Can't just find anything, but I'd guess that JP11 is the 3 jumper pins unfitted, for selecting the size of the also unfitted ROM. So that might mean the fitted ones are JP12-14. Maybe.

I thought I'd try looking up the M5105 chip, which led to this: https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-disk-floppy … ives-M5105.html
But that's got quite a different jumper layout and does have a disable for the gameport.

snufkin wrote on 2021-09-30, 21:08:

Can't just find anything, but I'd guess that JP11 is the 3 jumper pins unfitted, for selecting the size of the also unfitted ROM. So that might mean the fitted ones are JP12-14. Maybe.

I thought I'd try looking up the M5105 chip, which led to this: https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-disk-floppy … ives-M5105.html
But that's got quite a different jumper layout and does have a disable for the gameport.

Thanks. I think you're right about JP12-14. But as I can't find a way to disable the game port I can't use this card. It's a shame as it's getting harder and harder to get decent VLB cards nowadays.

Yoghoo wrote on 2021-10-01, 23:22:

snufkin wrote on 2021-09-30, 21:08:

Can't just find anything, but I'd guess that JP11 is the 3 jumper pins unfitted, for selecting the size of the also unfitted ROM. So that might mean the fitted ones are JP12-14. Maybe.

I thought I'd try looking up the M5105 chip, which led to this: https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-disk-floppy … ives-M5105.html
But that's got quite a different jumper layout and does have a disable for the gameport.

Thanks. I think you're right about JP12-14. But as I can't find a way to disable the game port I can't use this card. It's a shame as it's getting harder and harder to get decent VLB cards nowadays.

How adventurous are you feeling? I found (from an ebay listing) some pictures of the front and back of the non-VLB M5105 card that has the jumpers on that Stason link, which includes a disable the gameport on J8. Tracing where that jumper goes, it goes through a 4.7k resistor to pin 41 on the M5105 chip. That pin also heads off to the line drive chips that I think are to do with the serial port.

So what I think happens is that when the chip starts up it first senses to see if the pin is pulled high or low (through the 4.7k resistor, then through the jumper). If it's pulled to GND (jumper pin 2-3) it enables the gameport, if pulled +ve (jumper pin 1-2, probably +5V) it disables the gameport. After it's started up then the pin changes function to something serial related.

So you might be able to disable the gameport by connecting a 4.7k resistor from pin 41 to +ve (pin 1 of J11 looks like it's probably connected to +5, and is conveniently near by). I can't see any pull up or down on the picture of your board, so the chip probably has a weak internal pull down to give it a default of enabling the gameport.

snufkin wrote on 2021-10-02, 10:55:

How adventurous are you feeling? I found (from an ebay listing) some pictures of the front and back of the non-VLB M5105 card that has the jumpers on that Stason link, which includes a disable the gameport on J8. Tracing where that jumper goes, it goes through a 4.7k resistor to pin 41 on the M5105 chip. That pin also heads off to the line drive chips that I think are to do with the serial port.

So what I think happens is that when the chip starts up it first senses to see if the pin is pulled high or low (through the 4.7k resistor, then through the jumper). If it's pulled to GND (jumper pin 2-3) it enables the gameport, if pulled +ve (jumper pin 1-2, probably +5V) it disables the gameport. After it's started up then the pin changes function to something serial related.

So you might be able to disable the gameport by connecting a 4.7k resistor from pin 41 to +ve (pin 1 of J11 looks like it's probably connected to +5, and is conveniently near by). I can't see any pull up or down on the picture of your board, so the chip probably has a weak internal pull down to give it a default of enabling the gameport.

That's very interesting. I don't feel that adventurous at the moment though. Just ordered a soldering kit so probably something for the future. 😀 Thanks for taking the effort to dive into this.

Also another problem came up yesterday when I tried some settings with this card. It doesn't like it when I connect a cdrom drive as slave. After doing so my CF card doesn't work anymore. It only works without the cdrom connected. This will probably be easier to fix by using a different cdrom or something like that but I don't have one spare to try atm.

I've got a memory of having a problems using a CD drive as secondary with a HD as primary which stopped UDMA working.

On the controller card, I suddenly realised that you don't need to solder directly to pin 41 on the M5105, which would be a bit fiddly. Instead, if you've got a multimeter, trace where pin 41 connects to. It might be a pin on that 75189 next to the gameport header. If you can find that, then it just means soldering a 4.7k resistor from that pin to a +ve pin somewhere (e.g. pin 14 of the 75189). That'd be a lot easier and be fairly neat, and easy to reverse.

Yoghoo wrote on 2021-10-02, 11:26:

Also another problem came up yesterday when I tried some settings with this card. It doesn't like it when I connect a cdrom drive as slave. After doing so my CF card doesn't work anymore. It only works without the cdrom connected. This will probably be easier to fix by using a different cdrom or something like that but I don't have one spare to try atm.

Yes not all IDE-CF adapters support Master/Slave like a real IDE HD can. Which exact IDE-CF adapter are you using ?

Horun wrote on 2021-10-02, 16:05:

Yoghoo wrote on 2021-10-02, 11:26:

Also another problem came up yesterday when I tried some settings with this card. It doesn't like it when I connect a cdrom drive as slave. After doing so my CF card doesn't work anymore. It only works without the cdrom connected. This will probably be easier to fix by using a different cdrom or something like that but I don't have one spare to try atm.

Yes not all IDE-CF adapters support Master/Slave like a real IDE HD can. Which exact IDE-CF adapter are you using ?

I don't know exactly what brand the IDE-CF adapter is. It's a generic one which takes a slot at the back of the case. It has a master/slave jumper.

It works with my current ISA card though. So I think it's more of an issue with this VLB card which does not like the cdrom drive. Had that same problem in the past with another PC.

snufkin wrote on 2021-10-02, 12:46:

I've got a memory of having a problems using a CD drive as secondary with a HD as primary which stopped UDMA working.

On the controller card, I suddenly realised that you don't need to solder directly to pin 41 on the M5105, which would be a bit fiddly. Instead, if you've got a multimeter, trace where pin 41 connects to. It might be a pin on that 75189 next to the gameport header. If you can find that, then it just means soldering a 4.7k resistor from that pin to a +ve pin somewhere (e.g. pin 14 of the 75189). That'd be a lot easier and be fairly neat, and easy to reverse.

Nice. Will maybe try that in the future. Got a multimeter but no resistors yet. Need to find out were I can order those kind of things online here.