I've got an S2 in-hand but I'll be leaving town for a week and a half shortly, so I suspect you'll get to it faster than I 😀

This will be a gamechanger, as you can run many other synthesizers on the top of tinyllama. It would also be great to have the ability to easily change IRQ from BIOS, as some of the software requires to have it in a specific range.

Eivind wrote on 2023-03-01, 20:10:

Aaron707 wrote on 2023-03-01, 17:35:

Only the original waveboards need the 12v. All of the newly created ones run on 5v. Here is the simple adapter that was made to just use the gameport for modern waveblaster boards. And that port only has 5V on the pins:
https://www.serdashop.com/CHiLLandPhilAdapter so sounds pretty doable, maybe this tiny S2 waveboard would work best? https://www.serdashop.com/waveblaster . If a diagram to wire it up is available at some point I would be willing to try it with mine.

Aaron ordered an S2 for me, I'll try hooking it up to a llama and see if this works. If it does, I'll spin up a small batch of adapter boards and sell at cost to whomever's interested.

Wow, a very impressive project!! Sent you mail (@Elvind) in regards to an assembled v2 board.

My package arrived slightly damaged, but it looks like my tinyllama2 is unharmed.

PSU wise, would a 5V 2A PSU be enough? or should I get something else?
also, which button is which on the tinyllama2?

So question, no one is working on a laptop model of tinyllama? Haha

About 2A Psu, for my tiny llama, was not enough. In the end, I used 20W PSU. PW is the first button from the left, the second it’s reset, and two others are mt32 buttons.

Duffman wrote on 2023-03-02, 11:48:

My package arrived slightly damaged, but it looks like my tinyllama2 is unharmed. […]
Show full quote

My package arrived slightly damaged, but it looks like my tinyllama2 is unharmed.

20230302_192434.jpg

PSU wise, would a 5V 2A PSU be enough? or should I get something else?
also, which button is which on the tinyllama2?

sndlbn wrote on 2023-03-02, 15:11:

About 2A Psu, for my tiny llama, was not enough. In the end, I used 20W PSU.

I measured the current draw a while back, don't remember the exact numbers but it was in the ballpark of slightly under 1A. There might be an initial surge though, and of course whatever you plug into the various connectors (USB, SD) will draw power as well. So yeah, the boring answer is as always: it depends. 😉 Never hurts to overshoot when it comes to power supplies.

@sndlbn

Thanks for the info on the PSU and buttons.
I'll start looking for a beefier PSU. maybe one of my phone chargers will have enough.

I'm assuming it needs to be 5V? or can it take 12V too?

Duffman wrote on 2023-03-02, 15:29:

@sndlbn […]
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@sndlbn

Thanks for the info on the PSU and buttons.
I'll start looking for a beefier PSU. maybe one of my phone chargers will have enough.

I'm assuming it needs to be 5V? or can it take 12V too?

Only 5V!! 😁

Eivind wrote on 2023-03-02, 15:24:

I measured the current draw a while back, don't remember the exact numbers but it was in the ballpark of slightly under 1A. There might be an initial surge though, and of course whatever you plug into the various connectors (USB, SD) will draw power as well. So yeah, the boring answer is as always: it depends. 😉 Never hurts to overshoot when it comes to power supplies.

Often the problem isn't the current rating it's the voltage sag. USB cables are often the cause of this - I did a test on a lot of cables a while back and they all performed very differently. Some brand-name ones would drop down to 4v at 500mA...

Also a lot of "5v 2A" power supplies will drop down to 4.5v or lower if you get them anywhere near their rated current.

The raspberry pi power supplies actually run at 5.1v to help overcome these issues, that would probably be a good choice for the tinyllama

Raspberry pi 4 psu would work best i guess 😉

It would be great to have it. However, I see two main problems, availability of 5:4 displays. If you don't want to start from scratch and don't care about the display, you can adopt raspberry pi ready-to-go solutions. The problem could be the tinyllama form factor and presumably heating if you go over 300mhz.

tabm0de wrote on 2023-03-02, 14:53:

So question, no one is working on a laptop model of tinyllama? Haha

sndlbn wrote on 2023-03-02, 16:30:

It would be great to have it. However, I see two main problems, availability of 5:4 displays. If you don't want to start from scratch and don't care about the display, you can adopt raspberry pi ready-to-go solutions. The problem could be the tinyllama form factor and presumably heating if you go over 300mhz.

tabm0de wrote on 2023-03-02, 14:53:

So question, no one is working on a laptop model of tinyllama? Haha

There is a few tiny 5:4 but they are pricey:) I have to do a test how long I can run a tinyllama first on battery pack 😀

rasteri wrote on 2023-03-02, 16:24:

Often the problem isn't the current rating it's the voltage sag. USB cables are often the cause of this - I did a test on a lot of cables a while back and they all performed very differently. Some brand-name ones would drop down to 4v at 500mA...

Also a lot of "5v 2A" power supplies will drop down to 4.5v or lower if you get them anywhere near their rated current.

The raspberry pi power supplies actually run at 5.1v to help overcome these issues, that would probably be a good choice for the tinyllama

Yeah, good points! I think Apple's chargers do that as well. A newer iPad charger has USB-C output and would probably work well.

Aaron707 wrote on 2023-01-09, 18:42:

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 […]
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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.

I bought AST1300 too, and have had the same experience so far. The card often crashes on a resolution above 640x480. In Quake instantly after a couple of milliseconds. Compared with Vortex VGA, it's just slightly faster, about 10%, at least in Quake. Below are measurements taken from Quake (1.06). They have been taken with sound on. Can you measure FPS in Need For Speed?

sndlbn wrote on 2023-03-02, 22:43:

Aaron707 wrote on 2023-01-09, 18:42:

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 […]
Show full quote

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.

I bought AST1300 too, and have had the same experience so far. The card often crashes on a resolution above 640x480. In Quake instantly after a couple of milliseconds. Compared with Vortex VGA, it's just slightly faster, about 10%, at least in Quake. Below are measurements taken from Quake (1.06). They have been taken with sound on. Can you measure FPS in Need For Speed?

What demo have you been running? I guess you dont have the GD-SM750 ? Otherwise I am happy to run same demo’s to compare it with them.

tabm0de wrote on 2023-03-03, 06:22:

sndlbn wrote on 2023-03-02, 22:43:

Aaron707 wrote on 2023-01-09, 18:42:

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 […]
Show full quote

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.

I bought AST1300 too, and have had the same experience so far. The card often crashes on a resolution above 640x480. In Quake instantly after a couple of milliseconds. Compared with Vortex VGA, it's just slightly faster, about 10%, at least in Quake. Below are measurements taken from Quake (1.06). They have been taken with sound on. Can you measure FPS in Need For Speed?

What demo have you been running? I guess you dont have the GD-SM750 ? Otherwise I am happy to run same demo’s to compare it with them.

It’s just Quake in different resolutions. You need to open the quake console and type timedemo demo1. I don’t have an 750 card, so I can’t compare. I can push this spreadsheet to Google calc, so you can add more measurements.

sndlbn wrote on 2023-03-02, 22:43:

I bought AST1300 too, and have had the same experience so far. The card often crashes on a resolution above 640x480. In Quake instantly after a couple of milliseconds. Compared with Vortex VGA, it's just slightly faster, about 10%, at least in Quake. Below are measurements taken from Quake (1.06). They have been taken with sound on. Can you measure FPS in Need For Speed?

I am unsure how to measure FPS in Need for Speed 1 in DOS. It just felt somewhat smother but actually felt pretty good with VortexVGA.
I did some testing and I feel fairly certain the ASPEED card crash above 640x480 is due to VortexVGA BIOS being loaded. I think it conflicts with the VGA BIOS of some cards causing this issue. The card works fine in another machine. The way I tested this is I used a utility that dumps the video BIOS in DOS. And it can only see the VortexVGA BIOS no matter what card is installed. It must be generic enough to work with most cards OK. To fully test this we would need to compile a version of the TinyLlama BIOS without VortexVGA, or even better, have a BIOS option to disable it for cards that have their own VGABIOS. One more test that is somewhat telling, I have a Geforce2 MX200 PCI card with a corrupt VGABIOS (wont post in any machine due to bit rot). But it works OK in the Tiny Llama due to it loading just the generic VortexVGA BIOS. It also has the issue with crash above 640x480, but works fine otherwise.

Aaron707 wrote on 2023-03-06, 18:40:

sndlbn wrote on 2023-03-02, 22:43:

I bought AST1300 too, and have had the same experience so far. The card often crashes on a resolution above 640x480. In Quake instantly after a couple of milliseconds. Compared with Vortex VGA, it's just slightly faster, about 10%, at least in Quake. Below are measurements taken from Quake (1.06). They have been taken with sound on. Can you measure FPS in Need For Speed?

I am unsure how to measure FPS in Need for Speed 1 in DOS. It just felt somewhat smother but actually felt pretty good with VortexVGA.
I did some testing and I feel fairly certain the ASPEED card crash above 640x480 is due to VortexVGA BIOS being loaded. I think it conflicts with the VGA BIOS of some cards causing this issue. The card works fine in another machine. The way I tested this is I used a utility that dumps the video BIOS in DOS. And it can only see the VortexVGA BIOS no matter what card is installed. It must be generic enough to work with most cards OK. To fully test this we would need to compile a version of the TinyLlama BIOS without VortexVGA, or even better, have a BIOS option to disable it for cards that have their own VGABIOS. One more test that is somewhat telling, I have a Geforce2 MX200 PCI card with a corrupt VGABIOS (wont post in any machine due to bit rot). But it works OK in the Tiny Llama due to it loading just the generic VortexVGA BIOS. It also has the issue with crash above 640x480, but works fine otherwise.

Huh! This is interesting! I thought the baked-in Vortex86VGA BIOS didn't get used when the BIOS detected another graphics card's VBIOS - but I might have been wrong about that then! When testing with the SM750, it made absolutely no difference when I removed the Vortex86VGA BIOS.

It's actually pretty easy to rip it out and test for yourself, just comment out the

1INCLUDE_VGA_BIOS=vgabios.rom

line in the build-target.sh file and recompile.

Aaron, could you point me to that utility that dumps the VBIOS in DOS?

Yes here is the thread where I found the utility Wfflash (attached to first post). I was trying to figure out why my dead GF MX200 PCI worked with the Tiny Llama and no where else. There are some other utilitys that can dump VGA BIOS in DOS as well.
ELSA Synergy II -32 PCI: No VGA output - BIOS bit rot?