rasteri wrote on 2023-01-07, 17:28:

My SM750 arrived just as I was testing the RTX!

Did you happen to get one of the SM750 cards with DVI output? I'm curious to know how well those work.

Purchased one of the AST1300 miniPCIe cards to try out or use as a spare. It shows on the system as:
AST1300/2300 VGA True Color Graphics and Video Accelerator
VBIOS Version 0.93.08
DRAM Size: 64MB

It works good and shows 50FPS (1484 realtics) in doom benchmark. And 32FPS in Quake benchmark. And NeedForSpeed runs really good at 640x480 with high details. But Quake and Duke3D both crash pretty quickly when running 640x480. And its a hard system crash that I have to reset for. Not a crash to command prompt. Quake almost right away, and duke after about 30 seconds of play. I dont need to run quake at 640x480 but its a bummer about Duke3D and Shadow Warrior. They work great at 320 resolution with this card though. I noticed the chip on the card was getting hot so added a heatsink and that helped with NeedforSpeed (it would crash after short play at 640x480) but quake and duke seem more like a deeper issue. I don't need to be able to use this card right now. Just wonder why its crashing. Would like to use this with the rev. 2 board when available. Thanks

Edit:
Updated the video BIOS to latest version 1.10.01 (found on the ASpeed website) but no change in behavior. Going to grab a mPCIE to PCI adapter for testing as I have a few old PCI video cards it would be fun to try out.

The vga cards came today from chamsys.co.uk, will se if i have time to test them tonight.

*edited, tested, ye seems exactly the same as rasteri as the chip is the same 😉

I got my adapters yesterday and tried hooking them up to the rev2.0 prototype board.
My first issue was that there seemed to be an excessive current draw on the 3.3V rail, causing the voltage to drop down to ~2.6V. I had assumed the adapters with their own voltage converters would provide all power themselves, but obviously not. This in turned caused the SD card to crap out, as it uses 3.3V from the llama's 3.3V voltage converter. By booting from a USB flash drive instead, I bypassed this issue.

I found a crapton of AGP- and early PCIe cards in my retro storage boxes, but only one PCI GPU, a shitty Dell TNT2 card that barely managed some testing before showing signs of faulty memory (though that could be power issues as well, haven't investigated properly).
My findings coincide with what other people have been reporting here - basically that more powerful cards than the Vortex86VGA will get us a modest but not exceptional performance boost in DOS games. CPU performance seems to matter more, and this does make sense of course - since we're talking about software rendering.

Two things that could be worth investigating further are:
1. Hardware-accelerated 3D performance in DOS using Glide, with for example a Voodoo2 or 3.
2. OpenGL/Direct3D in Windows 98.
For the former I would need to buy such a card, which I'll probably do at some point, and for the latter I'll try later today or tomorrow.

Anyways, I'm happy the PI7C9X118 chip worked nicely - it's available and reasonably well documented, so I'll be trying that one for my FatLlama board later this year.

Oh, and the TinyLlama rev2.1 is finally in production at JLC, will get my hands on them next week probably.

I think speed improvement is not the only thing we should look after, I found some compatibility issues on several 2D apps which makes this even more interesting in my opinion.

The kukoo2 demo didn't work. Now I know demos don't represent what most games used, but some games used demo effects, which is similar to the keyboard issue we had before (I managed to found one game that doesn't work with the usb keyboard at all : pinball fantasy)
And toonstruck (a point & click from 1996 using a 640*400 vesa mode) which seems to work initially, but has a very annoying graphical issue (basically the borders of the screen blink with some garbage which is distracting) and once you reach the title screen, the screen is so distorted it's just unplayable.

I haven't tested that many games either, but I don't think these are some minor cases especially for later DOS games

By the way how do you plan to test a voodoo 2 ? Because I have a few, but since that's pretty much the only pci slot ... Then you just have a voodoo 2 which cannot display standard VGA modes, you need a proper "2D" card alongside

Edit : it turns out my quake benchmark is relevant afterall, because I didn't rename the quake executable, so the 486quake executable was sitting right next to it.

Using the cheap S3 trio, quake 1.06 scores at 48fps while 486quake scores at 56.6fps !
However I haven't been able to test 640*480 resolution because the game doesn't let me choose that option. I'll try with Duke3d instead..

Edit 2 : well Duke3d runs perfectly normal at 640*480 at a respectable 45-50fps on the S3 trio. I managed to complete level 1 and 2 without a hitch

Eivind wrote on 2023-01-10, 09:47:

I got my adapters yesterday and tried hooking them up to the rev2.0 prototype board. My first issue was that there seemed to be […]
Show full quote

I got my adapters yesterday and tried hooking them up to the rev2.0 prototype board.
My first issue was that there seemed to be an excessive current draw on the 3.3V rail, causing the voltage to drop down to ~2.6V. I had assumed the adapters with their own voltage converters would provide all power themselves, but obviously not. This in turned caused the SD card to crap out, as it uses 3.3V from the llama's 3.3V voltage converter. By booting from a USB flash drive instead, I bypassed this issue.

I found a crapton of AGP- and early PCIe cards in my retro storage boxes, but only one PCI GPU, a shitty Dell TNT2 card that barely managed some testing before showing signs of faulty memory (though that could be power issues as well, haven't investigated properly).
My findings coincide with what other people have been reporting here - basically that more powerful cards than the Vortex86VGA will get us a modest but not exceptional performance boost in DOS games. CPU performance seems to matter more, and this does make sense of course - since we're talking about software rendering.

Two things that could be worth investigating further are:
1. Hardware-accelerated 3D performance in DOS using Glide, with for example a Voodoo2 or 3.
2. OpenGL/Direct3D in Windows 98.
For the former I would need to buy such a card, which I'll probably do at some point, and for the latter I'll try later today or tomorrow.

Anyways, I'm happy the PI7C9X118 chip worked nicely - it's available and reasonably well documented, so I'll be trying that one for my FatLlama board later this year.

Oh, and the TinyLlama rev2.1 is finally in production at JLC, will get my hands on them next week probably.

Aha nice to know, well it was at least a test for me as they were cheaper than dmp’s vga.
But not forget that this project was aimed for pure dos games ( I do run games like duke in low res as that’s what I was possible to do only when I was younger 😉 ) (also works with win 3.1 ) which works without any problems what I have tested 😀

2.1 will be interesting due to the built in ps/2 emulated so I don’t need to use serial mouse hehe

Deksor wrote on 2023-01-10, 09:59:

I think speed improvement is not the only thing we should look after, I found some compatibility issues on several 2D apps which makes this even more interesting in my opinion.

Yep, this is a good point! Also, let's not lose track of the fact that this machine is really aimed at the lower end of the 90's and earlier. 😉

Deksor wrote on 2023-01-10, 09:59:

By the way how do you plan to test a voodoo 2 ? Because I have a few, but since that's pretty much the only pci slot ... Then you just have a voodoo 2 which cannot display standard VGA modes, you need a proper "2D" card alongside

Haha, yeah you're right. Brainfart. Voodoo3 would do the job.

Deksor wrote on 2023-01-10, 09:59:

Edit : it turns out my quake benchmark is relevant afterall, because I didn't rename the quake executable, so the 486quake execu […]
Show full quote

Edit : it turns out my quake benchmark is relevant afterall, because I didn't rename the quake executable, so the 486quake executable was sitting right next to it.
Using the cheap S3 trio, quake 1.06 scores at 48fps while 486quake scores at 56.6fps !
However I haven't been able to test 640*480 resolution because the game doesn't let me choose that option. I'll try with Duke3d instead..
Edit 2 : well Duke3d runs perfectly normal at 640*480 at a respectable 45-50fps on the S3 trio. I managed to complete level 1 and 2 without a hitch

Hm, weird that you can't select 640x480 in Quake....?

Anyways, I'm not sure if any of you guys have specified the CPU clock speed you're running these tests at? Is is the default 300 MHz or overclocked to something else? 😁 Makes quite the difference... 😉

Wanted to try something new today, a usb cdrom in dos 😁 i finnaly got it to find it and load it, problem is as soon then USBASPI is loaded the usb keyboard stops working, maybe it resets the port or something.

Is there any one else that has been trying usb cdrom? 😜

Deksor wrote on 2023-01-10, 09:59:

Using the cheap S3 trio, quake 1.06 scores at 48fps while 486quake scores at 56.6fps !

Weird how your Quake performance is so high given we're CPU-bound, have you overclocked your EX? I'm running mine at stock clocks

tabm0de wrote on 2023-01-10, 12:10:

Wanted to try something new today, a usb cdrom in dos 😁 i finnaly got it to find it and load it, problem is as soon then USBASPI is loaded the usb keyboard stops working, maybe it resets the port or something.

Is there any one else that has been trying usb cdrom? 😜

No but this is the same problem I had on the 86duino when I tried using a USB mouse, the keyboard would stop working when I loaded ctmouse

Yeah you're right, I should mention I'm running my ex at 500mhz.

Aiming at the early 90's and before is a shame in my opinion as when ran at max speed it truly feels like a pentium (I mean 48fps in quake is a pretty good score and 50 FPS in duke3d at 640x480 is like a pentium MMX 233).

As fun as 3d accelerated games are, it's true that this isn't the right machine for that, something as fast as a pentium 3 would be better, but in my opinion it could truly be a 2d/non accelerated games king.

I think the video card issue isn't going to cause issues just to these games.

Maybe we should make a chart to tell if games run properly or not on the dmp video card (and the other card that's been found), this would give us a better view overall I think 😀

rasteri wrote on 2023-01-10, 12:34:

tabm0de wrote on 2023-01-10, 12:10:

Wanted to try something new today, a usb cdrom in dos 😁 i finnaly got it to find it and load it, problem is as soon then USBASPI is loaded the usb keyboard stops working, maybe it resets the port or something.

Is there any one else that has been trying usb cdrom? 😜

No but this is the same problem I had on the 86duino when I tried using a USB mouse, the keyboard would stop working when I loaded ctmouse

This might not be a problem for rev 2 of tinyllama as i guess as it uses the usb to ps2 adapter instead.

tabm0de wrote on 2023-01-10, 12:56:

This might not be a problem for rev 2 of tinyllama as i guess as it uses the usb to ps2 adapter instead.

Correct, the HIDman circuitry bypasses the crappy SeaBIOS USB->PS/2 emulation completely! 🎉

Question have any one used Logitech unifying keyboard with the computer? Sadly
I only have crappy bolt version with Logitech mx mini and it does not work for me.
*edit* Bolt doesn't seem to work with old computer, just tested a p4 board.
F BOLT 🙁

Aaron707 wrote on 2023-01-07, 23:35:

Finished making a case for my board. Posted the files here https://www.printables.com/model/362273-tiny-llama-x86-case if anyone wants to modify it or print. Huge learning curve figuring out 3D printing and cad but it was a fun journey. I can just play SimCity 2000 for hours on this thing. It sounds great with MT-32 music. Also some Star Wars : Dark Forces for good fun as well. Both serial mice I tried worked out of the box. I think the biggest thing needed is some sort of joystick or gamepad emulation or translation to be perfect. But overall it does everything very well and is an awesome little machine.

Did a print out with my ender don’t know if I did something wrong but the board seems to be really tight fit to get the board in so i grunded it abit, also did that around the vga so I could push the vga cable from the pc the hole way in. Otherwise I do like it, and great work ! 😀

I finally got to play with the SM750 card, and it was indeed a very nice upgrade from the Vortex86VGA. Can even play Quake2 now, nice. 😎

In other news, my rev2.1 boards were delivered today! Here are a couple of screenshots of one, still in its break-away panel:

Eivind wrote on 2023-01-18, 19:51:

I finally got to play with the SM750 card, and it was indeed a very nice upgrade from the Vortex86VGA. Can even play Quake2 now, nice. 😎

In other news, my rev2.1 boards were delivered today! Here are a couple of screenshots of one, still in its break-away panel:

Did you play with sm750 on the new board or old on? 😉

Board looks nice 😀 is it hand made or have you ordered it with the Components ?

Anyway it looks sexy 😀

tabm0de wrote on 2023-01-19, 06:11:

Did you play with sm750 on the new board or old on? 😉

The 2.1 version, but there are no changes from 1.1 -> 2.1 that should affect performance or compatibility.

tabm0de wrote on 2023-01-19, 06:11:

Board looks nice 😀 is it hand made or have you ordered it with the Components ?

The pictures show what I got delivered. I only have to solder the SOM pin headers, crystal chip, DAC board and D1 Mini. I already did the pin headers and got the system up and running. Hopefully I'll be able to do the rest later today and do a thorough round of testing. Looks promising!

tabm0de wrote on 2023-01-19, 06:11:

Anyway it looks sexy 😀

Thanks! 😁

Eivind wrote on 2023-01-19, 06:19:

tabm0de wrote on 2023-01-19, 06:11:

Did you play with sm750 on the new board or old on? 😉

The 2.1 version, but there are no changes from 1.1 -> 2.1 that should affect performance or compatibility.

I just wanted asked due to the power problem you had before 😉

tabm0de wrote on 2023-01-19, 07:54:

Eivind wrote on 2023-01-19, 06:19:

tabm0de wrote on 2023-01-19, 06:11:

Did you play with sm750 on the new board or old on? 😉

The 2.1 version, but there are no changes from 1.1 -> 2.1 that should affect performance or compatibility.

I just wanted asked due to the power problem you had before 😉

Oh, yeah no that was one of the adapters not playing nice. The SM750 card seems stable enough.