Skyscraper wrote:

To day I set up my Harris 286-16 system permanently on my desk.

I want to be sure to use it more often so the original ~28 year old barrel battery dosnt starts to leak, it keeps charge and only minimal corrosion can be seen where the leads attach to the battery.

I'd be a good idea to ditch the battery anyway to prevent any further damage.

I found out the hdd out of the k6-2 350 wasn't toast after all. It's partition table had just been waxed. It's booting dos just fine and dandy now.

Caluser2000 wrote:

Skyscraper wrote:

To day I set up my Harris 286-16 system permanently on my desk.

I want to be sure to use it more often so the original ~28 year old barrel battery dosnt starts to leak, it keeps charge and only minimal corrosion can be seen where the leads attach to the battery.

I'd be a good idea to ditch the battery anyway to prevent any further damage.

I found out the hdd out of the k6-2 350 wasn't toast after all. It's partition table had just been waxed. It's booting dos just fine and dandy now.

I do not have any suitable chargable replacement. I will check the battery now and then though, with luck it lasts another decade.

Right now Im playing "Dizzy Prince Of The Yolkfolk", the Ad Lib Music is great 😀

Skyscraper wrote:

I do not have any suitable chargable replacement. I will check the battery now and then though, with luck it lasts another decade.

I guess some folk just like to live on the edge 😉

You could just use a 4.5V battery and bung a diode between it and the board to prevent charging. Very nice 286... And a whole 10MHz faster than mine.

Changed PSU on my P3-933 V3-3500 machine.
And installed V2-SLI in my "Zitech".

Resprayed an old Yellowed Floppy Black for my KT7-RAID in a new case.
It was more yellow than the one in the photo, which is more yellow than what it looks like.
I would like to respray my old beige cases, but it's just about impossible to avoid getting paint blobs and dust
particles ruining the endresult. Works well for small jobs though.

HighTreason wrote:

You could just use a 4.5V battery and bung a diode between it and the board to prevent charging. Very nice 286... And a whole 10MHz faster than mine.

Sooner or later I will have to solve it, I think I will use 3x AAA nickel–cadmium 1.25V batterys so the board can keep charging as much as it likes.

I think I figured out how to load soundfonts with AWEUTL using the GM emulation switch but I still dont know how to test the upgraded memory on DOS. I know the AWE32 is only supposed to support 1MB, 4MB and 16MB SIMMs but I have read that others have been able to use modules from printers as long as they are not larger than 16MB. Not that it really matters as the soundfont of choice seems to be the 2MB "finegm.sbk" so if the 2.25MB modules dont work I will use two 1MB modules.

I have also noticed that some MIDI files that sound off on just about every other MIDI device I have tried sounds just fine with the AWE32s default GM emulation using the built in 1MB soundbank, probably because they were made with the AWE32 in mind.

Ok now I have loaded the finegm.sbk 2MB soundfont to the AWE32 by renaming it synthgm.sbk and using the "aweutil /em:gm" command

If anyone thinks that loading a 2MB soundfont to a Sound Blaster AWE32 using a 286 with 1MB memory is something that is done in a second then think again, I went to take a shower and it wasnt done when I came back 😜. It works perfectly though and I think the "finegm.sbk" sounds better when playing most MIDI files than the built in 1MB ROM with GM emulation activated does.

Skyscraper wrote:

Ok now I have loaded the finegm.sbk 2MB soundfont to the AWE32 by renaming it synthgm.sbk and using the "aweutil /em:gm" command

If anyone thinks that loading a 2MB soundfont to a Sound Blaster AWE32 using a 286 with 1MB memory is something that is done in a second then think again, I went to take a shower and it wasnt done when I came back 😜. It works perfectly though and I think the "finegm.sbk" sounds better when playing most MIDI files than the built in 1MB ROM with GM emulation activated does.

could you post your whole autoexec.bat somewhere and let me see it please? I've been trying to learn how to load soundfonts in ms-dos for years.

kithylin wrote:

Skyscraper wrote:

Ok now I have loaded the finegm.sbk 2MB soundfont to the AWE32 by renaming it synthgm.sbk and using the "aweutil /em:gm" command

If anyone thinks that loading a 2MB soundfont to a Sound Blaster AWE32 using a 286 with 1MB memory is something that is done in a second then think again, I went to take a shower and it wasnt done when I came back 😜. It works perfectly though and I think the "finegm.sbk" sounds better when playing most MIDI files than the built in 1MB ROM with GM emulation activated does.

could you post your whole autoexec.bat somewhere and let me see it please? I've been trying to learn how to load soundfonts in ms-dos for years.

I diddnt load the soundfont with autoexec.bat as I read that it dosnt work. I used the command "aweutil /em:gm" with the 2MB soundfont in the same directory as aweutil, you have to rename the soundfont synthgm.sbk. I think the issue with trying to load the soundfont with autoexec.bat is that the AWE32 needs to be initialized with "aweutil /S" first and then perhaps a pause is needed before you can load the soundfont with "aweutil /em:gm".

Here is my autoexec.bat

SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 E620 T6
@ECHO OFF
PROMPT $p$g
PATH C:\DOS
SET TEMP=C:\DOS
SET SOUND=C:\SB16
C:\SB16\DIAGNOSE /S
C:\SB16\MIXERSET /P
C:\SB16\AWEUTIL /S
keyb sv

The version of aweutil.exe Im using is v1.35
The 2MB soundfont can be found here http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=499

Skyscraper wrote:

I diddnt load the soundfont with autoexec.bat as I read that it dosnt work. I used the command "aweutil /em:gm" with the 2MB sou […]
Show full quote

I diddnt load the soundfont with autoexec.bat as I read that it dosnt work. I used the command "aweutil /em:gm" with the 2MB soundfont in the same directory as aweutil, you have to rename the soundfont synthgm.sbk. I think the issue with trying to load the soundfont with autoexec.bat is that the AWE32 needs to be initialized with "aweutil /S" first and then perhaps a pause is needed before you can load the soundfont with "aweutil /em:gm".

Here is my autoexec.bat

<snip>
The version of aweutil.exe Im using is v1.35
The 2MB soundfont can be found here http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=499

Do you think this might work trying to load a 28MB soundfont in to a awe64 card?

kithylin wrote:

Skyscraper wrote:

I diddnt load the soundfont with autoexec.bat as I read that it dosnt work. I used the command "aweutil /em:gm" with the 2MB sou […]
Show full quote

I diddnt load the soundfont with autoexec.bat as I read that it dosnt work. I used the command "aweutil /em:gm" with the 2MB soundfont in the same directory as aweutil, you have to rename the soundfont synthgm.sbk. I think the issue with trying to load the soundfont with autoexec.bat is that the AWE32 needs to be initialized with "aweutil /S" first and then perhaps a pause is needed before you can load the soundfont with "aweutil /em:gm".

Here is my autoexec.bat

<snip>
The version of aweutil.exe Im using is v1.35
The 2MB soundfont can be found here http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=499

Do you think this might work trying to load a 28MB soundfont in to a awe64 card?

The really large soundfonts are usually the wrong type, I think aweutil only supports the SBK file format. If you make your own SBK soundfont or if you somehow manage to convert a SF2 soundfont to SBK it should work.

Skyscraper wrote:

The really large soundfonts are usually the wrong type, I think aweutil only supports the SBK file format. If you make your own SBK soundfont or if you somehow manage to convert a SF2 soundfont to SBK it should work.

Darn, doomed to windows 9x for large soundfonts then... 😒 😢 I've been hoping to some day figure out a way around that for my pure-dos machine.

Wrote some new stuff about times back then on my blog.

Ran some benchmarks and Doom to compare 486s' performance. More info:
http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showt … em-Requirements

I really need to exchange a grey CD-ROM with a white one at some point. After lifting PCs from piles all day I do not feel like it. 😀

I also have to force myself not to buy that Digital Venturis Pentium 100. Going to play Pirates! Gold now.

Im testing some MIDI files and DEMOS on my 286, Im linking this machine more and more the more I use it.

Its amazing that VectorDemo by UltraForce runs perfectly with music on a 286 16 MHz! 😀

Runs fine on a 6MHz one too. Was one of the first things I ever ran on it.

Worked a little on my custom XT clone. It is based on a "X'Golden board" https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/107843342 … xt/IMG_0037.jpg (warning, 20Mpixel photo); originally came with a CGA card which I had hooked via composite video to a modern LCD TV since I don't have a CGA-capable monitor. Today I got to test a pile of VGA cards until I found one that works in a 8-bit slot (despite the card being 16-bit) - it's a OTI077-based card. None of the several Trident-based cards worked at all. I still have to test a Tseng 4000 card which I have hopes for.

The other thing I did was filling some of those empty EPROM sockets with some BIOS extensions. They are all mapped starting at F000:0000 in 8kB increments, i.e. take a 2764 chip each.

The first extension is a BIOS from a HD floppy controller, a KW-530 card; by that I enabled the XT to read/write 1.44M floppies (by default it can read/write only up to 720k floppies). I plugged in a UMC-based multi-IO card (again, 16-bit card in 8-bit slot) and verified that with the BIOS extension it can use 1.44M floppies.

Next I compiled a fresh binary of the XT-IDE Universal BIOS https://code.google.com/p/xtideuniversalbios/ and configured it so that it supports as primary IDE controller a 16-bit generic controller in 8-bit mode, and as secondary a XT-CF card https://www.lo-tech.co.uk/wiki/Lo-tech_ISA_Co … pter_revision_2 Then I verified that a CF card attached to either the multi-IO card's IDE connector or to the XT-CF card via a IDE/CF adapter works as a hard drive. It does, and now this XT clone has support for up to 4 HDDs and/or CF cards, not that I would ever need that many. I then installed MSDOS 6.20 on the CF card.

Everything works beautifully now.

My next plans for this machine are:
1. replace the 8088 CPU with a V20
2. add some memory in the HMA for UMBs and EMM. The motherboard has 640k onboard and no space for any extra. Currently in the HMA I have the VGA's video RAM and BIOS, which take up all the space from A000 to B7FF. The second half of the B segment, as well as the C, D and E segments are empty. I will add a AST Rampage 8-bit EMS card with 2M to make a EMS frame in the E segment, and then with a lo-tech RAM board https://www.lo-tech.co.uk/wiki/1MB-RAM-Board I will fill the C and D segments with 128KB RAM for UMBs. Too bad I can't use the second half of the B segment but this card can only map full 64kB pages.

(edit) Of course, replace HMA with UMA in all that I said above. This being a 8088 there is no HMA sadly.

I traded an matx Compaq case for a circa-2004 Raidmax ATX case to house my Socket 423 project. I have some terrible, sinister plans for this machine muwhahahaha

HighTreason wrote:

Runs fine on a 6MHz one too. Was one of the first things I ever ran on it.

Thats Pretty impressive 😀

Today I ran Cronologia by cascada which also ran fine, I could probably have gotten away with setting the speed setting to "386 16MHz" as I dont think the demo uses any instructions the 286 dosnt support? I ran it at the "286 12MHz" speed setting with sondblaster sound and VGA graphics just to be sure it would run smootly. The last time I ran this demo I was using a IBM 55SX 386 SX-16 back in late 1991 or early 1992, that system diddnt have a soundblaster as it was a MCA system.