VOGONS


First post, by hugojpinto

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Hi!

So, on a recent find I got myself a old PC XT with a dead motherboard and outer case in a pretty rough shape. I decided to scavenge some of the parts for my other machines, and found inside an AST Flashpak 8086 NEC V30 processor upgrade card, alongside with other AST expansion goodies.

I wanted to get that running on my 2nd generation XT (with 640kb onboard), but cannot. Everything works using the original 8088 setting, but in the 8086 mode the system POSTs correctly, counts and verifies memory super fast, but, alas, upon disk boot time the screen either gets garbled, or the boot process halts. It almost seems like some address or I/O corruption. I messed around with the DIP switches and things change a bit, but never to a successful boot.

I looked over half the internet for the manual this expansion card should have come with, but could not find anything.

Does anyone by any chance have a reference/manual/instructions on the switches’ meaning and settings?

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks!

Hugo

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Reply 1 of 6, by Anonymous Coward

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This looks like an interesting card. Does it have any cache or RAM onboard? It doesn't appear that way. (Those toshiba chips appear to be SRAMs)
It's interesting that there are four sockets for 40-pin ICs. Looks like the two on the left are for the V30 and 8087. But what are the two on the right for? One looks like it's holding a dummy chip. Are you supposed to plug your old 8088 into one of those sockets?

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 2 of 6, by hugojpinto

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Thanks!

It is indeed an interesting card. I don’t think they had cache in there, but cannot tell for certain.

The ribbon would connect to the connector on top of the “dummy” chip (it is indeed an Intel 8088 with markings faded), and plug into the motherboard’s 8088 socket.

You are quite correct - the empty slots are for the 8087 counterparts of the 4.77mhz 8088 and the 9mhz NEC 8086 v30.

Now if I could decipher what those pesky 10 switches are….

Reply 3 of 6, by Anonymous Coward

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So wait...you're telling me that this thing can take TWO 8087s? Now that's crazy!

From what I can tell your card is very rare. I only managed to find one discussion about it on VCFed, where the author asks if anyone had one, because he'd seen it in a magazine but never in real life.

My guess is that there might be some usenet posts about it, but tracking down the manual will be hard.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 6 of 6, by hugojpinto

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Anonymous Coward wrote on 2022-05-23, 00:03:

So wait...you're telling me that this thing can take TWO 8087s? Now that's crazy!

Yup. The two 8087’s would be rated for different clock frequencies, and thus two different chips would be needed.