tabm0de wrote on 2022-12-29, 17:02:

Eivind wrote on 2022-12-28, 22:45:

While I'm waiting for the 16.9344 MHz crystal to arrive at JLC's warehouse, here are a couple of screenshots from KiCad of revision 2.1:

Is it really 2032??? 😀 a lot nice since you can grab them even at local stores 😀

Try adding a bit of context to avoid having your messages look so incoherent! 😀 I assume you're talking about the silkscreen for the RTC battery. No, I'm sorry it's not CR2032, but CR1220. The reason it was wrongly labeled was that the prototype rev2.0 used the 2032. Thanks for noticing! 👍

Edit: tabm0de, you can pick them up at Clas Ohlson, there should be one not far from you! 😉

Nice work on the Rev 2.1 Eivind, it’s looking great

I was experimenting with the D1 Mini with via serial port on the Rev 1.1 before Xmas, didn’t quite get it up and running as a modem, but did get communication flowing from TinyLlama to my Pc and back - can’t wait to get my hands on a rev 2.1!

On the convo re gfx cards, I stumbled across this SM750 version that is much cheaper than the vertex86vga, I ordered one before Xmas to try: https://secure.chamsys.co.uk/shop/index.php?r … &product_id=155 (£17.50 inc shipping all the way to New Zealand), apparently it’s just landed in the country today, so may get my grubby hands on it sometime next week

Was finally able to complete my unit before Xmas with my RPi Zero’s arriving - have to say a massive thanks again Eivind, this device has been the highlight of our holidays, my sons are slowly making their way through “The Incredible Machine”, just like I did as a kid, with the added bonus of the MT32-pi

Jarrad wrote on 2022-12-29, 19:43:

Nice work on the Rev 2.1 Eivind, it’s looking great […]
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Nice work on the Rev 2.1 Eivind, it’s looking great

I was experimenting with the D1 Mini with via serial port on the Rev 1.1 before Xmas, didn’t quite get it up and running as a modem, but did get communication flowing from TinyLlama to my Pc and back - can’t wait to get my hands on a rev 2.1!

On the convo re gfx cards, I stumbled across this SM750 version that is much cheaper than the vertex86vga, I ordered one before Xmas to try: https://secure.chamsys.co.uk/shop/index.php?r … &product_id=155 (£17.50 inc shipping all the way to New Zealand), apparently it’s just landed in the country today, so may get my grubby hands on it sometime next week

Was finally able to complete my unit before Xmas with my RPi Zero’s arriving - have to say a massive thanks again Eivind, this device has been the highlight of our holidays, my sons are slowly making their way through “The Incredible Machine”, just like I did as a kid, with the added bonus of the MT32-pi

damn that price was not high for that card there 😀

Jarrad wrote on 2022-12-29, 19:43:

On the convo re gfx cards, I stumbled across this SM750 version that is much cheaper than the vertex86vga, I ordered one before Xmas to try: https://secure.chamsys.co.uk/shop/index.php?r … &product_id=155 (£17.50 inc shipping all the way to New Zealand), apparently it’s just landed in the country today, so may get my grubby hands on it sometime next week

Was finally able to complete my unit before Xmas with my RPi Zero’s arriving - have to say a massive thanks again Eivind, this device has been the highlight of our holidays, my sons are slowly making their way through “The Incredible Machine”, just like I did as a kid, with the added bonus of the MT32-pi

Thanks for your kinds words!
Hah, that was a suspiciously low price... I grabbed one, we'll see how it turns out! Thanks for the tip! 😀

Jarrad wrote on 2022-12-29, 19:43:

I was experimenting with the D1 Mini with via serial port on the Rev 1.1 before Xmas, didn’t quite get it up and running as a modem, but did get communication flowing from TinyLlama to my Pc and back - can’t wait to get my hands on a rev 2.1!

I've made good progress with the D1 - I'm currently able to use it either as an old skool modem, for use with Telix and the like, OR (even better) as an ethernet device (SLIP over Wi-Fi). When enabling hw flow control and tweaking the UART to 3Mbps I'm getting a transfer speed of roughly 150 KB/sec. Not earth-shattering by any means, by pretty convenient for transfering files and more than sufficient for any kind of DOS stuff in my book.

Jarrad wrote on 2022-12-29, 19:43:

On the convo re gfx cards, I stumbled across this SM750 version that is much cheaper than the vertex86vga, I ordered one before Xmas to try: https://secure.chamsys.co.uk/shop/index.php?r … &product_id=155 (£17.50 inc shipping all the way to New Zealand), apparently it’s just landed in the country today, so may get my grubby hands on it sometime next week

Darn, out of stock, and their US store doesn't even have them listed.

ExplodingLemur wrote on 2022-12-29, 21:04:

Jarrad wrote on 2022-12-29, 19:43:

On the convo re gfx cards, I stumbled across this SM750 version that is much cheaper than the vertex86vga, I ordered one before Xmas to try: https://secure.chamsys.co.uk/shop/index.php?r … &product_id=155 (£17.50 inc shipping all the way to New Zealand), apparently it’s just landed in the country today, so may get my grubby hands on it sometime next week

Darn, out of stock, and their US store doesn't even have them listed.

One post on vogons and it goes out of stock in few minutes.

tabm0de wrote on 2022-12-29, 21:06:

One post on vogons and it goes out of stock in few minutes.

BEHOLD THE POWER OF VOGONS!

@Eivind

I can't recall if I've already asked this, sorry if I already have.

Does the tinyllama have the same issue with it's SD card slot getting the SD card size wrong?

also, have you benchmarked a 2.5 inch SSD on this? how fast can it go?

Duffman wrote on 2022-12-31, 12:21:

I can't recall if I've already asked this, sorry if I already have.
Does the tinyllama have the same issue with it's SD card slot getting the SD card size wrong?
also, have you benchmarked a 2.5 inch SSD on this? how fast can it go?

Don't think you've asked me this before! 😁
SD card: Same issue as what? Pretty sure the size is correctly reported.
Haven't benchmarked any SSDs as there's currently no way of attaching one! 😁 The SOM has SATA pins, but I'm not using those as my thinking was that in its current, as-small-as-possible board size, attaching SATA drives wouldn't make much sense. Also, SD cards are usually plenty fast and big enough for any kind of DOS usage.

@Eivind

Sorry, I meant to say WeeCee! I thought I wrote WeeCee there but it must have slipped my mind.

I've notice that the WeeCee's AMIBIOS reports the SD card size wrong, it shows up as 24.9GB in the BIOS as well as in XP's installer.

It's my theory that this is the cause of the Yellow exclamation mark in 98SE issue that the WeeCee has.
Since it gets the size wrong, the IDE driver gives up, that's my theory anyway.

I reckon you should make another version of the tinyllama... a fatllama!
One with a SATA SSD and an exposed PCI slot for a GeforceFX 5500 PCI

See how fast the Vortex86EX2 can go without size constraints.
I would like to make one myself, but I have 0 experience in circuit board engineering so I've no idea how to make one.

Duffman wrote on 2022-12-31, 13:05:

@Eivind […]
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@Eivind

Sorry, I meant to say WeeCee! I thought I wrote WeeCee there but it must have slipped my mind.

I've notice that the WeeCee's AMIBIOS reports the SD card size wrong, it shows up as 24.9GB in the BIOS as well as in XP's installer.

It's my theory that this is the cause of the Yellow exclamation mark in 98SE issue that the WeeCee has.
Since it gets the size wrong, the IDE driver gives up, that's my theory anyway.

I reckon you should make another version of the tinyllama... a fatllama!
One with a SATA SSD and an exposed PCI slot for a GeforceFX 5500 PCI

See how fast the Vortex86EX2 can go without size constraints.
I would like to make one myself, but I have 0 experience in circuit board engineering so I've no idea how to make one.

Hehe, gotcha!
Well anyways, the AMIBIOS the WeeCee uses and the Coreboot/SeaBIOS in the TinyLlama are completely different, so barring any hardware issues with the Vortex SOMs, there wouldn't be any shared bugs.

Speaking of the fat llama, I've already alluded to this earlier in this thread. The Vortex86EX is pretty anemic compared to other CPUs, so I don't think it makes much sense to make a fat version with the EX aimed at Windows98/XP. However, I have it on good authority that there'll be a much beefier (but still pretty decently priced) SOM coming out of Taiwan later in 2023, so I'll probably try to use that one and build an ATX or microATX mainboard with PCI and ISA slots and lots of I/O ports. Will be exciting for sure, but I fear the cost will be pretty high still. If anyone knows of a good supply of cheap ISA and PCI connectors, lemme know!

...Happy New Year, everyone! 🎉

Happy new Year to all llamas:)

Eivind wrote on 2022-12-31, 17:18:

If anyone knows of a good supply of cheap ISA and PCI connectors, lemme know!

I've got a Hakko FR-301 through-hole desoldering tool if folks want to send me dead motherboards 😀 Otherwise Digikey actually stocks them in the US. The cheapest ISA slots are $3.56 in single-unit quantities, and $4.78 for PCI slots in single-unit quantities.

Eivind wrote on 2022-12-31, 17:18:

If anyone knows of a good supply of cheap ISA and PCI connectors, lemme know!

Varta-ed pentium/486 boards 😁

And happy new year !!

As for SSD, maybe a M.2 slot wired with sata could do the trick ? It's still pretty small and let you use a sata SSD, it's not just for PCIe drives.

Eivind wrote on 2022-12-31, 17:18:

If anyone knows of a good supply of cheap ISA and PCI connectors, lemme know!

I've been ordering mine on aliexpress. About $12-13 for a batch of 5. Decent quality. Gets the job done for all my projects.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001414139438.html

Also, you can find 90 degree angle edge connector, or buy 62+36 connectors separately and combine them to get a 98 pin ISA slot.

Now, if you'll excuse me... I've got to go and grab me a batch before it's out of order too 😀

Paul_V wrote on 2023-01-02, 19:27:

I've been ordering mine on aliexpress. About $12-13 for a batch of 5. Decent quality. Gets the job done for all my projects. htt […]
Show full quote

Eivind wrote on 2022-12-31, 17:18:

If anyone knows of a good supply of cheap ISA and PCI connectors, lemme know!

I've been ordering mine on aliexpress. About $12-13 for a batch of 5. Decent quality. Gets the job done for all my projects.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001414139438.html

Also, you can find 90 degree angle edge connector, or buy 62+36 connectors separately and combine them to get a 98 pin ISA slot.

Now, if you'll excuse me... I've got to go and grab me a batch before it's out of order too 😀

Bah, LCSC/JLC actually have both ISA and PCI connectors in stock! Don't know how I could have missed that, was so sure I'd checked earlier! That's even better for me, as I can have JLC assemble them directly.
They're about $1.4 and $0.5 for ISA and PCI respectively per unit, less for higher quantities. Guess I'll just order some now, and hope I'll be able to use them later this year! 😉

I've been playing around with a nicer BIOS setup than the text-based, press-a-number one currently in use; here's a preview:

Eivind wrote on 2023-01-02, 21:10:

I've been playing around with a nicer BIOS setup than the text-based, press-a-number one currently in use; here's a preview:

Haha thats a nice touch 😀

Very nice !
By the way how's the CPU frequency and cache switched ? Because I'm wondering if it could be done without a reset via a program (like setmul)

Deksor wrote on 2023-01-02, 22:58:

Very nice !
By the way how's the CPU frequency and cache switched ? Because I'm wondering if it could be done without a reset via a program (like setmul)

L1 cache can be switched on and off in software, the standard x86 way (CR0 register, bit 30).
CPU frequency is set during reset by a set of strapping bytes read from the EEPROM, AFAIK can't be changed during normal operation.