VOGONS


First post, by marmotta

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Hi! I have a Citygate chipset motherboard with 25mhz 286! The exact name is TD60K, same as this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/185378852274

This board stop working, I have tested all, some test... I suspect the bios is damaged. Anyone have this bios? Or where I can found it. Thanks!

Reply 1 of 30, by Horun

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Can you post a picture of your board? Just because you have a 25Mhz Harris does not mean it is running at 25Mhz (I have a board with 20Mhz Harris in a 16Mhz board)...

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 2 of 30, by marmotta

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Horun wrote on 2022-04-21, 00:18:

Can you post a picture of your board? Just because you have a 25Mhz Harris does not mean it is running at 25Mhz (I have a board with 20Mhz Harris in a 16Mhz board)...

This is my board, which card do you have?

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Reply 3 of 30, by PC Hoarder Patrol

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There are some similar (series) boards on Ultimate Retro (with BIOS downloads) - check these links

https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/?name=td60

https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/?name=td70

Reply 4 of 30, by marmotta

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PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2022-04-21, 10:55:

There are some similar (series) boards on Ultimate Retro (with BIOS downloads) - check these links

https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/?name=td60

https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/?name=td70

I have already tried the td60c bios, but the diagnostic card show me random numbers… (not go, or is wrong flashed) most chip are different (keyboard and others). Td70 is for 386. My original eprom show me only “FF”, another eprom from generic 386 show me the correct pass 01/02 and stop. (is normal, is for 386)

Reply 5 of 30, by PC Hoarder Patrol

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One sold on ebay the other day - https://www.ebay.com/itm/185378852274?hash=it … =p2047675.l2557

Maybe you could make contact with the buyer (thru the seller) and ask for a BIOS dump

Reply 6 of 30, by marmotta

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PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2022-04-21, 11:39:

One sold on ebay the other day - https://www.ebay.com/itm/185378852274?hash=it … =p2047675.l2557

Maybe you could make contact with the buyer (thru the seller) and ask for a BIOS dump

I have ask, but I don't hope much 🙁

Reply 8 of 30, by marmotta

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Predator99 wrote on 2022-04-21, 18:09:

Please upload a copy of your current BIOS. We can see if the checksum is OK and if yes try to get it running in PCem.

I waiting the eprom reader/writer, when It arrives I try to read the bios

Reply 10 of 30, by marmotta

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zapbuzz wrote on 2022-04-21, 19:32:

whenever i see a motherboard without its base memory chips i cringe that it might not have 540k base memory or is that vram?

This board can use dip or simm, I use simm. The board is always gone without dip 😉

Reply 11 of 30, by marmotta

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Predator99 wrote on 2022-04-21, 18:09:

Please upload a copy of your current BIOS. We can see if the checksum is OK and if yes try to get it running in PCem.

Ok! Now I have the reader/programmer... this is the dump of original bios, seems ASCII read reveal a damaged contenent. If you want to take look 😉

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    td60k.zip
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    59 downloads
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Reply 12 of 30, by Horun

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Looks a bit odd. The AMI header even on 286 boards should always be readable and is but have to load in PCem or MAME to see if it really is OK.

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 13 of 30, by marmotta

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Horun wrote on 2022-04-22, 23:00:

Looks a bit odd. The AMI header even on 286 boards should always be readable and is but have to load in PCem or MAME to see if it really is OK.

The td60c bios available on net have the same read problem...

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    2cgm001.zip
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    41.69 KiB
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    40 downloads
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Reply 14 of 30, by marmotta

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After comparison the td60c and td60k bioses seems to be identical (and same checksum). My bios is ok and the problem is another? But I don't know because on hex editor I cant view the correct characters (other bioses view correctly)

Reply 15 of 30, by Horun

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BIOS would not load in PCem under generic AMI 286 or TriGem 286. Have had good luck loading them before so am wondering if that BIOS is odd enough or it has a major issue....
added: will try to load it in MAME later when I have time...

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 16 of 30, by marmotta

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Horun wrote on 2022-04-23, 23:16:

BIOS would not load in PCem under generic AMI 286 or TriGem 286. Have had good luck loading them before so am wondering if that BIOS is odd enough or it has a major issue....
added: will try to load it in MAME later when I have time...

Yes, I tried too. This is a strange bios and board... but I think the bios is not the real problem (if online bios is the same of my bios, I think is ok), probably the chipset is died 🙁

Reply 17 of 30, by Anonymous Coward

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Do you know which chipset the board actually uses? I think "Citygate" is like "PC Chips" and "ETEQ" branding...just a sticker.
Just the other day I saw a Citygate board that was actually based on an ALD chipset.

home_logo2.jpg

"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 18 of 30, by vstrakh

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Horun wrote on 2022-04-22, 23:00:

Looks a bit odd. The AMI header even on 286 boards should always be readable and is but have to load in PCem or MAME to see if it really is OK.

That is the way they've mapped the 8-bit rom onto 16-bit data bus. Some motherboards or ega cards would use two chips, this motherboard uses single chip, and the most significant address line is used as a "byte select" input. So lower half of the chip stores even bytes, the upper half stores odd bytes.
The plain content as seen by cpu would look like this:

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2cgm001_straight.zip
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36.67 KiB
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47 downloads
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Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 19 of 30, by marmotta

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Anonymous Coward wrote on 2022-04-25, 00:46:
Do you know which chipset the board actually uses? I think "Citygate" is like "PC Chips" and "ETEQ" branding...just a sticker. […]
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Do you know which chipset the board actually uses? I think "Citygate" is like "PC Chips" and "ETEQ" branding...just a sticker.
Just the other day I saw a Citygate board that was actually based on an ALD chipset.

home_logo2.jpg

Is Citygate d90-275, under the sticker the chip is blank. The board have another smaller chip and is ALD 93c001 from Fujitsu and i think is keyboard controller... but I not have reliable information's. This chipset is very poor documented.