Grzyb wrote:

But who needs such a multifunctional card?
I/O cards are plentiful, and so are AdLib-compatible sound cards.

I agree.

Beauty of PC architecture is that we keep everything modular and separated.

I was never a fan of LPT ports on Hercules cards, drive controllers integrated with I/O ports and so on.

It has some advantages in machines with sparse number of ISA slots (Commodore PC10-III for example) but most of the time is just a nuisance.

HanJammer wrote:

And reason behind 48MB of RAM in 286 would be...?

Eg. running Windows 3.1 from a RAM-disk.
Windows can easily use 16 MB of RAM, and the remaining 32 MB can be EMS-based RAM-disk.

There may be some more use cases, there must have been some reason behind Orchid releasing a 32 MB EMS card.

Grzyb wrote:

HanJammer wrote:

And reason behind 48MB of RAM in 286 would be...?

Eg. running Windows 3.1 from a RAM-disk.

Yeah, RAM disk was first way I thought about but to fill this RAM disk you would first have to transfer files into it. Unless you plan to keep your machine running for a long time, and believe it won't have to be rebooted (yeah... the lack of protected mode on 8088/80286)... So that's not really the best idea.[/quote]

Grzyb wrote:

Windows can easily use 16 MB of RAM, and the remaining 32 MB can be EMS-based RAM-disk.

There may be some more use cases, there must have been some reason behind Orchid releasing a 32 MB EMS card.

Oh, but of course there are. But I guess these are mostly limited to terminal server, industrial design, scientific applications and so one...

But oh well... people buy arduino-powered rulers nowadays so maybe I'm just keeping my feet on the ground too much and that's why I don't find any use for this amount of RAM in retro computing hobby environment...

https://sites.google.com/site/misterzeropage/
There's an XT with 33 MB of RAM, so it's appropriate for an AT to have 48 MB!

The UART on the XT-IDE was for remote booting, it didn't actually provide a serial port at all. It was minimal so you could just get a virtual hard disk image onto an old machine, you couldn't really do anything with it.

The problem with SB/GUS/PAS is that those all use hen's teeth for chips or are far too complex to implement on a board like this. An AdLib can fit in the same space as a Covox Speech Thing. There's no reason you couldn't have an AdLib built into a card like this, and there's actually no reason you couldn't support both CVT and AdLib on the same card with memory - All of those parts are cheap, readily available, and through hole. Not to mention their designs are simple and do not take up much space, meaning that you could easily just stick them in with whatever else and it would be hardly noticeable.

An SB is a much more complex device, and a GUS/PAS/AWE64 are all almost full length and would never fit properly and still work right in that kind of space.

Personally, I have to disagree. A multifunction board saves me money because instead of buying 3-4 boards, I only need the one. I saw a video card with an MFM controller and a serial / parallel port on it once. I must acquire such a device, I can't really see the problem in combining them into one board. It's not like it wouldn't be period correct - AST SixPackPlus, QuadRAM boards, AST Advantage, etc.

Yep, HanJammer is right. It wouldn't be hard to make an exact copy of this card as it is, and I personally would be interested in buying one with the daughtercard. I'd like more than 2MB XMS in Windows 3.1, please.

Grzyb wrote:

https://sites.google.com/site/misterzeropage/
There's an XT with 33 MB of RAM, so it's appropriate for an AT to have 48 MB!

Whoever built that 33MB XT is a super cool guy...definitely not a dork. 😁

I think 48MB on an AT is somewhat overkill, but mostly the EMS. You can actually make pretty good use of the extended memory if your AT has a CPU accelerator in it. For the most part, 2MB of EMS is all you'd ever really need...but I think Deskview might be able to put it good use. On the other hand, you might as well put the maximum possible amount of memory on the hypothetical new expansion card, because the memory is so cheap now anyway so why not? Maybe some clever programmer can write some software to show off what an AT can do. 80286 Corruption anyone?

FAMICOMASTER wrote:

Personally, I have to disagree. A multifunction board saves me money because instead of buying 3-4 boards, I only need the one.

This argument was very valid back in the 80s and 90s and still is but not so much for hobby retro PCs. What if I want to move AdLib card from my AT to XT or borrow it to my friend? I just prefer to have separate devices which gives me total freedom over the 'bricks' when building PC.

FAMICOMASTER wrote:

I saw a video card with an MFM controller and a serial / parallel port on it once. I must acquire such a device, I can't really see the problem in combining them into one board. It's not like it wouldn't be period correct - AST SixPackPlus, QuadRAM boards, AST Advantage, etc.

Yes, I have such multi i/o / mfm controller thing. It's economically (and practically) justified for combining these board when they were new. But like I said above - I don't think it's a case with hobby built retro PCs.

But that's just my opinion - I guess I would be very interested in all-in-one multimedia card as well (AdLib (or even better SB) + Covox + maybe a proper MPU-401 in one device). I just prefer not having it combined with a device with a totally different purpose (like drive controller or memory expansion card).

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Maybe some clever programmer can write some software to show off what an AT can do. 80286 Corruption anyone?

Yes, please! 😁
But to me 286 running games like Falcon 3.0 or Darker (both already have some short and low-res, but still good looking digitized video sequences and pretty advanced vector graphics) is jaw dropping everytime I run them.

Yes I agree the Orchid Ramquest 8/16 is a better card and it would be nice to have additional features. But this decreases the amount of people with the knowledge to design and build such card. And this makes it much more unlikely to get this project done. I think a Bocaram 1:1 replica is a more easy to implement project.
Moreover dont like these newly designed cards very much, they dont give me a retro feeling.

Thanks cyclone3d for the link, I searched very long for such template without success.

It might be possible to strap 16MB on the BocaRAM card. I recommend not using IC RAM though. It's a pain in the ass.

The Orchid RAMquest Xilinx chip is socketed. If somebody has a reader, they should check to see if the security fuses have been blown. Maybe it's possible to find out what's inside. I have a VP 280 EEPROM programmer. I can check to see if it supports it, but I highly doubt it.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Grzyb wrote:

https://sites.google.com/site/misterzeropage/
There's an XT with 33 MB of RAM, so it's appropriate for an AT to have 48 MB!

Whoever built that 33MB XT is a super cool guy...definitely not a dork. 😁

He's cool alright. Another chap took his XT based system up to 486DLC33 level iirc using available upgrade cards. It was a gradual process taking months and he was assisted with advice from a few of us vcfed members. This is one part of the projects journey http://www.vcfed.org/forum/archive/index.php/t-45362.html

Anonymous Coward wrote:

I recommend not using IC RAM though.

Are you suggesting ferrite core memory, then? 😁

What I meant was DIP, especially if there's a tonne of them. It's really annoying soldering in the sockets, and having to take the chips in and out.

Grzyb wrote:

Anonymous Coward wrote:

I recommend not using IC RAM though.

Are you suggesting ferrite core memory, then? 😁

That's actually a cool idea. I would buy PC compatible card with ferrite memory 😁