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NuXT - micro-ATX IBM XT (LGR review)

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Reply 80 of 102, by The Serpent Rider

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Probably not FCC-compliant because it lacks shielding

Please raise your hand if you actually care or have intention to use where it matters.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 81 of 102, by matze79

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Tandy ISA Card already exists, and will soon launch 😀

https://www.retrokits.de - blog, retro projects, hdd clicker, diy soundcards etc
https://www.retroianer.de - german retro computer board

Reply 83 of 102, by infiniteclouds

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matze79 wrote:

Tandy ISA Card already exists, and will soon launch 😀

And graphics? There are some games that were only 16 color in Tandy mode. Also, for the Tandy sound card that will require game-by-game patches, won't it?

Reply 84 of 102, by mothergoose729

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Tandy graphics would also be great. Alternatively, PCjr would also be useful. I think there is some overlap there, as the Tandy graphics are supposed to support PCjr graphics modes as well. Either one would be really cool.

The biggest weakness of the NuXT right now, as I see it, is the trident graphics. While it is a great 8 bit SVGA card, there is a fair number of titles that just won't run properly on it. They need an actual CGA card , sometimes with composite output, in order to work correctly. I can understand why that isn't part of the design though (what with difficulty in sourcing parts in bulk, compatibility with VGA displays, ect).

There are also some Tandy games that will also run in EGA, where EGA is usually comparable or superior anyway. So if you have the trident graphics and a good IBM CGA card, then that should cover lots of games.

As I see it, the ideal addons card for the NuXT for best comparability are Tandy sound, sound blaster 1350A with a CMS upgrade, an IBM CGA card, and then your choice for the fourth slot (network card, serial to PS/2 adapter, whatever).

Reply 85 of 102, by hasnopants

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Well my planned addons for the NuXT right now are only a snark barker (with CMS chips) and a multi io adapter for serial, gameport and parallel additions. Via parallel I am going to run one of the covox clones that I picked up years ago.

It didnt really occur to me to do tandy sound or a real cga card? I think I am going to just see what encounter with the list of games I have slated for the build. Im glad you said something though so now its on my mind if I do encounter issues on setup.

Current Systems:
DIP40|8088|640K|HERCULESGB102|PCSPKR
DIP40|V20|640K|VGA|ADLIB/TNDY/COVOX
S7|P233MMX|128M|S3ViRGEDX/DM3D|SB16
S370|P600MMX|256M|SIS630/DM3DIIX2|SBLIVE!5.1
S775|P43.4|2G|6800GS|SBAUDIGY

Reply 86 of 102, by Kiteless

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Oh hey BTW, HasNoPants, as you know I got the same IO card you did. Thanks for the link to that BTW! If you watched my video on the NuXT, you saw that I was having issues getting the NuXT to play nice with the IO card. I found that I had to move the serial port (and IRQ) on the NuXT to COM 2. Then it would boot and POST normally. Buuuuuuuuuut CTMouse aka Cute Mouse would detect my Microsoft Serial Mouse but it wouldn't work. Fliddling with it I managed to get the mouse driver loaded and it worked in Edit for like 5 seconds then stopped. Really odd. I eventually just disabled all the onboard serial on the NuXT and am just using the 2 serial ports on the IO Card. They both work just fine. At some point soon when I have time I'm going to do some more testing with the onboard serial port and see if mine is maybe having some issues or if it's just something funky with the IO Card and the NuXT.

I also got Upper Memory working great. The manual isn't super duper clear on how to enable it. At least for me because I'm dumb! haha.

In short, just do some thorough testing with 640K conventional first. Then flip switches 2 - 6 on SW2. Then go into AUTOEXEC.BAT and uncomment all the things. Done. I spent like an hour trying to download things, not understanding the manual, blah blah blah. He sets it all up for you but keeps the NuXT as compatible as possible right out of the box. Also to run lemmings, just type lemmings. Duuuuuh. Haha.

I'm going to do a quick follow up video on all the stuff I didn't have working and how to setup a new CF card. I found a 1TB "Industrial" Transend brand that it likes and I will never ever EVER be able to fill. But oddly the Cisco 512MB ones didn't work. Well, they worked but were super flaky. I want to do some more testing with the Transcend before I label it as fully working. But so far so good.

YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTfnRX4AWhbYJuguUcEff-g

Main Systems
NuXT
IBM 5140
486 DX4 100Mhz (Mainly DOS)
AMD K6-2 500Mhz (Mainly DOS)
AMD Athlon 700Mhz 9700 Pro (Win 98)
Pentium D 3Ghz 4670 AGP 8x (Win XP)

Reply 87 of 102, by Kiteless

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Quick side note on Graphics.

I downloaded a bunch of games from myabandonware and found almost all of them worked in any mode. CGA seemed to be the most flaky though. You could be able to use any vintage 8-bit video adapter with the NuXT. Just disable onboard video and make sure that the upper memory doesn't conflict with address space. You probably don't need any upper memory anyway to run games that require a CGA card.

YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTfnRX4AWhbYJuguUcEff-g

Main Systems
NuXT
IBM 5140
486 DX4 100Mhz (Mainly DOS)
AMD K6-2 500Mhz (Mainly DOS)
AMD Athlon 700Mhz 9700 Pro (Win 98)
Pentium D 3Ghz 4670 AGP 8x (Win XP)

Reply 88 of 102, by hasnopants

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Oh damn, yeah I watched the video and its a bummer about the I/O card, glad you got it working though. It works perfect in my actual XT...well I will try it out with my NuXT when it comes and see what happens...thanks for the tips on the upper memory.

Current Systems:
DIP40|8088|640K|HERCULESGB102|PCSPKR
DIP40|V20|640K|VGA|ADLIB/TNDY/COVOX
S7|P233MMX|128M|S3ViRGEDX/DM3D|SB16
S370|P600MMX|256M|SIS630/DM3DIIX2|SBLIVE!5.1
S775|P43.4|2G|6800GS|SBAUDIGY

Reply 89 of 102, by hasnopants

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NuXT Shipped! Believe the final batch of boards are done now until JD gets more stock as his site says he expects that in October sometime.

Current Systems:
DIP40|8088|640K|HERCULESGB102|PCSPKR
DIP40|V20|640K|VGA|ADLIB/TNDY/COVOX
S7|P233MMX|128M|S3ViRGEDX/DM3D|SB16
S370|P600MMX|256M|SIS630/DM3DIIX2|SBLIVE!5.1
S775|P43.4|2G|6800GS|SBAUDIGY

Reply 91 of 102, by Kiteless

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Hamby wrote:

I'm really interested in one of these, but now I'm conflicted, because I really want a Commander X16, and I can't afford both 🙁

This is just me, but if I get one of these I plan on waiting till at least his ITX version. The mATX version is really more of a dev board so people can start writing/porting software to it. It doesn't look like it will be able to run Commodore software out of the box. The NuXT is basically done, and already has a huge library of old and some new software. Again, this is just me. I'm more of a DOS head anyway. ITX version of the Commander X16 is probably at least 6 months to a year away. While I'm not much of a Commodore guy, I find the Commander project incredibly interesting and want one. I think you could get a NuXT now, and wait for the ITX version that's still a ways off, set aside a little cash every month then get the ITX when it's released. It should have a more mature software library and possibly even hardware sorted out. My 2 cents on the matter. 😀

YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTfnRX4AWhbYJuguUcEff-g

Main Systems
NuXT
IBM 5140
486 DX4 100Mhz (Mainly DOS)
AMD K6-2 500Mhz (Mainly DOS)
AMD Athlon 700Mhz 9700 Pro (Win 98)
Pentium D 3Ghz 4670 AGP 8x (Win XP)

Reply 93 of 102, by Kiteless

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Errius wrote:

So this is a C64 clone board you can mount in a regular PC case?

This is leaning outside the topic of this thread but, no it's similar architecture but by it's nature it's too different to just run "out of the box" C64 software. That said I think this is a good things. It will be a much more capable machine, and made with all "modern" off the shelf components. IMO it's a really interesting 45 min long video. Should start a different thread to continue talking about the Commander though. 😁

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg-6Cjzzg8s&t

YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTfnRX4AWhbYJuguUcEff-g

Main Systems
NuXT
IBM 5140
486 DX4 100Mhz (Mainly DOS)
AMD K6-2 500Mhz (Mainly DOS)
AMD Athlon 700Mhz 9700 Pro (Win 98)
Pentium D 3Ghz 4670 AGP 8x (Win XP)

Reply 94 of 102, by ujav

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mothergoose729 wrote:

The biggest weakness of the NuXT right now, as I see it, is the trident graphics. While it is a great 8 bit SVGA card, there is a fair number of titles that just won't run properly on it. They need an actual CGA card , sometimes with composite output, in order to work correctly. I can understand why that isn't part of the design though (what with difficulty in sourcing parts in bulk, compatibility with VGA displays, ect).

Oh, I couldn't agree more. Main purpose of 8088 is to run period-correct games, which is early 80x titles. Most of newer games will run slow on this old CPU, as I remember, even 1983's XT was kind of disappointment because of this.
And you can see it clearly in LGR review too, lots and lots of unplayable VGA titles, so your choice is turn-based quests, very simple arcades, etc.

Trident CGA/EGA emulation is okay-ish, but again, it's only emulation, you'll never see proper 8088mph demo on this, again, thanks LGR. You can play Popcorn, but can't see its boss screen, etc. And of course, no composite colors too.

So, what's your choice for that "proper" early 80x experience? To search and buy some rare old expensive CGA card, plus sourcing even more rare and expensive monitor? Or buy CGA plus some scan-doubler frame-buffered converter(not cheap, again)? At this point, why not the whole 5150?

For that price I would love to see some TGA/EGA/CGA on board, and if DE-15 converter is too complicated - at least simple composite will do.

Reply 95 of 102, by spark2k06

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Several months ago I ventured to build this project. Finally I can say that I have achieved it, after many setbacks:

wsLVEapcsh5yvzVRxkux0PMg-ReugJFAGPmaEFahxZo3wv3omPOM1218zNLN8tXgRSRTcTMk7iWfoAOHo8Sfmxollyi11POEsuFmg4CjgqjFdNF4aMUYrlSeDMsRPukuxyayFMO7dys=w1280-h853-no

I had some problems with the assembly of a pair of PCBs but I currently have a fully functional one that would sell for € 200 plus shipping costs by DHL (I would only ship to Europe preferably to avoid customs costs for the buyer, I am from Spain).

In addition, I sell it with a Nec v20 CPU of up to 10Mhz and 512Kb of VRAM at 60ns.

I think it is a unique opportunity for those who have an interest in this board.

As an additional fact, I have already contributed to the improvement of the BIOS of the Micro8088 project on which this project is based and I am waiting for Sergey (author of Micro8088) to validate another update for the BIOS, specifically the possibility of management RTC:

https://github.com/skiselev/8088_bios/pull/2

https://www.tindie.com/stores/spark2k06/
https://hackaday.io/spark2k06

Reply 96 of 102, by spark2k06

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Sold.

If anyone has an interest in the other PCBs with problems, I will provide detailed information and prices by private message.

spark2k06 wrote:
Several months ago I ventured to build this project. Finally I can say that I have achieved it, after many setbacks: […]
Show full quote

Several months ago I ventured to build this project. Finally I can say that I have achieved it, after many setbacks:

wsLVEapcsh5yvzVRxkux0PMg-ReugJFAGPmaEFahxZo3wv3omPOM1218zNLN8tXgRSRTcTMk7iWfoAOHo8Sfmxollyi11POEsuFmg4CjgqjFdNF4aMUYrlSeDMsRPukuxyayFMO7dys=w1280-h853-no

I had some problems with the assembly of a pair of PCBs but I currently have a fully functional one that would sell for € 200 plus shipping costs by DHL (I would only ship to Europe preferably to avoid customs costs for the buyer, I am from Spain).

In addition, I sell it with a Nec v20 CPU of up to 10Mhz and 512Kb of VRAM at 60ns.

I think it is a unique opportunity for those who have an interest in this board.

As an additional fact, I have already contributed to the improvement of the BIOS of the Micro8088 project on which this project is based and I am waiting for Sergey (author of Micro8088) to validate another update for the BIOS, specifically the possibility of management RTC:

https://github.com/skiselev/8088_bios/pull/2

https://www.tindie.com/stores/spark2k06/
https://hackaday.io/spark2k06

Reply 97 of 102, by Caluser2000

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spark2k06 wrote:

Sold.

If anyone has an interest in the other PCBs with problems, I will provide detailed information and prices by private message.

Did you ever bother to connect JD for a resolution to your issues? How about a youtube video or blog post to air it out? All this secrecy is a bit um shall we say unusual. We know the first revision boards had serial issues and that is documented what revision was yours?

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 98 of 102, by spark2k06

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Caluser2000 wrote:

]Did you ever bother to connect JD for a resolution to your issues? How about a youtube video or blog post to air it out? All this secrecy is a bit um shall we say unusual. We know the first revision boards had serial issues and that is documented what revision was yours?

Revision 1.2

Yes, I already discussed with JD about some of these assembly-related problems.

Okay, I go into detail, one of them sure, yes ... the RS232 transceiver was upside down, the board booted but obviously the serial port did not work. When desoldering it I had the bad fortune to cut at least two tracks in the process:

49ks7ByoD1DFRnQ4lMw9_alFC4FMvqAI1Hc9HsXEzdjTBDSaAyTNmnLaUN3Vg5zY5TheiPirzb1l6sFjJ_7MSVRKf4BFw5e-_r0ZGE-pvMJG2-cvF0ACpvTlJVJIm4GQZj1QlZ4IvDU=w1180-h885-no

Consequence, it doesn't boot anymore. Two of the tracks (IO CHK and IOCHRDY) go directly to the Trident IC and nowhere else except the buses that are directly connected to the Faraday, the other is AEN, a more important signal than apart from the Trident It goes to other components ... taking advantage of the fact that these are Through Hole I make a bridge to correct it even if it is only this signal:

nGWnxvs7T0JeUnCHJlhqtPZ5sxS51Up1SqkpYL0EBB1C_t9sWqJ8_3YzmJ3c7JOINEnYTiHuHE0D_RoqPWepuKoE_sJG04oC4T50Uawggg2Ncry5v2lLjwdMdFb88ML1N4vYs0tvPGM=w1180-h885-no

But the board still does not boot. One thing is clear, the SVGA and other expensive components such as the Faraday and other ICs in sockets work perfectly but it requires a more in-depth review. The price for this board is 125€

In the another board, everything seems to be well placed on this occasion but does not boot. I check all the ICs in socket on another PCB that does work and all are fine, the only thing I would have to check is the SVGA, it is the only one that I suspect but it is that not even deactivating it starts the PC so my main suspicion is some internal bridge or something more complex, but related to the SVGA. The price for this board is 100€, due mainly to SVGA, which possibly needs to be desoldered and again I don't have the right experience nor tools.

https://www.tindie.com/stores/spark2k06/
https://hackaday.io/spark2k06

Reply 99 of 102, by spark2k06

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Sold both!

spark2k06 wrote:
Revision 1.2 […]
Show full quote
Caluser2000 wrote:

]Did you ever bother to connect JD for a resolution to your issues? How about a youtube video or blog post to air it out? All this secrecy is a bit um shall we say unusual. We know the first revision boards had serial issues and that is documented what revision was yours?

Revision 1.2

Yes, I already discussed with JD about some of these assembly-related problems.

Okay, I go into detail, one of them sure, yes ... the RS232 transceiver was upside down, the board booted but obviously the serial port did not work. When desoldering it I had the bad fortune to cut at least two tracks in the process:

49ks7ByoD1DFRnQ4lMw9_alFC4FMvqAI1Hc9HsXEzdjTBDSaAyTNmnLaUN3Vg5zY5TheiPirzb1l6sFjJ_7MSVRKf4BFw5e-_r0ZGE-pvMJG2-cvF0ACpvTlJVJIm4GQZj1QlZ4IvDU=w1180-h885-no

Consequence, it doesn't boot anymore. Two of the tracks (IO CHK and IOCHRDY) go directly to the Trident IC and nowhere else except the buses that are directly connected to the Faraday, the other is AEN, a more important signal than apart from the Trident It goes to other components ... taking advantage of the fact that these are Through Hole I make a bridge to correct it even if it is only this signal:

nGWnxvs7T0JeUnCHJlhqtPZ5sxS51Up1SqkpYL0EBB1C_t9sWqJ8_3YzmJ3c7JOINEnYTiHuHE0D_RoqPWepuKoE_sJG04oC4T50Uawggg2Ncry5v2lLjwdMdFb88ML1N4vYs0tvPGM=w1180-h885-no

But the board still does not boot. One thing is clear, the SVGA and other expensive components such as the Faraday and other ICs in sockets work perfectly but it requires a more in-depth review. The price for this board is 125€

In the another board, everything seems to be well placed on this occasion but does not boot. I check all the ICs in socket on another PCB that does work and all are fine, the only thing I would have to check is the SVGA, it is the only one that I suspect but it is that not even deactivating it starts the PC so my main suspicion is some internal bridge or something more complex, but related to the SVGA. The price for this board is 100€, due mainly to SVGA, which possibly needs to be desoldered and again I don't have the right experience nor tools.

https://www.tindie.com/stores/spark2k06/
https://hackaday.io/spark2k06