mbliss11 wrote on 2021-05-28, 13:08:

Just got my card yesterday and have the day off today so it is time for some retro goodness. Unfortunately when I install the card my system will not boot from any device (hard drive, floppy). System posts but will not go any further than initial boot screen and memory scan. I am thinking it is a conflict of some kind but I cannot figure it out. I have adjusted all of the jumpers on the card to no avail. Any suggestions? Anyone have any trouble getting their cards recognized in their systems? Dell Optiplex GL5100 Socket 5

Please leave it on that screen for 1 minute and then report please.

Just let it sit for 5 mins on several shutdowns and restarts still the same issue.

I threw the card in one of my socket7 machines with the jumper settings that were shipped with the card and bingo bango came up with no problems and works great.

Put my old Awe32 back in the Optiplex and boots as normal. The ol dell and I have had our share of wonderful experiences and troubleshooting stories over the years it is a finnicky pizza box that does nothing particularly well but I love it and want to have the Orpheus in her if it is possible.

Troubleshooting steps I have done:

-Tried all different IRQ jumper settings
-Tried different ISA slot
-Disabled all com ports on the Dell

Any other suggestions? Thanks again Marmes for the quick response too!

mbliss11 wrote on 2021-05-28, 14:12:

Just let it sit for 5 mins on several shutdowns and restarts still the same issue. […]
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Just let it sit for 5 mins on several shutdowns and restarts still the same issue.

I threw the card in one of my socket7 machines with the jumper settings that were shipped with the card and bingo bango came up with no problems and works great.

Put my old Awe32 back in the Optiplex and boots as normal. The ol dell and I have had our share of wonderful experiences and troubleshooting stories over the years it is a finnicky pizza box that does nothing particularly well but I love it and want to have the Orpheus in her if it is possible.

Troubleshooting steps I have done:

-Tried all different IRQ jumper settings
-Tried different ISA slot
-Disabled all com ports on the Dell

Any other suggestions? Thanks again Marmes for the quick response too!

have you tried to make a BIOS reset? this has to be related to PnP/ESCD update on these BIOSes - there was another user on the facebook support group that had the same issue with a 486 Optiplex but after he left it for some mins the system booted and after that all was good.
Can you please post a couple of pics of this system unit so I can attempt to find one for further testing?

Thanks for responding keropi! I just checked out your facebook page and found that post I think (unless there is another Optiplex user says he had a GN with a 200MMX) unfortunately I couldn't expand all of the comments to read how it was resolved. I do think you are on to something though. I will try some additional troubleshooting and see what I can to get her up and running in it. Optiplex is on the bottom of the Beige mountain below:

Here is a link to a german site that has info on it and a video as well:

https://tuhlteim.de/dell-optiplex-gl-5100-pen … ows-95-kann-was

The trick was to let it "stuck" when attempting to boot, eventually the system configured itself with the Orpheus , recorded the information and since then every boot/reboot was a normal one with no waiting time. Thanks for the pics and info, will hunt down such a system 😀

No luck unfortunately - I think it may be a conflict with the board's drive controller I was able to reset BIOS and boot from floppy after clearing CMOS but the moment I try to configure my hard drive reverts back to the same behavior. I'll throw in an external drive controller and see if I get any luck disabling the onboard. I think the dell is just finnicky.

I am convinced this is some sort of PnP routine issue with those DELL BIOSes. I can tell you more once marmes or me succeed in finding one ... at a sane price 🙁
I am searching if there is a BIOS update for these systems but it's not easy finding that stuff for such old DELL systems...

edit:
if you go here and select the BIOS category you will get a download for a DOS executable that will try and update the system bios to version A20
https://www.dell.com/support/home/de-de/produ … lex-gxl/drivers

this bios seems to be common across the Optiplex Gxx systems of the era (if not the bios updater will complain).
Release notes mention few fixes regarging PNPISA cards - IMHO it would worth the attempt to update the BIOS, worst case scenario it will not allow you to update or you'll get the latest bios for the system.

1The following problems in the A19 BIOS were corrected to generate the A20 BIOS: 
21. Add support for autoshutdown call for win95 and NT. 
32.Properly disable cache if no l2 installed. 
43.Make beep code for no memory 1-3-2. 
54.Remove 3f6/3f7 from floppy resources. 
65.Fix incorrect BASE address stored in on-board S3 configuration space. 
76.Assign IRQ's by slot, not function. 
87.Support 16-bit IO arbitration, if no 10-bit IO present. 
98.Deactivate iorangechk in PNPISA cards. 
109.Allow port 102 to be used by PNPISA device. 
1110.Remove 3BF from the VGA resource table. 
1211.Use IRQ 15 last when searching for free IRQs for PCI. 
1312.Turn off S3 PCI disconnect. 
1413.Allow IRQ 12 use if mouse disabled. 
1514.Disable bus-master bit in IDE registers when onboard IDE disabled. 
1615.Fix possible bad year when auto-power-on is enabled. 
1716.Put 764/765 into bad_dac_snoop_table (force dac snoop off). 
1817.Allow dac snoop enable for onboard vga when feature connector on. 
1918.Allow use of 'non-2k multiple' ISA option roms (new ibm TR card). 
2019.Make copyright notice say 1997.

I actually purchased another one a few months ago to have on hand for parts in case mine ever went bad. The old tech hoard continues to grow haha. I had updated my BIOS on the main system to A20 a while ago which was the one I was testing the card on. I am not sure what version the other machine has. It has a slightly different motherboard revision that the one I currently have (more jumpers for different processors) but I will try it out on that system this week as well and report back. I had only booted the spare machine up once really I just got it for the board and the power supply and the front bezel on the case was in slightly better shape than my main system so I swapped those out.

Shoot if you guys are really interested I could mail out the spare to you to test and play around with if you are interested. Would take a bit to get to you from the US.

I see... so the issue exists in the very latest bios for these systems...
thanks for the offer but since you are in the US the end cost of shipping+taxes will make it not worth since with that amount of money a complete system could be bought...
I am still looking for one

I got my cards few days ago. Thank you, Orpheus sure is a great card!
I now started testing with this Copam. Real Sound Blaster Pro was problematic with it (mixer issue). Orpheus seems to work just fine with unisound and orphinit. But Cycles, one of the speed sensitive games I mentioned in the Copam thread, does not work at all. System just freezes even with internal cache disabled. Same thing happens with unisound and orphinit. Does Cycles work for anyone else?

Edit: Also tested with CrystalFM and no difference.

mbliss11 wrote on 2021-05-28, 13:08:

Just got my card yesterday and have the day off today so it is time for some retro goodness. Unfortunately when I install the card my system will not boot from any device (hard drive, floppy). System posts but will not go any further than initial boot screen and memory scan. I am thinking it is a conflict of some kind but I cannot figure it out. I have adjusted all of the jumpers on the card to no avail. Any suggestions? Anyone have any trouble getting their cards recognized in their systems? Dell Optiplex GL5100 Socket 5

Hi,

These may be a dumb ideas, but assuming the problem is related to some ISA PnP detection/initialization issue, I wonder if you could actually workaround the problem and get it too boot to DOS, by either trying to
a) Disable Plug'n Play functionality in BIOS (if option exists)
b) In BIOS, intentionally disallow ISA resources (DMA, IRQ) from being used so the card cannot be initialized by BIOS in any way shape or form
c) Assuming a) and or b) either do not help or are not possible AND subject to prior validation by Keropi and/or Marmes and/or 640kEnough! as to whether this is feasible, safe and actually worth trying: use an other machine to alter the Orpheus' PnP EEPROM in such a way as to prevent the Dell's BIOS from seeing/initializing the Orpheus at boot and thus avoiding the related lockup . Assuming this can be done, the question would then turn to whether Orphinit (or a possible new/modified version of it) or UNISOUND would allow initializing the Orpheus while both ignoring the invalid EEPROM and not writing anything to the EEPROM to make it valid from the system BIOS' point of view .

Sorry again if these ideas are obviously not possible, not sane, or otherwise unlikely to help .

I will test the Cycles game assuming it's this one: https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/cycles-int … and-prix-racing

@darry
generally OEM systems do not allow for "exotic" options like disable PnP etc... they are the first adopters of such technologies and this doesn't always mean it's for the best 🤣
At least Orphinit as-is requires valid Orpheus eeprom data to exist in order to work. Pretty sure unisound will require the same - at least to activate the YMF289 and S/PDIF.
If one removes the following resistor then the eeprom gets disabled and the card is in non-pnp mode.

I believe only the official DOS crystal drivers *might* work with such a configuration. It is unsure what windows will do. The eeprom on the card does not only store name information - it stores config options too so it can't be discarded easily if your driver does not specifically support such a romless config.

keropi wrote on 2021-06-06, 12:30:

I will test the Cycles game assuming it's this one: https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/cycles-int … and-prix-racing

Yes, that's the one.

I can confirm that Cycles works fine the Orpheus - I just tested in my 486DLC40 system (so a little faster 386DX40 in reality).
What you are experiencing is speed problems with your system. Cycles is a 1989 game and it's best video mode is a EGA 16colors so it is not surprising fast systems have issues with it.
I would suggest a slowdown utility like moslo or similar - I believe it will work better since disabling caches is not enough for your 486 aitotat.

Good to know Cycles works with Orpheus. 486DX@25 MHz and disabling L1 cache was enough for CT1330A and CT1600. Maybe I have something different this time. I'll test some more. Did you need any slowdown with 486DLC@40 MHz ? I think I got CT1600 to work with DLC@33MHz but not with 40 MHz. And if DLC@40MHz works okay, then 486DX@25 should not need any slowdown either.

I'll need to test Orpheus on my DLC system as well when I have time.

nope I did nothing special on the 486DLC, I just ran the game with no tricks or extra programs
real 486DX no matter the mhz can do some things way faster than a DLC cpu so you can't just compare general performance and be 100% sure , the one thing that can screw things up will be the issue as per Murphy's Law 🤣 🤣 🤣

I found what caused Cycles to freeze. It was caused by FreeDOS. I did all the previous testing with PC DOS 2000 but removed the drive and now did the tests with Microdrive containing FreeDOS. Problem was not Orpheus related. I tested with CT1600 and it also did not work when booted with FreeDOS. I then booted with Win98 boot disk and Cycles worked with both CT1600 and Orpheus. And both worked with 486@33MHz and cache enabled.

I haven't mentioned Indy Last Crusade in this thread (I mentioned it in Copam thread) but I'll post Orpheus related observation here since it might be useful. The Indy is also very speed sensitive and sound works only when 486 is set to 25 MHz. Anything above and sound is garbage or the game does not start (divide error). I applied the 486 patch and now the game starts with 33 MHz but audio is still garbage. Same happens with CT1600. But CrystalFM does work! So CrystalFM is less speed sensitive than Yamaha.

that's good to know - it is true Freedos and parts of it are not very compatible with old programs/systems
maybe some slowdown utility will help you with Indy - still it is weird that the "486 patch" did not help your system....
if you make more observations like these please do share!

mbliss11 wrote on 2021-06-03, 01:50:

I actually purchased another one a few months ago to have on hand for parts in case mine ever went bad. The old tech hoard continues to grow haha. I had updated my BIOS on the main system to A20 a while ago which was the one I was testing the card on. I am not sure what version the other machine has. It has a slightly different motherboard revision that the one I currently have (more jumpers for different processors) but I will try it out on that system this week as well and report back. I had only booted the spare machine up once really I just got it for the board and the power supply and the front bezel on the case was in slightly better shape than my main system so I swapped those out.

Shoot if you guys are really interested I could mail out the spare to you to test and play around with if you are interested. Would take a bit to get to you from the US.

I'm sorry to hear about your problem, both the optiplex and the orpheus are outstanding system and it's a shame you are having difficulty using it. My optiplex gx200 was for long my favorite retro-gear but it started to have power issue so with the promise to inspect and recap the PSU I put it on my spare part shelve. Reading about your problem made me realize both the orpheus was on my crafting table (for waveblaster card switch) and I could dust off the optiplex and honor my words. So I took the chance to help a brother in soundcard and reproduce your problem but no dice, it worked fine... I think I could reproduce the behavior Keropi talked, first boot took some times, I did not timed it but it could be around 30~60 seconds, other reboot went promptly. Long ago I think I eventually corrupted the ESCD of that computer fooling around and I dont know how to bring it back. I cannot get rid of those two PNP error message, ever ! I think a bios upgrade/reset did not help, Is this the kind of screen you are stuck at ? Maybe getting back to an older BIOS then upgrading to current could force some config reset ? I'm not expert and I wonder if the ESCD is something that is built at each boot and stored on a nvram and read back for faster subsequent boot ?

ESCD is stored in the BIOS chip, it might be worth to try to flash a fresh BIOS image using something like uniflash which will not try to preserve anything of the original BIOS content.