Searching for Insyde ExpressRom BIOS dump for AMD Geode LX/CS5536

Posted on 2022-07-29, 22:01

by

by Paul_V

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hi, everyone. I'm searching for an Insyde ExpressROM BIOS file or a dump for a Geode LX/CS5536. It is used in a variety of industrial or development motherboards, here is the copy of the guide: http://web.cse.ohio-state.edu/~zhang.574/XpressROM_BIOS_Guidev2_01-1%5B1%5D.pdf Unfortunately, I'm not …

---

Re: "ISA855" - An interesting and peculiar motherboard from ali

Posted on 2022-07-28, 13:05

by

by Paul_V

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

And when I'd told that it's a gamble, I made an understatement. Before buying, I specifically inquired available options and specs and was told that the CPUs do come pre-soldered. While the seller was honest and sent me exactly the Pentium-M variant, it did not come in a BGA package, which is a nice …

---

"ISA855" - An interesting and peculiar motherboard from ali

Posted on 2022-07-28, 12:54

by

by Paul_V

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hi, everyone. Just got my hands on one this motherboard from aliexpress. It is labeled simply "ISA855" and I managed to find a manual for it. It is marketed as an industrial motherboard mATX and it's specs vary from one production batch to another as follows: 1) Celeron-M or Penrium-M cpu (pre- …

---

Re: UNISOUND - Universal ISA PnP Sound Card Driver for DOS v0.78b

Posted on 2022-07-10, 18:02

by

by Paul_V

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

[*] Added support for 3D sound on some cards that support it. Option: /X3Dn Usage depends on the supported card (value of 'n'): * ALS100+/ALS120: 3D Sound Effect Proccessor ON (n = 1) or OFF (n = 0) * ES1869: (n = 0 to 9) 0 = disabled, 1-9 Spatializer 3D VBX effect amount. Just awesome, exactly …

---

Re: Vortex86DX - A beastie of it's own (General info and discussion)

Posted on 2022-07-04, 15:03

by

by Paul_V

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Small update. I'm uploading a brief schematic on how to connect and boot from ISA EEPROM, in case someone would need it. Note, that there are some complications using original BIOS image meant for SPI. I spent some time trying to underclock this SoC further with mixed results. When using strap …

---

Re: Vortex86DX - A beastie of it's own (General info and discussion)

Posted on 2022-05-20, 14:37

by

by Paul_V

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

if someone could write a programm that could detect both L1\L2 cahce and disable them as needed, that would be awesome Are you still looking for a tool like this? I'm about to do some more vortex86 experiments and will develop such a tool if it's still necessary. I want to build a (probably) …

---

Re: Vortex86DX - A beastie of it's own (General info and discussion)

Posted on 2022-05-09, 10:06

by

by Paul_V

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

wait so you added isa, could you add a sound card then? I did not "add" an ISA slot, so to speak. I merely switched the board to seek BIOS code on it's ISA bus, instead of SPI. The board itself already has an ISA slot implemented, just in another form-factor (PC/104) So, yes. The sound card (and …

---

Re: Vortex86DX - A beastie of it's own (General info and discussion)

Posted on 2022-04-10, 11:42

by

by Paul_V

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A small update concerning BIOS and motherboard un-bricking: Eventually, I was able to boot from external ISA\EEPROM 8bit flash BIOS. The main trick is that the SoC pin 'F10', which you need to pull low is also an address pin A12 of the DDR2 memory ICs. A12 is easily accessible due to it being on the …

---

Re: UNISOUND - Universal ISA PnP Sound Card Driver for DOS v0.77a

Posted on 2022-03-19, 20:58

by

by Paul_V

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

You can use MS's DEBUG to write to these. Just type: (remove my comments) Thank you, javispedro1, for your comprehensive response! I now have full understanding of what I've been doing wrong with DEBUG. UPD: Spatializer register defaults to 0x00, so it's not enabled. Also, i've found the culprit: …

---

Re: UNISOUND - Universal ISA PnP Sound Card Driver for DOS v0.77a

Posted on 2022-03-18, 16:03

by

by Paul_V

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Hi guys, I humbly request some help on the ES1869 soundcard with UNISOUND: After setting it up, I noticed that there's a difference in sound between ES1868 and ES1869, as if there's a high pass filter on the latter. I've checked different bands\models In ES1869 datasheet there's a mention about "3D …

---

Re: Vortex86/XGI SVGA issues (solved)

Posted on 2022-03-06, 21:12

by

by Paul_V

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Glad you got it sorted out. Thank you for the info. Makes me wonder, if there is a AMI BIOS version, which allows switching video modes (CRT\LCD 640x480; 800x600 etc). Otherwise, there will always be trouble upscaling things correctly. Advantech BIOS, for example, does have this, but lacks many …

---

Re: Vortex86/XGI SVGA issues

Posted on 2022-03-06, 18:25

by

by Paul_V

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I've never tried running Win98 on Vortex86DX, only pure DOS. But I'll give a try on ebox-3300 mobo. Can you specify the pc\motherboard model? Some motherboards have bios settings, which lock the resolution output to a specific value. The other thing that comes to my mind is using drivers from vmware …

---

Re: Vortex86DX - A beastie of it's own (General info and discussion)

Posted on 2022-02-22, 20:31

by

by Paul_V

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Small update: A link to a document (containing hardware stap info, benchmarks, etc), which I'll be updating as I go. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wEa2xjZHNir0tWWfG-KBawGRrNF7B68ueddka5W_oqA/edit?usp=sharing Current progress is somewhat slow due to various reasons and I'm yet to devise a …

---

Re: ESS1868/1869 Startup and digital sound popping - issue or normal?

Posted on 2022-02-04, 11:24

by

by Paul_V

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Well, regarding popping sounds - they are also present in DosBox, so I'm pretty confident now this is a "junk" DMA transfer issue on startup. It's not ES186x fault by any means. P.S And I'm also feeling incredibly stupid now. Having ordered some good caps to replace the old ones only to realize that …

---

Re: ESS1868/1869 Startup and digital sound popping - issue or normal?

Posted on 2022-01-21, 08:56

by

by Paul_V

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Yes I found the 1868 cards to be a bit 'poppy' too, great cards in general though. The 1688 cards I have tend to do it less I think. I have wondered in the past if a re-cap might help - I did a YMF719 card recently and feel like the boot pop was reduced but those cards don't pop much anyway. Yes, …

---

ESS1868/1869 Startup and digital sound popping (solved).

Posted on 2022-01-20, 15:38

by

by Paul_V

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Hello all, I've recenrly been testing ESS1868 and ESS1869 soundcards on my build and there seems to be a noticable popping sound whenever I start some games with digital sound set up, or when digital sound start playing. I've attached to examples below for Colonization and Privateer games. I've …

---

Re: Vortex86DX - A beastie of it's own (General info and discussion)

Posted on 2022-01-13, 15:03

by

by Paul_V

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Some preliminary results: I've chosen Topbench as a primary reference tool, Doom min\max benchmark from Phil's benchmark compilation as a secondary reference and internal timestamp counter from chkcpu beta. The particular interest is the behaviour of the CPU (or I should better start calling it SoC …

---

Re: Vortex86DX - A beastie of it's own (General info and discussion)

Posted on 2022-01-10, 06:23

by

by Paul_V

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The sheer volume of the BIOS chip is 2Mb (hence, the dump is also 2Mb), but the BIOS image itself is 256kb. Did you mean 2Mb and 256KB? 2Mb = 256KB. Small b is bits, large B is bytes. Sorry, my bad. I mistyped the values, it's MB and KB, of course. The flash chip is 2MB and the BIOS image is 256KB. …

---

Re: Vortex86DX - A beastie of it's own (General info and discussion)

Posted on 2022-01-09, 22:19

by

by Paul_V

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've got my hands on a ebox-3300 mobo and have successfully identified CPU and RAM straps on it (R5/R6; R7/R8; R9/R10; R11/R12; R13/R14 - are the pullup/pulldown resistors on the mobo, I'll post more details later). It defaults at 933Mhz CPU and 300Mhz RAM. (This configuration requires a total of …

---

Re: Vortex86DX - A beastie of it's own (General info and discussion)

Posted on 2021-12-30, 10:21

by

by Paul_V

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Apart from having different external LAN rom and less hidden options, VDX-6390 BIOS seems almost identical to the AMI BIOS the PFM-535S has (PFM-535S has more options, but they are useless in terms of underclocking). I think most of the Vortex86DX OEM motherboard manufactures have just been swapping …

---