers are one of not so many controllers that actually supported ISA bus mastering …

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1MB RAM in IBM PC-XT - JEDEC file for U44, anyone?

Posted on 2019-06-23, 19:02

by

by Kubik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Folks, as far as I know (the information is floating around for years), it's possible to use 256kx1 chips in all banks of PC-XT mainboard, and after adding 74LS158 to the empty socket U84 and replacing PROM at U44 with a GAL, it's possible to have RAM mapped to UMB. I have seen the equations for the …

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PC-XT: HD floppy and CF card on regular I/O card?

Posted on 2019-06-22, 18:07

by

by Kubik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Folks, I had an idea of combining some HD floppy ROM with XT-IDE BIOS, putting that into an EPROM socked on a LAN card, and have both HD floppy and CF card support on my XT board. Well, it sort of works, but not really. I can see both ROMs executed, but they don't play together well. The system …

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Re: PC-XT mainboard PETER-10F - BIOS, anyone?

Posted on 2019-06-10, 10:41

by

by Kubik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks! Sadly, the BIOS doesn't seem to work on my board. I am using the Super XT BIOS right now, so I can confirm the board works (I got it with some chips missing), but I would prefer to have the original BIOS :) Anyone else has the same board? Or, it looks like there's also Peter-10 that has 8 …

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Re: 512mb CF card cylinder values ?

Posted on 2019-06-09, 11:51

by

by Kubik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

One of the command line parameters must be the one that enables IDE. You might need to move the ESS init to CONFIG.SYS so that you can load the ATAPI driver for CDROM as well - both needs to be in CONFIG.SYS.

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Rancho BIOS for SCSI drives >1GB?

Posted on 2019-06-07, 23:16

by

by Kubik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Folks, is there a BIOS for Rancho (and similar 53C400 based) controllers that would support SCSI drives over 1GB? Thanks!

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Re: Screams “AWW” my frustrations with Sound Blaster.

Posted on 2019-06-07, 17:52

by

by Kubik

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

You should always check the model number (SB0060, SB0100, CT4760...) and look for drivers for that particular model.

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Re: 512mb CF card cylinder values ?

Posted on 2019-06-06, 10:32

by

by Kubik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Also, be careful with the number of cylinders. I have PQ 512MB card and autodetecting says something like 973 cylinders.

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Re: ZIDA 4DPS – the story of repairing

Posted on 2019-06-05, 18:31

by

by Kubik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Replacing the chips shouldn't be that difficult, you just need some hot air, good soldering station, magnifying glass and steady hand. However, it's not worth it. There was other damage on the board as well, so I'd say screw it 😀

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Re: ZIDA 4DPS – the story of repairing

Posted on 2019-06-04, 19:07

by

by Kubik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I bought one locally in Germany together with three VLBUS ones for like 40 EUR... just be patient.

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Re: 512mb CF card cylinder values ?

Posted on 2019-06-04, 18:26

by

by Kubik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If you boot from floppy (preferably MSDOS install floppy), hold Shift while booting so that you boot to clean DOS, there's no chance the boot virus on HDD could be activated. If your floppy was not write protected, there's chance it got infected as well, so I'd recommend to download an MSDOS install …

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Re: ZIDA 4DPS – the story of repairing

Posted on 2019-06-04, 18:19

by

by Kubik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

There's certain moment when reviving something stops being worth your time. Unless you have good reason to spend more time and money on this, I think you've reached the moment :) There still are 486 PCI board available. I must know it, I purchased one on eBay last week. That diagnostic card is a …

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